Day 36 - Improving your orkut performance

"You know that you orkut because you want to be something with somebody. You say that you orkut because you want to be something else with somebody else."

- Leo da Mirci in his book "How to win friends and orkut with people!!"

One of the most frequent reasons I have heard for people being on orkut is “Looking for friends who studied with me in primary school", "To catch up with old friends" "Orkut is the best thing that happened to friends” and all that crap.

Come on guys, we all know that when you sign into orkut the first thing you see is whether the number of fans/friends has increased or whether any girl has scrapped you (if at all it happens). We know that you go search girls school/ college communities looking for some girl whom you might have known. Soon you get frustrated and quit orkut saying “You know what, I am spending too much time on orkut and it is affecting my job performace”. Yes we understand even that. You are no longer able to compete with your friends in the number of fans, scraps or the number of girls he has connected with. You tried, tried and tried but you could not improve your performance. So you planned to quit. But see, the good news is that you have company - a lot of people are quitting orkut nowadays.

For such poor souls who are thinking of quitting orkut because their performance is not good enough, here are a few tips to increase your orkut performance.

Let us start with the Profile

Name: Names should always be stylish. If you still have things like Raamasaamy, Supppramanian, Asokan, Santhaanam, Jayaramakrishnan in your profile immediately go change them. A Rams, Subra, Ash, Santa or Jay Kris is what you should have.

About me: Typically an about me column would contain super smart statements like “You know me or you don’t know me”, “Read my profile if you really want to know” “I am not someone who cant be easily understood” “Buzz me on yahoo” etc.. Sometimes you can see a bunch of characters scattered all over the place and when you scroll down – Voila! What a surprise !!! You can see a devil’s face or the word FRIENDS! What an imaginative guy he is!! The most recent addition to this phenomenon is to have a poem describing you.. Something like
Want to get into a passionate mire?
I am always on fire
I took an auto on hire
I stood on an electric wire
I will soon burn on a wooden pyre
(for the benefit of the public the lines ending in dire, tyre, sire and gyre have been removed).

Come on guys…. these are stuff Raja Raja Chozhan’s great grandfather had in his profile. It is enough you have a simple about me column which is actually something about you.

Gender: Men are always proud to claim that they are men. However, DC Nielsen’s survey says that there are more men who own feminine ids than women.

Relationship Status: Give some respect to the male community. Give some respect to how God wanted men to behave. Don’t be an outcast. Even if you are married/committed say single.

Birthday: Birthday is the only occasion when girls wish you profusely. The day when they suddenly realize that you exist in this world. That is the day you get the most number of scraps in the year. So, have at least 5 birthdays in a year. Change it every now and then so that you get wishes from girls every now and then. You can have an actual birthday, one each for your star, the sun and the nine planets. (Don’t act too smart and tell me that Pluto is no more a planet. Then you get to lose a few scraps).

City/State: Nothing much. For heaven’s sake do not write the name of your village. Guys from pattis (Kovilpatti, Vadipatti) have a big disadvantage here. You guys might get a list of US cities from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population and use them.

Zip/Postal code: After using an U.S city’s name please don’t show your intelligence by coming up with a 6 digit Pincode (like 624218 for Vaidpatti). U.S cities have 5 digit pin codes (I think he he).

Interested in: Choose any damn thing except dating men/dating men and women.

Children: Remember two things. You are single. Single men are not supposed to have children.

Ethnicity, Political view, Humor, Fashion: Does not matter. No girl is going to search for a Multi-ethnic, very left-liberal trendy fashioned guy with a quick-witted or slapstick humor. Orkut does not have a provision for such searches.

Language: As a true patriotic Indian accept one thing first. We use neither English(U.S) nor English(U.K). We use an Indian language which is similar to English in many ways. Don’t debate on that. The only reason we choose one of the two is because an English(Indian) option does not exist. In addition to your mother tongue you can also choose French, German, Spanish or Mandarin etc. I am sure they are also languages.

Sexual orientation: Avoid the no answer choice here. People should know that you are oriented. (There is a choice called bi-curious here, what the hell is that?)

Smoking, drinking: The girls community is divided in their preference. So no answer is the best answer.

Living: As long as you don’t check all the options it is fine. Girls sometimes read between the lines. For example from a check all entry they would get the idea that you are living alone with your parents and a partner who has kids with friends who visit you often and roommates who party every night with your pets.

Passions: If you are passionate about the discovery channel control your instincts to announce it to the world. See below(Sports) would be the best option…Girls like that.

Sports: F1, Football, Cricket(?) or anything that is associated with speed. Writing Carrom board here would reduce the number of potential scraps by 72%.

Activities: Don’t write your daily activities like checking out girls. Equivalent phrases like Nature watching(considering girls to be an integral part of nature) , Sky watching(when girls are studying in the terrace) etc. can be used.

The five habits of highly effective orkut people: Books, Movies, TV Shows, Music, Cuisines. This is a very important part of your profile. This is the first thing girls check in your profile after your sexual orientation. If you haven’t started reading, watching, eating or listening to anything non Indian, the following tips might be helpful.

Books: You could use names such as Ayn Rand, Frederick Forsyth, Arthur Hailey, Paulo Coelho or Ken Follet. Don’t use Jeffrey Archer or Sidney Sheldon. They are supposedly not so favorite among girls. Girls are jealous that they are the favorite authors of every Bollywood or Kollywood actress. Btw, don’t try typing and pronouncing Paulo Coelho at the same time. It produces disastrous results.

Music: Use names like MLTR, Beatles, Beethoven, Mozart, Elton John, Bryan Adams, Enrique Iglesias, Beyonce Knowles etc… If this list does not contain AR Rahman you are bound to lose fans.

Movies: You should have one movie for each genre. If you don’t know the different genres check IMDB(at http://imdb.com/) . If you don’t know what the word genre means check the dictionary(at http://dictionary.com/). As a basic criteria, minimum two movies should be from IMBD 250 (at http://www.imdb.com/chart/top). Any two from this list is enough but a Godfather or Citizen Kane would prove more effective. Instead of giving the names of movies if you give the names of the directors you will be considered as an avid movie watcher. Say for ex. Roman Polanski movies, Akira Kurosawa movies, Martin Scorsese movies…Also add a few foreign movies French, Japanese etc. You dont need to search for them. Get them at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_for_Best_Foreign_Language_Film. Use the original name(like La vita labonski murra) within brackets. In an Indian’s profile, the term Spielberg movies is always followed by Maniratnam movies. For Tamil guys Kaaka Kaaka is a must. That is the only Tamil movie that the North Indians love. Any other movie which has Surya in it is an added advantage. Even Surya’s TVS Star ads might help getting a few fans.

TV Shows: Friends is universal. Here, you should be very careful. Even if you are, please do not mention that you would be eagerly waiting in your living room for Desperate Housewives every Thursday night.

Cuisine: Simple formula. You like the people of Italy? Then say Italian. You like Mexico. Say Mexican. You love South India. Say South Indian. You like China. Say Chinese. You love all continents. Say Continental.

Now we are done with the profile part of it. Let us get into how to improve your popularity among the girls.

Profile picture: Don’t think that putting in a picture of Brad Pitt will help you in any way. First, everybody knows Brad Pitt. Second everybody will come to know that you are one poor soul who could not look like Brad Pitt and so gets vicarious satisfaction by putting in his picture.

Recent Visitors: The recent visitors list should never have a name like Jambulingam or Senthoorapaandi. We cant suffer because these idiots did not change their names to Jammy or Sandy. We have a way out. Basic logic: When you visit any arbit person’s orkut profile they visit yours. So go ahead and visit profiles of girls with names like Helen, Jenifer, Anna, Catherine or Isabel. Your recent visitors list will always look colorful.

Scraps: Scrap all girls. “Hi how are you. Didn’t know that you were on orkut”. She will reply saying “Do I know you?”. Orkut will tell you how you know her. A->B-> C ->D->E. Tell her the link. Soon you would probably reach A->E. Wait for a day when she scraps you saying “why no reply da?”. Immediately scrap all friends you have (right from LKG to post graduation) saying “Long time no see da”. They will come visit your page and see the girl’s scrap. They will be envious all day about the “Why no reply da” scrap.

Fans: Except a few morons everybody else becomes your fan when you become theirs. It is an universal obligation. To take revenge of these morons, you can reveal secrets of these morons in their scraps and damage their image. Alternatively, if any girl scraps these morons you can scrap the guy asking “What da… what is happening? Does she know about your affairs?” etc.. and do a proper image damage operation.

Testimonials: You can draft your testimonials yourselves and ask your friends to post them. Treats do magic. You can even return them the favor. Or create a few orkut profiles under some good girls’ names and write testimonials for you from those profiles. Nothing can match the happiness of writing your own testimonial.

Communities: Join some intelligent communities like Puzzles, Sudoku, History of India, Maniratnam fans etc. If you studied in a co-education school start a community for it. But please don’t play games like “Favourite miss in the school, Favourite aaya in the school, Favourite place in the school, Favourite bench in the classroom,” etc. It will be real fun for your friends when a lot of girls reply to your favourites saying “Anna that bench was my favourite too”. The entire purpose would be lost. So, just add the girls as friends and orkut, orkut and orkut. That is the sole purpose of these communities, not playing such useless games.

If anyone has any other ideas please do comment. It will help fellow orkutters.

Long live Orkut & all guys who orkut for girls.