5 Facebook Profile Photos to Avoid

If a Facebook picture is worth a thousand words, we’re pretty sure there’s one word in the lexicon you’d be loath to have associated with you: tool.

(Unless you’re a handyman, in which case, carry on.)

Yes, FacebookFacebook started off as a gated community for college kids awkwardly trolling for chicks in their rooms because the outside world was just too bright … too bright. But now, as Mark Zuckerberg sallies forth with his plan to consume all of society, it has become kind of legit.

Last week, Zuckerberg unveiled a messaging system for the book of faces that will consolidate e-mail, texts, chat and Facebook messages. While we won’t be calling Z’s new baby a “Gmailgmail killer” any time soon (dude, eradicate all those FB phishing scams and then we’ll talk), the fact that Facebook would take such a step got us thinking.

Every day, 4 billion messages are shot off via Facebook, and next to those 4 billion messages is something that could make or break the legitimacy of your missive — or, at the very least, amuse or horrify your friends: your profile picture.

This is your calling card, your public face. So why do so many of you contort it into that of a duck?

Read on for five common types of Facebook photos that make your friends want to block you, potential employers take pause and future suitors weep with frustration at the state of the human race.

And so begins my Netiquette column — which I write with my Stuff Hipsters Hate co-blogger, Andrea Bartz — this week over at CNN.