A new study, the results of which appear in the October issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, suggests that Facebook profiles can mirror the narcissism of their owners.

Besides being synonymous with being “egotistical,” “self-centered,” and “self-absorbed,” narcissism affects the ability of a person to form healthy, long-term relationships. According to W. Keith Campbell, a professor at the University of Georgia who co-authored the study in question, “Narcissists are using Facebook the same way they use their other relationships – for self promotion with an emphasis on quantity of over quality.”

You know those people that add you as a friend after a 30-second convo, or because you know one of their friends (or their friend’s friends?) The ones who have 10,562 friends…in their main network alone? These Facebookers also have a variety of photo albums on their page– most of which are full of self-portraits and glamour shots taken in the mirror. These are the FB users who most clearly exhibit signs of narcissism.

The growth spurts of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace have grabbed the attention of behaviorists who want to explore how personality traits are expressed online. “We’ve undergone a social change in the last four or five years and now almost every student manages their relationships through Facebook – something that few older people do,” asserts Campbell. “It’s a completely new social world that we’re just beginning to understand.”

I wonder what else we can learn from peoples’ Facebook quirks. For example: what do we learn from the girl who changes her status every five seconds, so you always know EXACTLY where she is and what she’s doing? How about the guy you haven’t talked to in months, yet still comments on all of your new FB photos, your status, even what other people are writing on your wall?

What would you like to learn from Facebook? Do you agree with this study?

This sentence isn’t offensive on it’s own, but couple it with an hour’s worth of similar utterances, and you’ve got one of the most annoying situations in life: The Girl Who Won’t Stop Talking About Her Boyfriend.

I was recently in the presence of such a girl, and found myself silently contemplating all the ways in which I could force her mouth shut permanently.

Trying to do work around one of these female specimens is impossible. You just can’t do it. No matter how interested you try to make yourself look in whatever work is in front of you, Girl Who Won’t Stop Talking About Her Boyfriend will continually engage you in superficial drivel.

The shallow conversation she tries to engage you in will always be one-sided, however. Even though she’ll ask you questions that will keep you away from you work, she’ll routinely answer those questions herself, not having even a second to wait while you search your head for something remotely friendly to say.

Girl Who Won’t Stop Talking About Her Boyfriend usually picks single people to torture. It’s a subconscious, animal-like sense that she has about her—she can smell singleness like a shark smells bloody fish heads.

I’m not sure she does this for vicious reasons. Quite possibly she thinks you want to hear about her hours of making out under the setting sun in a horse drawn carriage. You want to hear about it, she reasons, because you don’t have it. By detailing her unbridled happiness, she’ll let you live vicariously through her.

See? She’s actually doing you a favor.

If you’re a direct person who doesn’t mind stomping on the joy of others, telling Girl Who Won’t Stop Talking About Her Boyfriend to shut the fuck up is the most direct way to stop her waterfall of words from drowning you. If, however, you find yourself a more tactful person, there’s only one real way to escape her never-ending supply of “he’s just so cute, isn’t he?”

Run.

I mean it. Run away. You’ll never be able to get her to be quiet, she’s too blind with love to catch subtleties, and screaming at her will make you look like cynical bitch. Girl Who Won’t Stop Talking About Her Boyfriend will never voluntarily stop talking, so your best bet is to smile and run. Far, far away.

…Just make sure to find a good hiding spot.