Tuesday, January 30, 2007

MYSPACE A GREAT WAY TO WASTE TIME

Darn, those masses.

I knew I wanted to stay away from MySpace, which is today's equivalent of AOL. It's a great way to send dumb forwards and surveys to people, while keeping them out of your e-mail inbox.

I resisted as long as I could. I should have got into MySpace a couple of years ago, before it went nuts. Jenn-Jenn, official friend of the Mailbox, told us about it. She showed us how to become a friend of the Barenaked Ladies. I also used it to discover Coheed & Cambria and Scale the Summit (that band actually asked to be my friend). But, I didn't set up a profile until recently.

I still don't use it that much. My page is unpimped, I have three pictures and no videos posted and I refuse to fill out my MySpace blog (especially since this one is oft-neglected, I see no reason to torture myself). And I ignore all those scary TV news reports about pervs on MySpace that roll around during sweeps week. If you have a brain and use it, you'll be safe from creepy people on MySpace.

Now, it's a decent way to keep up with friends -- no, that's not true. It's a great way to advertise who your friends are. I find myself immaturely shuffling my "Top Friends" according to strange rationale: "OK, he's my cousin, so he has to be in the top four at LEAST...of course TLP is No. 1...where do I put these two guys? Haven't known him long, but he's a better friend than her...and why is SHE here? I don't even like her." And if you have someone famous (Mike Portnoy is a friend of mine), then the ethical implications multiply.

The Mailbox doesn't quite understand where MySpace fits in to the whole digital world. It's a meeting place of sorts...a place where, using ugly templates and bad layout, you can show other people how great your life looks, and force your musical tastes upon them. Seriously: Two of my friends have MySpace pages and design news pages for a living. Their pages are ugly because they are ALL ugly. How the hell do they tolerate looking at their own pages? How can anyone READ this?

I'll stick with MySpace for the time being, because it's still kinda fun. I've put in friend requests to Carl Sagan, Charles Darwin and -- my hero -- Johannes Kepler. I hope they all approve me.

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Comments:
Wow, I feel so sheepish for having pimped my space at all after that tongue-lashing....

Still, it's the only way that half my friends *will* keep in touch with me, since half of them are all military, and it's one of the few places that actively deployed military personnel can go outside of military sites. So I guess I'll keep it, and keep it mildly interesting after all....

That being said, you do have a good point.
 
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