Your Facebook account

You started off a couple years ago adamantly refusing to join Facebook. Why would you do that when you already have a Myspace that you barely ever check? Also, why would you want to reconnect with a bunch of people from your high school that you hated the first time around? Finding out the slutty girl in your senior class now has two babies at the age of 28 isn't exactly an earth-shattering revelation. Why do you need your predictions and judgments of these people from your past validated and confirmed so desperately?

It's unclear why, but the fact is you do.

Facebook, though you once spat on the very idea of it, should now be your homepage. It should be the number one most-visited site in your whole sad Internet life. You should check your Facebook when you wake up, then several thousand times throughout the day, and it should also be the last image your eyes see before falling asleep at night. Throughout the day you should constantly think about how your various goings on and thoughts can be best parsed as a status update. You should also begin taking pictures with your phone at the most mundane of events, like lunch with your coworkers, or a particularly long and boring stint in the bathroom, just so you can upload them to your Facebook where approximately nobody will be interested in them.

You should also be currently in the midst of taking the myriad quizzes that have infested Facebook like lice on poor people. You should now know which Star Wars character you are, what chemical element you're most like, the likely date of your own death, which non-recurring Golden Girls character you are, which type of clam chowder you most resemble, which Super Mario 2 villain you're most compatible with, and which prehistoric era you'd best thrive in. You should also know all of these things about every person on your friend list. And the fact that you know this should make you seriously question if your life is worth the resources it takes to sustain it.

You should also become a fan of everything. You should be a fan of ketchup, Phylicia Rashad, not being on fire, Detroit, thunderstorms, the Beatles, churros, puppies, words that begin with "q", space travel, the 1950s and Sears. 

One of the most important and fraudulent things you should do with your Facebook account is stalk people. If you have a recent ex-boyfriend/girlfriend, your entire life should revolve around constantly refreshing their Facebook wall. You should intently scour it for any sign of either their remorse in breaking up with you or evidence of their being a goddamn cheating whore. Because Facebook is now basically your only connection to this person (it's also your only connection to almost every other person in your life), you should start to think of visiting their wall as the equivalent of having real interaction with them. Clicking on their photos is like getting a really sad Internet hug. Reading their updates while eating dinner alone is almost like having a conversation with them again, only you don't have to talk, which is sort of what you've wanted all along. And then, on that special moment when you click on their name and all you get is a small thumbnail picture and a notice that says you must be so-and-so's friend in order to see their full profile, you can finally breathe a sigh of relief and start in on the pile of work you've let gather on your desk for the last three weeks. And then you can join another online dating site.