If Jane Austen's classic love story Pride and Prejudice were to be retold today and set at Brown, certainly the names of characters would change. Elizabeth "Liz" Bennet '10 meets Fitzwilliam "Will" Darcy '08 at a Sigma Chi party, thinks he is an asshole because he belligerently moos at her friends, drinks too much because she keeps winning at beirut, but she hooks up with Will anyway. The next morning, she's embarrassed; she feels used and easy. Moreover, one of their mutual acquaintances, George Wickham '08, lies to Liz that Will has a reputation for preying on freshmen girls like her, since he wants Liz for himself. Now Liz cannot see Will without flushing hot with shame. Since she keeps running into him at the V-Dub, she begins eating at the Ratty. Meanwhile, Will checks Liz's profile on Facebook several times daily and finds himself enamored with her intriguing "About Me" and witty wall posts, and even gets over his initial indifference to her looks after clicking through all 195 of her tagged pictures. Will sends her a friend request. Liz declines. The weekend after their initial hookup, they see each other at a Phi Psi party, and Will tipsily confronts Liz about her distaste for him. She lets him have it, and he leaves her alone, confused by her false accusations. Good ol' guy friend George buys Liz eight drinks, notes her pliancy, then takes her back to his room. Will follows them, and saves her.

The next morning, Liz friends him on Facebook, as is custom to do for everyone you meet and do not despise. In fact, she kind of likes him now. She checks his profile and notices that under "Looking For" he has chosen three of the five choices: Friendship, Dating, and Random Play. Conspicuously missing is A Relationship. Liz herself would enjoy the stability of a relationship, and certainly prefers it over random hookups, but her own profile does not list her as Looking For anything. If she explicitly states that she is looking for a relationship, guys may be scared off. Even though a relationship may be preferable to random hookups, random hookups are sometimes preferable to absolutely nothing, so she leaves the Looking For section blank. Her attitude is probably best described by the Looking For choice "Whatever I Can Get" but that sounds too desperate, and implies too much interest in hooking up. If she only lists Friendship, Dating, and Random Play (and only that last one if she is daring), then guys might never pursue a relationship with her, even though she secretly wants one. Not courageous, she opts for ambiguity.

She's not the only emotional coward. Will, for his part, epitomizes the 21^st century gentleman. When he hooks up with girls, he makes sure he is a good host and that they are only going as far as they want to. If the girl is stumbling and drunk, he will repeatedly ask her, "Are you okay?" It does not really matter whether she is or not, just as long as he gets the magic slurred "Yeaaah..." If a girl he hooked up with asks him whether or not he hooks up a lot, he'll demur vaguely, and tell her he doesn't hook up with just anybody. Treating a girl with respect is the polite thing to do, and better for his reputation. If the girl isn't happy, others will hear about it. This would surely put a damper on future action. After all, he's pre-med, and he doesn't have time for a relationship, only partying and hooking up.

That range of activities is usually described as "good times" in the interests section on Facebook. The phrase "good times" allows for such a variety that it can describe anything from playing mah jong with your grandmother to partying until you black out. The straight-edged girl from church thinks you mean the former, but the kid you beat in beirut the other night knows you mean the latter. You play it safe, you don't offend or repel. This is the modern Christian fish in the sand: another partier knows you too are a partier if you say you like "good times."

Similarly, "hooking up" ranges in content from PG to NC-17. When Liz says she hooked up, she can imply not much went on. When Will says he hooked up, he can imply everything went on. Much as in the movie Grease, where Danny brags to his friends that "We made out under the dock," while Sandy tells hers that "We stayed out 'till ten o'clock." Hooking up, since it covers all the bases of physical intimacy from first to home plate, lets you shape the definition to the audience through implication. If someone thinks you are a player, hooking up is going all the way without you having to admit otherwise. If someone thinks you are modest, hooking up is only kissing, no matter how far you have actually gone. It is all about the image, the assumption, and the continued approval of your peers.

But ambiguity isn't as safe a home as it seems. When you have a Facebook friend who is not actually quite a friend, what do you do when you see them on the streets? It is probably safe to say hello to acquaintances without feeling awkward, but what do you do about people that friended you on Facebook that you don't remember ever meeting? Seeing stranger-friends around campus prompts an urgent decision: do you make eye contact? Or do you look straight ahead and ignore them? Do you look into the distance, and to the side, and pretend not to see them? Do you try and say hi? Why did they friend you in the first place anyway? Maybe you could unfriend them on Facebook and avoid this entire thought process. But what if they notice? What if you actually did meet them? By this time, you've already passed them without acknowledgment. Now there is also the nagging fear that perhaps the stranger-friend didn't recognize you because your Facebook profile picture, unlike you, is hotter than Jessica Alba. Maybe you do have a profile picture that leads to disappointment as soon as somebody clicks "View More Photos." The profile picture is not something that you should leave to ambiguity; that is saved for the invisible intangibilities, the parts of ourselves we do not parade unless they are worthy of tribute.

So we make caricatures of ourselves as we struggle to define who we are in relation to who others appear to be. Does your crush like surfing and The Fray? You, too, can add these as interests and hope they see it. Then hope they don't catch wind of it through the News Feed or see it when the new additions are still highlighted by Facebook because that would be too obvious. And be careful when you bring up things you've learned about them on Facebook if you're talking face-to-face. You don't want to seem too interested. But don't seem so uninterested you don't even reply to wall posts. Keep those incriminating pictures of friends and stranger-friends to yourself. Put up a relatively accurate picture of yourself as your profile photo. Drunkenly posting on someone's wall is always amusing. Friend request new acquaintances, but wait a while before you friend request recent hookups. Don't actually fill out the "About Me" section seriously. Keep in mind the nuances of the "Looking For" section. These are the laws governing your college social life. Even ambiguity has rules.

Liz and Will know the game, know how to maintain both online and offline identities. They are masters of cool casualness, of deliberate action, of meditated words, of social lives with goals and strategies. There is pre-med, pre-law, and pre-love, or at least pre-hookup. We are victims of society, of parents, and of each other, but above all, we are victims of ourselves. As Jane admonishes Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice, "It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us."