Have you ever untagged an unflattering facebook photo of yourself or uploaded a photoshopped profile picture? Have you friended an acquaintance on the basis of their good looks more than their sunny personality? Posted a status update from an exotic locale? Felt competitive about your friend count? Vaguebooked a wistfully morose, yet abstract, status update designed to elicit an inquiry or response?

If you answered yes to any of the above, prepare to be taken down a notch in the near future. That’s the advice Bernard Salt gave last night at the Social Media Club Sydney, where he discussed his findings from his recent research into gen Y and social media usage in Australia. Just as the emergence of mobile phones made it briefly trendy to talk loudly into your brick at restaurant tables in the mid 90s, social consensus soon swung around and the habit became stigmatic of arrogant yuppies. Salt argues that the same is about to happen with social media use, and our intoxication with constructing more glamorous, popular, cosmopolitan social selves will soon give way to a rejection of these behaviours and a demand for online authenticity.

Salt doesn’t envisage this backlash for another couple of years, but sites like lamebook attest to the fact that we’re already highly aware (and delightingly critical) of self-aggrandising social networking use. Then again, there’d be very few facebookers who could say no to every question in paragraph one. Personally, I can deal with unflattering photos and a low friend count, but when I’m finally sipping a latte on the Champs-Elysees you can bet your FarmVille account I’m going to let everyone know about it.