ʙɪɢ․
I believe statuses could use a rework when it comes to how they're presented to your friends list/profile vs. how they're shown to people in your instance/on your nameplate.
Currently, I feel like there are two common use cases for the status field. People either use it to communicate with their friends when they're browsing through the list of who's online, or they use it to communicate information to people in an instance with them by taking advantage of the status's position on your nameplate. My problem with this is that there is currently no way to elegantly present
both types
of statuses in those 2 different places at once. You either set your status with the intent of your friends reading it when they see you online, or you set it with the intent of it being under your nameplate when talking to people.
If you intend for your friends to read your status and set it to something like "At at event!", "Join me, help me test something" or "Kinda busy today", then people you run into in your instance often see a redundant status. They know you're at an event or you're busy because they're there with you! The status being on your nameplate becomes pointless when used for this use-case.
The same thing happens in the opposite context. If you intend for your status to act as important information under your nameplate like your pronouns, "Don't be shy, introduce yourself!" or "Please don't headpat me", then anyone scrolling through their friends list will see information that they either already know or isn't valuable to them at a glance because it isn't intended for them.
I think it would be interesting if it were possible to set 2 statuses for both of these contexts discreetly. The status field on your profile could give you the option to set your "Profile/Friends List/Online Status" alongside a secondary "Instance/Nameplate Status". Perhaps the two statuses are merged by default, with a "Set a separate Nameplate Status" toggle splitting them.
This way, your friends could read that you're "At an event!" when seeing you online in their friends list, while the people at the event with you read something like "He/Him - Please don't headpat me". I think this would be so much more elegant than presenting the same status to both friends and users in your instance.