What drugs is Facebook taking?

Usually when facebook releases updates and everyone has a little rant about it I just sit back and roll my eyes. These things usually have a long term advantage, and change is always a bit painful for users.

However I've had a list of about 25 friends in alphabetical order, from A through to D, just stuck at the right side of my screen for about 6 weeks now. I have no idea why they are there. They're not online. They're not people I historically interact a lot with, I can't sort the list, or add favourites. I can't hide it, because that also hides the people online I might want to chat to.

I honestly would love to know the reasoning behind this. Someone, somewhere sat through multiple planning sessions and laid out some kind of argument that this delivers value somewhere, either in some obscure way to facebook themselves or somehow to the end user. The design doesn't bother me, but the functionality does seem... arbitrary? What inherent interest could I possibly have in my first few alphabetically sorted friends?

Remember when Facebook first introduced the News Feed and there were News Feed protest groups with over a million users sperging out about it?