What do you like to see in Profiles?

2K You are only speculating why people do not divulge their RL and in many cases you will be wrong. Case in point, me, I am not hiding anything and I don't see that as a liability to fun and mixing with others. That is a valid choice for those who want SL to be like that for them. I am quite a private individual who has never given out much RL info (certainly nothing specific) over the internet for safety reasons unless it is for secure purchasing and beleive me I agonised over that one for a very long time before doing it.
Mainly though I like to choose who to tell anything about RL to - that often includes nothing - I come here for a weee bit of time away from RL and want seperation between the two. This is not for any nefarious reasons that I am ashamed of but just because SL for me is not an extension of my RL, it is something I am immersed in and whilst my avatar is a lot like me, there is also a lot of character playing going on.

I really dislike it when people who want SL to be an extension of RL, want everyone to be the same. People are different and want different things, everyone should respect this. There is nothing cagey in not wanting to divluge who they are in RL - why is it you want to know so badly? My RL name tells you nothing about me, my job tells you nothing about my character, where I live does not help you understand what kind of person I am. You get to know people better through their choices of recreational activities and therefore what they come to SL and like to do, the choices they make here, is far more expressive of the kind of person and that includes if they are in character for some or all of the time. I suggest to all people who feel like 2K that they start looking at the SL part of a person primarily to get to know them, this obsession with knowing someones RL details does not tell you anything meaningful. Even in RL very soon the conversation steers to - "So what do you like to do when you are not working..." - get my point?

Sheesh, /rant off

I'm furiously taking notes. My profile is awful. I swear, I know how to string a few sentences together, but it just feels weird writing my own profile.

I agree with everyone else on the threatening profiles. Class A retarded. I desperately want to mess with people like that just for the perverse pleasure of knowing that I'm only doing it because they threatened to have their virtual boyfriend or master beat me up.

What do you mean?? You left me for Allegria! Suddenly you decided I was not good enough for you or something because you ignored me completely- my poor broken heart! Has it all been some horrible misunderstanding? Oh Yosef!

Now this shocks me. I mean seriously, after the writing skills you demonstrate in your posts on the forums........I would have thought your profile would be filled with lots of interesting and humorous tid bits!! You have a gift with words Trout and that judgment comes from your posts and from your ratings!

My 2nd Life profile page sucks big time - I only really added something as an experiment to see if it would make a difference to others. Sadly I can report yes it does - a lot of people seem very hung up over a blank 2nd life page, really, really sad in my opinion.
I don't bother much with profiles and so mine never really gets much attention. Once when I was newer I put some roleplaying stuff which was creative and itneresting but I found it a big chore to maintain and so I took it all out once it was no longer relevant. I like to meet people and talk with them, find out about them that way, it just seems more natural to me.

Having said that my alt has a seriously cool profile (or at least I think it is), perhaps she will do mine too

LOL... as someone who has a profile with a bit of a favorite poem in it. I love reading profiles with song lyrics, poetry. etc.. I think a persons choices in music and poetry say a lot about them, much as their choice of avatar does. And choosing to put poetry in the profile says a lot about the person too.

People talk to me all the time, opening with "Oh, mary Oliver, I love her work," or some such comment. We're all different. I'm sure there are many who read my profile and say "yuck, poetry", too. Maybe it's my loss if they don't strike up a conversation, or maybe we're just on different wavelengths, and no one loses.

I once met someone who when asked if he read my profile as he asked questions that were answered there, he said never. The whole point for him to get to know people was to talk to them, to learn what they were about. I can't say he was wrong. I think of conversations in RL with people I meet and wonder how they would be if we all had "Profiles" that you could read before approaching them. Then again, it probably would have saved me some heartburn in several cases.......

Dang it, I'm logging in to rewrite my stupid Profile. You all are making me feel guilty for having a boring one. Then I'm going to go take a nap.

Perhaps you are right on the heartburn lol and I am not anti-profiles at all. I think for people who want to put some things in them that it is wonderful they have some space to do so. Its just the way people get judgemental if you don't have stuff in there. Of all the things to be judemental about, it seems really, really petty to me and unnecessary. Especially as there is nothing that says the info in the profiles is accurate or true. This judgemental stance though is a bit like not talking to someone just because today they happen to be wearing clothing that is your least favourite colour - very sad in my opinion.

So what is your favorite prim shape?. I personally like the torus. I think it says a lot about me.

lol 2K you amaze me sometimes I like the scuplty penis What does that tell you about me?

i like you lots.

rofl - you make me laugh as much as you provoke me to want to refute you. Thank you.

What's the point of putting up a pic with your face covered?

Hell yes! The kind of man that would be attracted to that kind of comment is not the kind of man that I would want talking to me! That's for damn sure.

It is still funny though!

We should all just exchange resumés with people that we meet. That would make life simpler.

I don't know if it's a gift or a curse, but I don't think I'm anything special when it comes to writing. I just say what I think. My profile is different - I just sit there and stew. I don't want to sound like I'm bragging on myself. I don't want it to be boring. I can't imagine what I could say about myself that anybody would be interested in - I'm pretty dull. It's just total writer's block. I can't make anything interesting come out.

Maybe a good knock knock joke, or something about a Linden, a monkey and a rabbi walking into a bar together.

At which point the bartender looks at the Rabbi and Monkey and says, "Why does your friend have a red number over his head?"

I guess this is a fair point. When I converse with someone in RL, though, there's typically a reason to open conversation, some context to go on. The person is reading a book you liked. The person is sitting at the next table in a restaurant and ordered something that looks good. The person takes the same train to work as you every day. The person is attending the same networking mixer you are attending and so presumably works in your industry. These are the RL equivalent of the clues you get by reading someone's profile. If you really have *nothing* but the avatar to go on, it's not always easy to find a way to start a conversation.

Also I do tire of answering the same question over and over again. In SL I have an Indian name and run a cafe where Indian music is played and so I am asked nearly every day "r u Indian?" I put the answer (no) in my profile in the hopes that I would be asked a little less frequently.

The rabbi replies, "that's the number of outstanding tickets he's failed to answer," whereupon the Linden waves his hands about and the monkey disappears in a puff of smoke.

"See?" says the Rabbi, "The number just dropped by one."

"Damn furries. Always clogging up sim resources," says the Linden. "Who's up for a game of hackey sack?"

Which causes the bartender to look into the camera and say, "I lose more customers that way".

Oh, the humanity!

...said the monkey

It's easier for me to list what I don't like about other people's profiles, than it is for me to write a good profile for myself. I change my profile a lot, and can never come up with something I like.

But, when I'm reading profiles:

1) If the profile is long, using sentences and paragraphs breaks is vital. My eyes just swim when I see a solid block of text.

2) Assuming one wants to socialize with strangers, something in the profile that gives a reason to start a conversation is useful. I can't just walk up to strangers and say hi randomly. And in fact, even though I'd like to meet new people, I'm always uncomfortable when someone just says hi to me seemingly randomly. (Usually, I assume, "So you're IMing me because all the pretty girls in the room have rejected you already.)

The one successful thing I did with my own profile was to mention that I had opened a shop. So sometimes people start a conversation by saying, "Hi, so you own a shop? What is it?" Things like that make striking up conversations with strangers easier.

3) The picture, and listed groups, I think tell me a lot about a person when I see them in a profile. They are as important as the words in the "fields" description.

If someone has no picture (unless very new, like in SL only a week or so), that just gives me a bad feeling about the person.

If I see no groups, I wonder whether it's because the person just doesn't do anything in SL, or there's some reason to be so secretive about every single group so that they are all hidden.

LOL - same here, only it's "r u [insert ethnicity/religion here]," e.g. Muslim/Asian/Korean/Native American/African, etc. Which is why I put a blue picture in my profile. Now they don't know what to ask.