^*~A Mini Autobiography~*^. Review on Effective MouthShut Profile Page

That’s what a profile page is, isn’t it? A compact version of who we are.

One thing I love so much about ms’s profile page is how some fields like education and state is not already predetermined with a drop down list and we get to choose, like “high school”, “university” etc. etc. That way, we, as wonderfully cunning consumers, can successfully manipulate the fields to express our creativity.

And is there some serious manipulation or what, especially on the ‘education’ field.  Neha wrote ‘a pain!’, Chandra ‘made me a better and wiser person: lol yea rite:P’,  Ankit Madan ‘ruined me’, Anusha ‘can’t wait till its over’, Anuj ‘never stops’ and so on… For me, it is ‘scary’!

And then there is the About me and Interests section. This has always greatly puzzled me. Aren’t my interests about me? Am I not about my interests? How are the two different?

Some chose to write a poem in their profile. Look at Anusha’s(krazy4sonu) profile. She has a great poem on the Caribbean there in the about me. Then I start to wonder, isn’t the Caribbean her interests? Isn’t part of her about the Caribbean’s?

And then there are those freaks who post song lyrics in their profile. The freak in question is none other than the very same freak who penned this review.

There is also the big question. Is every word that is plastered across your computer screen true? Do profile pages speak the truth? As another member, you’ll never know. Take me, for example. I say that I love to play the piano. Do you believe me? If yes, why so? For all you know, I may be lying and in real life, I might not have even felt a piano in my whole life. But then again, I may not be lying and really am passionate about playing piano. You’ll never know. But hey, while we’re at it, might as well tell you that yes, it’s true. I really do play the piano.

There is also the whole hullabaloo on posting a picture. Everyone wants their reviews to be rated based on the review, not the picture. But are even raters in complete control of their minds? I know I am not. Could it be that even though you don’t specifically mean to let the picture sway your view of the review, your subconscious accidentally on purpose makes your rating and comment slightly biased? *

Now that I’ve let my tongue loose on pictures, I might as well spill my guts out. How can you be sure the person in the picture is the one writing your review? Maybe he or she posted a picture of his her friend and claimed the face as their own. You never know.

Profile pages DO matter. A profile page is one of the main players in the tricky game of luring people to your reviews, to draw the fireflies closer to the light. You stumble upon a profile page with an interesting picture. What do you do? You scroll down the page to find out more about the soul behind the picture. You find it bursting with creative energy, the words vigorously dancing in your mind as the result of a well written profile page. You want more of that sarcasm, that irony, that dry humour, that frank honesty. Predictably, you start sifting through that member’s reviews, dropping a few ratings and comments here and there. See what I mean?

I let my mind ponder over all this uncertainties while I allowed my fingers to freely fly across the keyboard, neatening my tangled, jumbled thoughts into words of a more orderly manner.

Sometimes my thoughts run ahead of my words, sometimes it’s the other way round with my thoughts running behind panting and puffing trying to catch up.*

In the midst of all that action and adventure, I realized something. What matters is you.If we paint on fake colours on our palette of personality as we fancy by lying, we are lying to no one but ourselves. Sure, others may believe the falsehood you spew, after all internet is the number one anonymous hide out. But at the end of the day, you question yourself. Is that what I want? To be someone other than myself?

Which of course changes the course of the current of words flowing in this review into a stream called fake ids. Why bother with fake ids? If your first id was flagged or sealed, instead of going undercover, start another new id but make it clear from the start who you are so we can know who is the one spewing trash reviews on the site instead of hiding under the shade of mysterious id’s and profile pages.

Now that I think about it, the real element that shows off your personality is not your profile. It’s your reviews.**  Think about it.

From a person’s reviews, you can glean lots of information, like past times, birthdays and even where they stay. Talk about the James Bond of the net!

You want to know a person? Read their profile. You want to know a person further? Read their reviews.*

Comments awaited!