Easyspace blows goats
 

So my friend is trying to wrap his around the appeal of MySpace, which to him is a) "the distilled essence of everything wrong with the internet back in the 90s," and b) "synonymous with teens using the internet." I don't understand it, either. I mean, I don't get the deal with Facebook, but MySpace scares me in a way unlike any other networking site that I'm not entirely able to express. That said, I can't claim total innocence, as I do maintain a journal elsewhere. However much I fantasize about ending it, I know that it won't happen, as it's a main point of contact for me and a lot of people I know. Sometimes I do wonder why I keep my account. There's the reason I just mentioned; there's also Exhibit A below, a sample of the kind of thing that can appear in my friends' page (reposted with permission):



Yes. This is why. Because within the teenage wasteland, there are people like this guy who can take the most mundane frustrations in life and turn them into something that leaves me giggling for minutes after. The fact that I saw early on how blogs can be interesting was a motivator. It's just that so many people just don't get how to make something interesting... like, of course it's interesting if it's about them or something that interests them; who cares about anyone who thinks otherwise? If it's all done in the service of cliques, that's one thing, but if you want to reach out to a general audience, that's not going to cut it. I'm not all that interesting, but I at least try to keep some flavor with the occasional visual or droll remark. Which is another thing -- there's a fine line between channeling Dorthy Parker and just being bitchy -- even Ms. Parker had trouble distinguishing -- so if you must be cynical, take caution. Note how our author above is cranky without ever losing his sense of whimsy.

So I mean, a readable blog is possible, so why does it happen so rarely? And why does it happen so rarely on MySpace especially?

Myspace is what happened to people who used to spend six hours updating their AOL profiles before AOL got taken over by everyone's grandmother who thinks that she's 'hip' because she e-mails people but finds Firefox to be vaguely frightening and probably somehow immoral.

Have you heard of DeadSpace? It's where the put the profiles of dead MySpace members. They keep them there so you can look over their last moments and judge them/morn.

^ LUE would have had a field day with that back in the day.

How about HySpace? Networking for Hylians.

I seriously don't get the myspace/facebook/blog/livejournal/xanga thing. Throw up some free forums or something, I mean really, if you want to network, forums are way better.

I used to have a blog, I did some reviews and stuff on it, but I got tired of it.

Sadly, I have a MySpace (people bugged me to get), a LiveJournal (nikose bugged me to get), and a Facebook (my roommate bugged me to get). I don't get the point of it either cause i talk to all those people anyway. And the ones I don't talk to, it's cause I don't want to talk to them.

I use Facebook. You sort of have to go out of your way to make people truly hate going to your personal profile, and it's an easy way to externalize your college memory; Instead of writing myself a post-it to remember when a friend's party is, Facebook tells me. Likewise for friend's birthdays, concerts coming I might have missed, study sessions, things of that ilk. I have a horrible memory for things like that and a crippling sense of laziness to record them myself, so having what amounts to an updating electronic organizer helps out.

Basically, I use Facebook very reactively to help out my life and keep me up to date. MySpace just seems very, head-smack inducing, personally oriented. If you have a MySpace it basically serves as a bastion of everything YOU, and once that Nickelback song gets loaded and your thirty personality quizzes are emblazoned on the screen, you've basically subjected any visitors to what you want them to think your mindscape looks like.

Blogs then, at their simplest form, are a kind of middle ground. It lets people see what you think, but it isn't like your every thought got shat out onto the web in midi form, and it allows for feedback. Of course, if you aren't interesting outside your own head/friend circle, it basically amounts to literary masturbation, but that's all some people need, so good for them.

On a related note, READ MY FUCKING BLOG.

Oh man I heard a new Nickelback song today and it sounded exactly like the Nickelback song that sounded exactly like the other Nickelback song that all their songs sound exactly like.

I guess it's just nice to know that there's some things you can count on.

Oh I read that every so often. It makes me lol.

I see blogging as the extension of post-modernism to the internet.
And post-modernism must die in all its forms (except post-structuralism! Oh how I love to hate you!) thus blogs=die.

Fifth it looks like DFM wrote your blog. This comment might incite some interesting response...