You're new to the Seattle college scene and you crave friends—an obscene number of friends—the most friends possible with the least amount of effort. So instead of bopping around the dorms and meeting people the old-fashioned way, you decide to plaster yourself all over MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, XTube, PornoTube—wherever.

Before you succumb to the sucking maw of cyberspace and its promise of the coolest friends you've never met, allow me to question your decision-making skills.

You see, an online profile is like having your very own soapbox on Second Avenue and Pike Street. Only instead of broadcasting your business to crack addicts and chubby office workers, your page on a site like MySpace reaches 17 million shut-ins per month. Don't stress out. These shut-ins aren't interested in your witty self-analysis; they simply want to make you the target of their masturbatory fantasies. Draw a bull's eye on your ass, look lusty and accessible, and—voilà!—you've got friends!

Now, in its user agreement MySpace warns that "your profile may not include... photographs containing nudity or obscene, lewd, excessively violent, harassing, sexually explicit, or otherwise objectionable subject matter." Facebook similarly cautions that users cannot "make available any content that we deem to be harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, vulgar, obscene, hateful, or racially, ethnically, or otherwise objectionable." But who's going to report you? Certainly not your new friends—their hands are busy—so snap some photos of your perky nipples and new tattoos.

To pump up the class, use your camera phone.

Kirkland shut-ins will find your page, linger over your abs, masturbate furiously, and add you as a friend. Their existing friends will notice and follow suit. Congratulations! You're popular!

Paradoxically, while the internet can make you popular if you massage it right, it cannot get you laid. Only beer can do that. So if you rank popularity based on a high volume of one-night stands, your best bet is to abandon the internet and start fucking strangers at college parties (use protection!) just like your parents before you.

If, however, you are content with cyberpopularity, or desire it as well, it is important to check your college's student code of conduct and ensure that you are not pissing on any ethical or moral standards the school might hold you to. I took the liberty of calling the University of Washington (UW), Seattle's largest college campus; Seattle Pacific University (SPU), Seattle's most conservative Christian campus; and Seattle University (SU), Seattle's Jesuit-run campus, to find out their guidelines regarding student-generated online sites and personal blogs, and the repercussions of violating these guidelines.

"We don't have specific guidelines," said Jeff Jordan, dean of student life at SPU, "but we do have 'lifestyle expectations' for our students. We frown upon posting risqué photographs, but they are out there, and we don't troll sites such as Facebook looking for offensive material." But be forewarned, students of SPU: post alluring photos of yourself—even posing bikini clad with a sexy bike pump or a hot Jesus tattooed on your ass—and you may run afoul of the lifestyle expectations, which include abstaining from alcohol and tobacco, climbing out of windows (God created doors for a reason), and participating in gay sex ever or straight sex premaritally.

My calls to UW and SU went unanswered, which probably means that they are down with whatever you want to do.

A final consideration: future employment. You're just starting college, I realize, and your splashy entry in the working world must seem a lifetime away. But you're going to graduate someday, and your quest for fame and friendship on the internet could complicate your ability to land a job.

In recent years, incidences of job applicants being turned down, to say nothing of employees being fired, based on content on personal webpages have become more common. Once you've plastered yourself all over MySpace, and perhaps posted a little friendship porn to XTube and PornoTube, it's nearly impossible to pull those pictures and videos back.

Perhaps you feel you wouldn't want to work for a company that couldn't appreciate the innocent spirit in which you made and posted that eight-minute-long video of your boyfriend tit-fucking you—or maybe you should be more discreet about what you do with your breasts. You're an adult now—exercise some responsibility. Use your breasts to feed the hungry, or donate them to cancer research, and you will discover that you don't need to try so hard to meet new friends. They'll find you.