Raerae
Well-known member
So like I was reading an article on yahoo about new parent software for MySpace and saw a link to this article and it made me totally LOL. Cuz it's so true. As someone who never got involved in the whole MySpace craze (go go LiveJournal! lol) I always laugh at some of the pages my friends have when they link me their MySpace page. And all of them are like the one described below.
Whats the point of MySpace again? LOL!
MySpace, Now With Random Crap
By Lore Sjöberg| Also by this reporter
02:00 AM Oct, 25, 2006
The immediate effect of my publishing a link to my MySpace page last week was that I started getting friend requests from people with names like "Señor Discount" and "Johnny One-Spur." It seems shallow to accept people I've never met as friends, but I like to think that anyone named "Señor Discount" is excellent friend material, online or off. Anyhow, after approving all my new friends and triggering about 400 server errors in the process, I now have 319 friends. That's what I love about the internet -- it allows you to have more friends than casual acquaintances.
I don't really know what to do with my 319 new online chums, compatriots and cronies, but frankly I never knew what to do with my meat friends either. I usually took them to mini-golf, but that doesn't seem to be an option on MySpace. I think you just collect them, as they collect you. It is the 21st century, and we are all each other's Hummel figurines. I think MySpace should take a hint from collectible figure games like HeroClix, and find a way to let you make your friends fight.
Lacking such an outlet, I return to setting up house. Looking at randomly selected MySpaces, I discover that one of the most important things to do with your page is embed random crap from other places on the web. Ha! Easy! I have spent a decade creating random crap! I am responsible for 0.00000001 percent of all the random crap on the web! Random crap is my soul name! So I throw some of my own random crap up there. Already, I am feeling at one with the Great Mother MySpace. I just wish she'd load quicker.
Next step is to add a background image. There are pages on MySpace without background images, but all they have going for them is legibility. Take it from me, a massive picture of an anime demon kitty in high heels and an extremely skimpy nurse's outfit says more about you than a thousand readable blog entries could. I don't have a picture like that, though, so I put up a photo I took of a frozen pizza I once bought that was supposed to be half pepperoni combo and half cheese, but the cheese "half" took up a lot more space than the combo half. I think that says a lot about me, too.
Finally, there's the issue of music. MySpace makes a big deal out of music, probably because when someone named "The Great Bodhisattva" asks you to be his friend, you need to know if he likes Steely Dan. (He does.)
MySpace makes it easy to upload your music, it makes it easy to promote your band, and it makes it easy to embed music into your page so that everyone has to listen to it while they wait for your random crap to load. I don't know when it became acceptable to blare Journey at helpless visitors, but on MySpace it's something close to mandatory.
When in Rome, annoy visitors to your web page. I need to pick a song to inflict upon those who dare visit my realm. I could go through the numerous talented independent artists who are using MySpace as a way to get much-needed exposure in the cut-throat, corporate-choked world of mass media, but I've got two episodes of Battlestar Galactica waiting for me on the TiVo, so I just upload a recording of myself singing a sensitive acoustic version of "Head Like a Hole."
I look upon my MySpace, and I see that it is good. Each part of it competes with the other for attention, creating an experience that blasts the senses, yet leaves the psyche unaffected. The many voices combine into a colorful but meaningless roar. A metaphor, perhaps, for MySpace as a whole, or the web, or perhaps all of human existence. I also had a shirt like that once.
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Born helpless, nude and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg eventually overcame these handicaps to become a collector, a director and a midnight specter.
