Facebook 101

A few tips from me to you on how to not have an annoying, arrogant, and/or all-around lame Facebook profile.

1. Do not create full albums of photos of just you taken by your roommate, your boyfriend, or yourself. Thirty pictures of you against the oak tree or you shot in black and white doesn't make you a model.
2. Answer basic profile questions directly. Your hometown is "Marietta, GA" not "M to the izzle" or "The betta 'retta."
3. Do not quote yourself in the "Favorite Quotes" section. It's particularly offensive if you attribute the quote to yourself: "I like purple hats." - Me
4. It's okay to change your profile picture regularly (because no one wants you to have a picture from your Senior year of high school). Do not, however, change it every day so that you are always in my "Friends with recently updated profiles" list.
5. Be legit with your favorites. Come on - War and Peace is not your favorite book; Confessions of a Shopaholic is.
6. Do not post on your own wall. Ever.
7. When posting on someone else's wall, evaluate how many times you have posted in the last week...three or more of your posts should never be visible in someone's 10 most recent wall postings. It makes you look like a stalker.
8. Try your best to be relatively unique with your interests. Listing "hanging out with my friends" or "people" as your favorites? Welcome to the human race, captain obvious.
9. Be self-aware and post a profile pictures of yourself that actually looks like you, not a spectacularly hot, glamour-shot version of yourself.
10. In your work info description, do not write any type of statement that conveys that you work for the "best" this, the "top" that, or "largest" other. Cockiness is not becoming, plus it makes us wonder if you're overcompensating for utter and total career dissatisfaction.
11. Keep all of the personal info sections (interests, fav music, movies) to 20 lines or much less. I know I have no life and spend way too much on Facebook, but please don't flatter yourself by thinking I'm going to read about how you like bananas, grapes, oranges, strawberries, raisins, avocados, apples, ugly fruit and mangos. Just say you like fruit and get on with your life.
12. The proper Facebook communication exchange is not post on wall, reply on wall, reply on wall, reply on wall. Instead, post on wall and reply on wall, and if the reply requires a response, reply in a message. Or copy and paste their Gmail address from contact info and send them a normal person email.
13. Do not poke. Ever.
14. I know it's grammatically restraining, but use the status function correctly. "Jamie is eating sushi," check. "Jamie is I love sushi!" no check.
15. If you are actually in a complicated relationship, I can pretty much guarantee that it will only make it more complicated to announce it on Facebook. If things are actually not complicated, then congratulations...they are now.

;)