People can learn a lot about you from your Facebook profile. By considering your favorite movies, pictures, quotes and the things other people write on your wall, it is quite easy to get a good idea of who you are as a person. And knowing that, many of us are extremely careful about what we throw on there.

And I’m not talking about taking down all those drunk pictures from the Jell-O wrestling tournament so you can get that job with the government you’ve been coveting. I’m talking about leaving those up to show anyone and everyone who is looking that you are one cool girl who happens to enjoy wrestling in gelatin.

Your Facebook picture is especially important. It’s the first thing people see when they look you up, not to mention the fact that it comes up next to every wall post, Facebook message, chat, update, etc., that you do on that damn website. Naturally, you are going to put a lot of thought into your photo of choice. It needs to be a good representation of who you are, be it an artist, a class clown, or any other type of person.

I spend a lot of time on Facebook (is there a 12-step program out there?!) and I’ve noticed that of the 500 million people using the site worldwide, there only 6 basic types of photos that people post on their profile:

[Click on any image to see the gallery!]

[This story was originally posted by Lauren - University of Michigan]

Likey? Don’t worry, there are plenty more faves where this came from.

Those lovable bros over at BroBible.com have once again attempted to tarnish the sterling facades us girls put up just to please them (riiiight…).  The latest topic up for debate: The 15 Most Common Ways Girls Try to Look Hotter on Facebook. From butts out to boobs smooshed, they’re calling us out on all our “tricks” of the online trade.

Well guys, a little of our own light research has gone a long way.  Turns out you’re guilty of posting some overused, Brolicious pics yourselves.  Need proof?  Just go through your tagged photos and see if you’re guilty of any of these thirteen major offenses:

[Click on any image to view the gallery.]

While perusing (and by “perusing” I mean obsessively checking and re-checking) Facebook for the fourth time yesterday, I noticed that no one had done anything since the last time I logged in (an hour before). In a fit of never ending boredom that made signing off impossible, I decided to look at pictures of me.

Of the 300ish photos of me, 250 involved drinking and 249 of those involved me making some sort of awful face. Not like “I wasn’t ready for the camera” awful; more like, “I am going to make the ugliest face I can think of” awful. The sad part is that I can distinctly remember taking most of those pictures and consciously making the faces that are now staring back at (and horrifying) me.

I even giggled as I made one of my uglier faces and poked my head into what would have been a cute picture of friends. Why did I ever think that was a good idea?

Self Reflective Beer Goggles, that’s why.

It’s like the minute the beer hits my lips, I am somehow unable to take a picture without doing something completely stupid. Whether it is an awful face, mimicking oral sex with a beer bottle or thinking of a ridiculous scenario (“Your boyfriend just asked you to pee on him”) before snapping a selfie, I always look horribly, terrifyingly, bad.

You know you’ve been there. Go ahead; log onto Facebook right now and take a look at drunken pictures of you and your friends. I guarantee Self-Reflective Beer Goggles make an appearance. Many appearances, in fact.

I have been a victim of beer goggles many times in my life — I even once sported them for an entire 10-day cruise — but I never realized that they affect more than the way I see men. They affect the way people (like everyone on Facebook – hi mom!) see me!

At least, unlike kicking an ugly/short/hairy stranger out of your bed in the morning, this is easy to remedy; a simple un-tagging will do it.

Do you have SR Beer Google issues? What do you think about the druken Facebook picture epidemic?

Being in a relationship in college is not easy. It pretty much goes against the rules of nature. The college gods never wanted their late night cramming, pong tournament winning, vodka guzzling subjects to be holed up in their dorm rooms eating takeout and cuddling with their partner every weekend.

But that didn’t stop anyone, including me. And while all of us coupled peeps absolutely love our boyfriends, we can all admit that we feel pulled in two directions. “Our girls or our boyfriend” becomes a weekly dilemma we have to hash out, mentally listing the pros and cons of which we should pencil in to our planners.

What makes it even harder for me is that my boyfriend doesn’t go to the same school, meaning seeing him is a tad harder then walking across campus to his dorm. It means packing a duffel, getting to a train station, an hour and a half trip, and then doing it all over again Sunday afternoon to be back in time for classes.

So if there are hearts on the agenda for Saturday, chances are I will be missing from all the Facebook photos come Monday morning. There will be a slew of inside jokes that my friends will shout to each other all week, and as they crumble into giggling fits I will stand oblivious…because I was at home sucking face with my boyfriend Saturday night while they were painting the town (Smirnoff) red.

Then again, when I stay at school and devote the weekend to group shots in our pastel-color coded glasses, bathroom photo shoots and dancing to Britney, it never fails that I end up in bed on the phone with my boyfriend at 4 am, the room swirling around me, crying about how much I miss him. (Alcohol makes me overly emotional and overly loving…not a good combo after the girls call it a night and you haven’t seen your boyfriend in weeks).

It seems like there’s no perfect solution. Except when the two worlds collide every now and then. My boyfriend gets along great with my bff’s (thank god!) so when he can take the trip I can combine both worlds: pre-game with the girls (which may or may not include a Miley Cyrus playlist), be a part of all the inappropriate totally embarrassing pictures, then squeeze into my twin bed with my boyfriend (spooning totally makes the spinning room more bearable) and get lucky.

What do you coupled girls think? Do you find it hard to balance the two worlds?

Maybe it’s the rain, maybe it’s the marathon training, but we are really tired. Maybe even too tired to hit the town, get drunk, and take tons of pictures of ourselves tonight. I know – something must be wrong with us, but it might be a good thing. We don’t want to do something stupid, and we never know where those pictures are going to end up.

Perhaps we’ll stay home and satisfy ourselves?

At the same time, though, we wanna show off our new boobs (thank you, cookies!), try to meet a man that meets our standards (like one of these hunka hunka burning loves) and have sex (but not that other icky act) on the first date! And we have the perfect eff-me shoes to do it!

Decisions, decisions….

But that wasn’t all we did this week.

We fought with our boyfriend about his love for strip clubs, we threw an end-of-the-year rager…and then spent the entire next day cleaning it up, and we spent a lot of time trying to understand this whole Miss California mess.

We also went in search of a romper for summer, which, thankfully, is a total fashion DO, unlike some things. We can’t wait to wear it tonight; our Facebook profile pic needs an update.  We’re gonna enjoy some margaritas, dance our little booty off, and then come home and convince ourselves that it’s totally fine to eat a giant pizza by ourselves.

After all, school’s out for summer and we couldn’t be more excited!

[There are some women out there that we just can’t get out of our minds. No, we aren’t switching teams - yet - but we do have some serious crushes on some pretty fierce females. These ladies are all special in their own right and we aren’t ashamed to tell the world we love them.]

As a self-proclaimed Harry Potter nerd, I’m super excited for the next movie to be released in July.  After watching all the trailers multiple times, (as well as recent TV viewing of the older movies), one of the actors has me crushing.  While I was always drawn to Harry Potter in the books, in the movies it’s Hermione, played by the fabulous Emma Watson, that caught my eye.

Emma Watson was cast as Hermione at the ripe age of 9 and has really grown up (into one hot tamale) in the spotlight. Unlike her other under-20 peers, though, she’s grown up right. The worst things we’ve seen of her are some awkward fashion choices and picture of her drinking a beer; not her lady parts sticking out under a skirt, or her doing some illegal drugs in a bathroom.

So Emma is more than deserving of her position at #15 on the Forbes 20 Top Earning Young Superstars in 2007. The girl is worth $16 million!

Like our many other girl crushes, Emma has brains that could rival those of the character that made her famous.  It’s reported that she’s going to take an acting hiatus after Harry Potter wraps and will either be going to Yale or Brown in the fall.  Her backup plan is to be an artist, though with all that money in the bank and the rumors that she’s going to be the next face of Chanel, I’m not sure she needs a backup plan.

But back to why I love her.

I think Emma Watson is truly a great role model for young women. She is well spoken, talented, beautiful and totally devoted to the family that has always supported her. She even starred in a TV movie, Ballet Shoes, with her twin half-sisters playing the younger version of her character.  And we are always seeing her photographed at premieres with her adorable little brother (who I’d love to kick to the curb so I could walk the red carpet with her!).

Oh, and she loves the older men. While rumors have constantly been surfacing about her having a relationship with one of her co-stars, Emma is just friends with the other members of the Golden Trio. (Editor’s Note: Which means Ron Weasley is available for me?!) Instead, Emma has recently been linked to a financier nine years her senior.  And yes, he may be older, but this girl is totally an old soul so it all just seems to fit.

Emma Watson proves that you can have success in Hollywood and not turn into a totally hot mess. She seems like the kind of girl we’d all want to be friends with and, hey, that whole accent thing isn’t too bad, either. I heart Emma Watson and if she’s reading this, I’d totally heart a day in her closet.

I’m adding that to my vision board.

However, a couple of weeks ago I was presented with a problem when the advisor of my sorority came to me with pictures of me and my fellow sisters drinking in the house. While it is pretty easy to deny that you break the rules, it is hard to do so when you are presented with a picture of yourself mid-Smirnoff shot in your own room.

Though none of the pictures came from my own albums, I still found myself staring at my own face. These were pictures that were DE-TAGGED. Pictures that I had known were inappropriate, and had clicked the little button next to my name, the one that makes everything bad go away. I suppose when we all look at the pictures tagged of us and don’t see one, we forget that, despite not having our name, it still exists. Albums from August with pictures that I had forgotten existed were shown to me. While my first thought was, “Wow, this person needs a life if she is stalking pictures of me from 6 months ago,” my second one was “Well. This isn’t pretty.”

To steal one of the most worthwhile things my father has ever said to me, it wasn’t that our parents didn’t do stupid or illegal things when they were younger. They just never had to worry that within 24 hours, this illegal activity would be popping up on mini-feeds all over the country. While my experience with adults and Facebook has luckily left me with minimal scars, this was my first warning to how technology-savvy bosses can check in on their future employers. My advisor used a girl in my house to spy on us. Large companies have greater access, more resources, and more reasons to background check their employees’ backgrounds. Would you really want someone who advertises pictures of themselves passed out drunk or in a cloud of smoke in your law firm every day?

So here is the warning: Delete Delete Delete. Do not de-tag. And if you are like me and still want everyone to be able to see your pictures, discover snapfish.com. You can e-mail your friends and family your albums and, since it is a website, you are safe in case your computer ever crashes and you lose everything. While I love the ease and access Facebook allows, having my friends view pictures of us holding vodka in one hand and rum in the other aren’t worth me being punished again.

[Photo courtesy of Asurroca on Flickr.]

Yesterday we published this story about some high-profile individuals who lost their jobs because of some unruly Facebook activity. If you’re thinking to yourself, “uh-oh, I love partying and taking pictures to post on Facebook, but I kind of want to have a job one day,” relax. You can have your cake and eat it, too.  Just make sure you’re utilizing all the appropriate privacy settings.  There are several steps to take to ensure your safety online, so just follow these tips!

1. Make all of your photos “Friends Only”

Tempting as it may be to leave photos up, it’s much safer to make them “Friends Only.” That way you know for certain who has access to your pictures. To do this, go here and under the option “Photos tagged of you,” click the drop-down menu and select “Only Friends.”

You should also do the same for Videos of You and all of your own photo albums (just click “Edit Photo Albums Privacy Settings” next to the”Photos Tagged of You” option). Even if you don’t tag your own photos, they’re still visible to anyone who has access to your profile.  By making your photos “Friends Only,” you don’t run the risk of having potential employers stumbling upon that glorious shot of you flipping the bird while sucking down a 40. Which brings me to the next point…

2. Make your profile private (or at least disable some applications).

Everyone’s a Facebook stalker, no matter if they’re a potential employer or a potential boyfriend. So while it may seem appealing to allow Mr. Hot Stuff to view your profile and read from your wall posts that you had such a great time at the bars last weekend, you can’t trust that a future boss will have the same enthused reaction. And most Facebook users  have their profiles set so that other people in their networks can see them. So if you belong to a regional network (especially in big cities like New York, LA, DC, and Boston), remember that anyone can join and belong to them, too.  So to control what information people see when they search you, go here and under the options “Profile” and “Wall Posts” click the drop-down menu and select “Only Friends.” You should consider doing the same for your Basic Info, Personal Info, and Status Updates as well (particularly if you list under “Interests” all of your favorite rums…). Even if you have a tame profile for the most part, you never know when a friend might post a questionable comment or YouTube video on your wall. Better to be safe than sorry.

 3. Choose your default wisely!

All of these new privacy settings would mean nothing if the Big Kahuna, your default Facebook photo, isn’t family-friendly. Save the sexy memories of Halloween (yes you looked cute as a hot nurse)  for your newly-protected other photos, and choose a default that is flattering but not reputation-damaging. If the default-in-question features ANYONE (even if it’s not you) drinking, inappropriately dressed, making obscene gestures and/or alluding to racist/sexist materia, ditch it! Furthermore, make sure to go into your Profile Picture album and delete any questionable defaults from the past. If your settings enable anyone on Facebook to view your default when they search for you, it’s possible they can view any of your past default photos (since Facebook automatically saves them into that album).

 4. Remove personal information that can potentially enable identity theft.

Being wary of potential employers isn’t the only reason to keep your profile clean. Identity theft is a real and scary part of the world these days–and most of the information used by theives can be found on a typical Facebook profile! Never publish the year you were born (the month and day is okay, but not foolproof), your address, and your phone number all at once. This information makes it much easier for scammers to open credit cards in your name, or at least track you down and possibly go through your trash (ALWAYS cut up or shred discarded mail).

 5. Don’t make your Facebook searchable on Google!Nowadays, it’s possible for your Facebook to be viewed even by people who do not have Facebook. Don’t believe me? Type your name as it appears on Facebook into Google and see if your profile shows up. If it does (and even if it doesn’t) follow this link to disable Facebook from making your profile searchable on the internet (unclick the “Create a public search listing” box). Not only can potential employers find you this way, but so can mom and dad, nana and papa, and…yeah, the whole free world.

Additionally, if you visit the Facebook Help Page, you can learn everything you ever wanted to know about anything on Facebook. I’ve been a Facebook user for years now and this site taught me quite a few things…particularly on the functions of Pokes.