What Your Facebook Profile Says About You

Upwards of 1,000 friends.

You are just not into confrontation. You would rather scroll through endless updates and commentary from people you met one time at a party six years ago then suffer the momentary tedium of weeding people out, and the potential fallout of some rando being like “Hey, bro, I thought we were friends.” While it’s understandable that saying to someone, albeit indirectly, that they are no longer important to you or relevant to your life is difficult, it has become nothing short of a necessity in our modern world. If you have a number of friends that is at least 10 times as high as the actual amount of people you really know/care about in life, you need to grow some conviction and start at least getting rid of people whose names you don’t even recognize.

Constantly-changing profile pictures.

Look at me! Look at me! I have so many pictures of myself, each one better than the last! Here I am looking sassy at a party with a drink in my hand — like it! Here I am in a bathing suit, poolside — like this one, as well! Essentially, having a new profile picture every three days is the online equivalent of dying your hair several times a month. Like, we get it, you like attention. I imagine you standing in front of your closet before work, consistently calling in late because you can’t decide which color of shirt most represents your existential crisis this week.

A ton of likes on every update.

You’re actually a legitimately popular person, and everyone else on your feed hates you. Unlike the rest of us paupers trying to scrape by with a family member or two acknowledging when something cool happens to us, your stuff is always headline news. You get thousands of “Happy Birthday” notes on your big day, and dozens of likes when you update your network upon getting a new job. People just gravitate towards you, and even something like “Ate peaches for the first time in years… kind of feel like I could have done without them. Overrated.” gets 30 people’s distinct approval. Everyone sees your posts — because they fall, by default, at the top of the homepage — and is like, “Ugh, really? Again?” Congratulations, you’re the Facebook equivalent of a high-school quarterback in a crumbling steel town which only has its football team to hope in anymore.

Thousands of photos a year.

You’re afraid that you’re going to die, and imagine, on some level, that filling the internet with your visual presence is going to stave off your mortality. No one is kept younger by having 300 photos of themselves at a house party, but you weren’t in the office when that memo went around.

Arguments about politics on statuses.

You are missing a distinct chip that is normally issued to all people upon entering adulthood which reminds us, at regular intervals, that arguing about politics and other real, complex issues via Facebook is only slightly more productive than throwing feces at one another. You are childish, and petulant, and are going to spend 60 back-and-forth comments trying to prove to some girl from your middle school pre-algebra class that gun control is essential if we’re going to get crime rates down. You want to prove yourself, and be heard, even thought fighting-via-comment is about the least impressive way of hashing something out. Even if you win the argument, you still lose for having engaged in a Facebook fight.

More than 3 statuses per day.

You don’t have a job, but you have a lot of feelings. If someone isn’t confirming your existence with a comment or a like every hour on the hour, you will shrivel up into a human-shaped raisin and cease to exist. You would go out and look for a job but, you know, can’t cut into that prime status-updating time. The people need to know that you are in your pajamas at 2 PM, and you’re going to give it to them.

Constant digital canoodling with significant other.

Everyone hates you and your stupid relationship. Everyone secretly makes fun of your constant back-and-forth of “love u baby” on your respective timelines. Everyone is going to quietly rejoice when the two of you finally break up — and you will. It may have been a different time, but even if Facebook had been around when Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were first falling in love, there’s no way a couple as solid as them were going to spend their afternoons calling each other embarrassing pet names in front of their 500 closest acquaintances. There is a thing called class, and you are in short supply of it.

No cursing or debauched behavior.

Someone added their coworker. Enjoy never being able to admit when you have a hangover if you want to call out sick again!

Ironic relationship status/no defined status.

You’re all about deflecting any potential questions about your actual relationship status by permanently leaving that space empty, or filling it with a hilarious little thing about you being “married” to one of your best friends. You’re not on the internet to actually reveal who you’re banging this week, and are certainly not trying to deal with the potential fallout if an actual relationship were to end and promptly pop up on the home page of every person you’ve ever met. You’d rather have everyone assume you can’t get a date than have to go through the humiliating process of putting up and taking down a very explicit status every time something changes. You might consider making it real when you actually do get married to someone, but you kind of hope that you’re not still on Facebook when you’re at that point in your life.