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What your profile says about you
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What your profile says about you Message . . . Tillyxxxx from Thurrock asks: Do you like experienced young sluts? This popped into my inbox last week. It's pretty unusual to get such a forthright message out of the blue, even though it's not really speaking my language I had a look at Tillyxxxx's profile - it was close to what I consider to be a non-profile - one line of body text and no pics. I wrote back to her saying I was only interested in people that have face and full-length body pics and are willing to chat. Unsurprisingly I've not heard from her since. When I see a profile with virtually nothing on it I think 'Is that the best you can do?' and I'm suspicious as to what really lies behind the profile, it could be anything or anyone as recent newspaper stories about dating site scammers highlight. I learnt an important lesson about presentation when I was fresh out of school, compiling a CV with all my qualifications on it. I showed to a friend's Dad, he was a corporate big cheese - a director at IBM UK, he looked at the list of exam results and was completely underwhelmed, "Matt this is all very well but it says nothing about you." Admittedly IBM is an unusual company where 'personal growth and development' is particularly important so you're not just a cog in a wheel, they really are interested in you, my friend's dad had placed printouts of Eastern guru philosophy in their<b> downstairs </font></b>toilet because he was a really switched on thinker - learn something new every day, don't begrudge other people's success, don't judge etc. So my friend's dad pretended I was a total stranger and said my CV said nothing about who I really was - my hobbies, my interests, my outlook on life - and that was as important as my degree or typing speed, if not more so. Since then I've taken that advice and applied it to dating sites. Yes I know this isn't a career and when you talk to people the getting-to-know-you process should not be like a job interview. However I do think it is important to say something about who you are, what your likes and dislikes are, what your strengths and weaknesses are, what sort of experience you're looking for etc . . . There are many people online who say next to nothing on their profile - this suggests to me that they're not taking it seriously, or they have nothing to say for themself, or perhaps that they don't know what they want. I try to avoid these types of people if I can, it's hard enough to deal with people who seem to have their shit together and know what they want, even worse to get mixed up with people don't know what they're doing or simply don't care.  One of my favourite Viz characters - Terry Fuckwit, good to elevate yourself above Terry with a little bit of detail about yourself I've got a lot to say about myself - it's a very polarising thing as the more you say, the more ammunition you give to people who are on a faultfinding exercise, rather than a friendfinding exercise. However I'm comfortable with this as I am really here to meet people and I'd rather those meets went well - the person I'm meeting already knows a fair bit about me and seems to like my attitude or preferences. Someone from A F F once said to me, "I like your profile - you speak your mind". As far as I'm concerned if you can't go through like speaking your mind from time to time what can you do? I guess she pointed this out because a lot of people don't speak their mind on their profile - they don't want to offend, they don't want people to form strong opinions about them, or they just want to get by doing the bare minimum and essentially say nothing. What approach have you taken to your profile - what were the priorities for you in terms of what you wanted to communicate to the world? |
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Hey there Ginger, Thanks for dropping by - I have a similar argument about awareness and disclosure with some of my political friends. Some of them think it's cool that there are so many Independents at a local level, my argument against that is that unless you really know someone you have no idea how they're going to behave in office, they could be a Crypto-fascist for all I know, so yes it's desperately uncool to be in a political party but you know what you're getting, you've seen the manifesto. I hope, at least, people can read my profile and my blogs and get a good sense of who I am and what I'm like in real life. I know that won't please everyone but why subject everyone to the concept of mystery/blind dates all the time? Because I am so open, many times when I've had meets from A F F it's more about me judging the other person than the other way round as I'm finding out so much more in real life for the first time. That's a major shock for most, I guess they lose sight of what they're holding back . . .
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