Note to Self: "Being slutty" is not an appropriate self-description.

Although I can't seem to find the article online, I was reading something (admittedly, in Playboy) the other day about a Florida law professor beginning his class by having all his students read their Facebook profiles aloud. [Sidenote: I was just informed that Playboy articles are on Lexis. Nice!] What a great exercise! It demonstrates the importance of public speech, and the content of your Facebook profile is definitely public speech.

I wish one of MY professors would do that. I'm shooting for a different career than most of my co-students; many of them are aiming for high-paying jobs a BigLaw firms, which are generally very touchy about their stuffy reputations. As long as I have internet access and a laptop, I'd rather be a low-paid writer living in a cardboard box. My peers have to be exceptionally cautious about what they put on the internets; I'd rather get laughs. Part of what makes writing interesting for me is the balance between serious, quality writing and just plain being funny. Making people laugh often requires irreverence, so I find myself weighing what degree of sauciness is appropriate for the topic I'm writing about.

Facebook profiles are a pretty liberal forum -- you can get by with a lot, as long as it's funny and well written. However, the girl at Florida whose Facebook profile included "Being slutty" as her primary interest probably quickly realized that "Being slutty" 1) wasn't funny, and 2) made her look stupid. I'd bet my siblings that the girl changed it before the end of the day.