I’ve only just started using Facebook and I’m still feeling my way around. One thing I’ve noticed is that the system puts up a lot of friend suggestions, and more often than not, I have no way of knowing what the connection is supposed to be.
If I click on the person’s link, there’s usually little or no information to help me in deciding whether to befriend them or not–except for some ads in the right margin. These are usually political, and so far have been for various Tea Partyites and other conservatives. Is this somehow related to the person whose link I’ve clicked on; IOW does it say something about the views the person has expressed on Facebook?
Facebook is pretty secretive about all the details of how it works and what it is doing but friend suggestions aren’t really tied to the ads. They are just ads for Facebook to make money like any other media. You will probably find that your friend suggestions get a lot more accurate as you add friends. Most of the rough guessing is done when you don’t have many friends listed. After you do, it looks at the spiderweb of connections between people that you already have as friends to figure out more people you probably know.
Did you let it have access to your address book? If you have any Teabagger posts or contacts, that might have to do with it.
Also, I don’t use Facebook as much anymore, but I seem to remember that it would give a clue on how I’m supposed to know the person, unless it was someone that was almost completely random. The most common was that someone had attended my high school or college (even if years earlier or later.)