An online profile arranges a person more neatly than ordinary acquaintance ever does.

A profile is a person with the loose ends cut off. Interests sit in a list, a face is chosen from many, and everything contradictory has been left out because there is nowhere to put it. Knowing someone the ordinary way is much messier, since the good sentence and the bad mood arrive in the same afternoon. Neatness feels like clarity and is mostly editing.

When a profile makes someone seem enviably sorted, remember you are reading their filing rather than their life. Do the reverse too. Your own page leaves out the parts that people who actually like you would recognise first.