The 10 Commandments of FACEBOOK

...found on tablets in Second Life. I translated them from the original XML.

John Logie's TEN COMMANDMENTS of FACEBOOK

1. You shall not maintain a Facebook profile without an actual picture of your face. Not your whole body . . . which makes the face all-but-illegible. Your face. YOUR FACE. (If Faceless people want to be my friend — and the number will probably shrink after I post this list — the place for faceless friends is MySpace. Find me there.)

2. You shall not substitute a picture of your baby, however adorable, for a picture of your face. (Personally, I looooove babies, and will look at your baby pictures. There are great places for baby pictures elsewhere on Facebook. Your Facebook profile picture is expressly for viewers to weigh the latest returns in the battle of You vs. The Ravages of Time, or You vs. Your Latest Questionable Haircut.)

3. You shall not substitute a picture of your pet for a picture of your face. (I am reasonably certain that no one else on the planet finds your pet as cute/charming/by-gosh charismatic as you do, and again, that pet is not welcome in the place where your face belongs. Don't wanna? Go start "MyPet'sFaceBook".)

4. You shall not seek to "friend" those with whom you have an obvious ongoing professional power imbalance (e.g. student/professor; employee/boss; drone/Queen Bee). I have friended former students, but there's an embedded discomfort that properly arises when the people who grade or evaluate one another are also announcing themselves as "friends."

5. You shall not dispatch your zombie/vampire/werewolf/slayer/superpower to attack more than once, excepting in those cases where you sustain a reciprocal attack. And that principle goes for li'l green things, too.

6. You shall not SuperPoke more than three other people at any given time.

7. You shall not draw a virtual bath via SuperPoke for anyone with whom you have not already shared a terrestrial bath.

8. You shall cc any important professional information to the recipient's actual personal e-mail account.

9. You shall think long and hard before attempting to extend the reach of your local fundraiser — however noble — into Facebook, recognizing that most people are already committed to concerns in their own non-virtual communities. (NOTE: this refers specifically to fundraisers — online political action and badging for various causes is not targeted here).

10. You shall continue mortifying one another by posting scans of dredged-up high school photos.