Everybody hates change, especially us over-entitled Facebook users. Whenever the developers at the omnipresent social networking site make even the slightest tweaks, a large percentage of the 800 million active users become a seriously whiny bunch. And while modifications to privacy settings are a completely legitimate concern, you have to wonder if the digital uproar over every little page layout alteration is really all that necessary.

So when Mark (King of the Internet) Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would be overhauling the entire site and introducing its new Timeline feature, all kinds of Internet hell broke loose. The angry masses took to their keyboards to protest about the changes in fuming status updates, ironically using the very medium they’re criticizing to complain about it. How very meta right? Somewhere, Marshall McLuhan is smiling.

Once upon a time, Facebook sold itself on connecting people, but the new feature (which finally launched worldwide last week) reveals what the site has really been about all along: vanity.

More visual and customizable, Timeline lets you play curator in a museum of your own digital history. The scrapbook-like interface means users can upload not one but TWO profile photos, enabling a more two-dimensional form of narcissism. So now you can post that here-I-am-drunk-at-a-bar-throwing-up-offensive-hand-gestures snapshot juxtaposed against a wide-angle photograph from your trip to Southeast Asia last year. All of which to prove to your friends that you might actually have some substance.

More importantly, Timeline’s neatly organized yearly catalogue makes taking a walk down memory lane that much easier. Us early adopters (I’ve been sharing my own mundane personal details since November 2005), we can’t resist the temptation to jump back and forth throughout the years, reliving our not-so-distant past through old conversations and tagged photos.

Remember when you signed all your wall posts with your name at the bottom because it was maybe kind of like an email? How silly. And remember all those lost photos from your fat years that were once buried in ancient albums? Well now they’re just a click away!

Yes there’s plenty to discover on Facebook in the age of Timeline. But before you publish your digital autobiography, you might want to take a moment to edit those posts from the years before you accepted your mom’s friend request. After all, Facebook is the one place where life’s most cringe-worthy moments can be deleted for good.