hotlinked
Like the oft-used Facebook relationship status indicates, it's complicated.
It definitely was for Schuler Benson and Celeste Zendler, who owe their relationship to a weird glitch on the social-networking site. On the sixth anniversary of the odd happening that started it all, Benson relayed the unlikely tale on Reddit.
In October 2009, Arkansas native Benson used a flip phone to log into his Facebook account. When he navigated to Facebook's mobile site, Benson realized he was already logged in, only it wasn't his account he was logged into. It was Colorado native Celeste Zendler's.
Thanks to some sort of Facebook glitch, Benson was stuck in the account of someone 1,000 miles away, and he couldn't get out. After they both realized what was going on, the two started chatting via status updates on Zendler's Facebook page as they tried to figure out how to get Benson logged out of Zendler's account.
Following several troubleshooting attempts, Zendler sent Benson a friend request, which finally allowed him to log out of her account for good.
Zendler intended to remove Benson as a friend a few days later, but the two found out they had a lot in common, and started chatting online. In June of 2013, the couple met for the first time in person, and they clearly really liked each other. In the fall, Zendler moved from her home in Boulder, Colorado, to live with Benson in Arkansas.
To this day, Benson has no idea how he got logged into Zendler's account in the first place, but he's definitely glad he did.
If he ever meets Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Benson tells CNET's Crave blog he'd "at least like to thank the dude" for whatever it is that caused the mix-up and led him to find his love.
You can read more of the couple's story and see some of the original Facebook status updates in Benson's Imgur gallery. It just goes to show that sometimes those Skynet-arranged connections can lead to true love.
Weird Facebook glitch leads to true love - CNET