Mirror Mirror on the wall...Who's the fairest facebooker of all?

I can't keep my eyes off of me.

First of all it's natural. Everyone does it. I mean, who hasn't pumped out some pre-flex push-ups and then struck a series of Mr. Universe poses in the bathroom mirror? Or turned a can of mousse into a microphone and belted out Whitney Houston's "I Have Nothing" for an imaginary audience of admiring fans?

When you got your yearbook every June, what was the first thing you did? You went through and found every single picture of yourself. Be honest. You know you did.

We're naturally obsessed with ourselves. It takes work to care about others, to really care about what they're saying, what they're up to, what they're feeling.

And Facebook isn't making it any easier. After recently rejoining the burgeoning ranks of the unemployed I've gotten addicted to Facebook. It's cool to be able to keep tabs on all your friends and acquaintances, but that's not the real appeal of Facebook.

Facebook is my opportunity to be on yearbook staff without having to stay after at school, wear skinny jeans and thrift store cardigans, take journalism classes or pretend to be interested in Key Club.

Finally, I can publish my own pics, write my own captions--P.S. Yearbook Staff, would it kill you to learn some tennis terminology?--and generally broadcast my brand around the world.

Last night, I was staring at 24 inches of luscious iMac flat screen and racking my brain to come up with a status update that didn't make me sound like a pop-culture newb...or an over enthusiastic dog owner...or a pathetic unemployed whiner. Finally, I spied my freshly arrived copy of Cook's Illustrated lying by my printer and I started typing: "Paul Boyer...is getting ready to geek out to Cook's Illustrated."

Perfect. Self-depricating, sufficiently odd, and truly me. Plus, you can't beat CI's product reviews. They're the consumer reports of cooking periodicals.

Don't get it? That's all right. I'm a bit of an acquired taste. I'm the indie band you haven't heard of yet. I am the re-emergence of beards. I am bubble tea 5 years ago. And by the time you're scrawling your own update about Cook's Illustrated, I'll have moved on to...wouldn't you like to know?

Point is, I'm not sure all of this self-publishing and self-awareness is entirely healthy. Is it prolonging a period of immaturity that we're supposed to shed after we leave the 'rents house and get real jobs? Methinks this new technology makes for too many chiefs and not enough Indians (Oh, racist sayings of yore).

Maybe there's something healthy about how the boomers did it: get a job, start making babies. It reinforces the "you're not the center of the universe" theme that most of us need to hear more frequently.

If nothing else, all this micro-blogging and status updating sometimes keeps me from being an actual productive member of society. The irony is while I'm seeking to increase my visibility and brand-value, I'm not going out and doing the things that would make me a better more interesting person. Hmmm...

Did you hear about www.urdb.com? It's this rad website where you can post videos of yourself setting very specific world records (i.e. fastest consumption of a 24 oz. bottle of breakfast syrup ). It's the next youtube. Surprised, you didn't know that ;)

P.S. Thx to Sigurd Decroos of Belgium for the cool mirror illustration