Wednesday, July 12, 2006

The Various Stages of Myspace

When I first joined Myspace it was after a long conversation via email with a friend of mine who was trying to tell me that Friendster was no longer "Where it's at".
It took me a long time to be convinced to join Friendster in the first place because I was of the mind that the last thing I needed was another internet distraction at work.
When my friend mentioned that Myspace had music profiles and I could add songs to my own profile I was sold. My Friendster account was deleted and my Myspace account was born.

Stage 1: Finding old friends, lovers, crushes, friends of lovers crushes...
It is sort of like the old saying "The first thing people look up on the internet the very first time they log on is porn". Well, the first thing you inevitably look up the first time you get on Myspace is anyone you have ever seen naked or ever wanted to see naked. (Don't lie, you have all done it. You know it. I know it. So let's just admit it to ourselves, shall we?)

Stage 2*: Looking up people right after you meet them.
These days if someone tells me their first and last name when I meet them out at a club/bar I will inevitably look them up that night when I get home. Or whenever anyone under 35 is mentioned on the evening news I will look to see if they have a profile. I would say eight out of ten times they do! Why not? Myspace is supposedly for networking right?
I figure if people put it out there, they must want it to be seen.
Recently I have seen a high instance of friends of mine who meet new guys and then go home and look them up only to find their profiles tagged with "In a relationship" or worse "married". What is up with that guys? My husband says I should not be surprised, but I always am.

Stage 3: Using it for dating purposes or hooking up.
I can't say much about this mostly because I have been married since Myspace came into my life, but I do know of several single people who have met via Myspace and gone out on dates. It seems like it would be a good tool for that. Even though on my profile I am clearly tagged as Married I get all of the classic crazy emails on a regular basis from Who's Who in Mental Health from around the world.
"I am pig farmer from Mars and I think you look pretty eyes and have many of my baby if we marry soon yes? I have much money and buy you many nice thing."
It is entertaining, tacky and a little bit scary all rolled up into one!

Stage 4: The fascination with Myspace has worn off.
You don't care about any of the things you cared about in stage one. You realize that only total Gomers would actually put anything real or deeply personal on their unfiltered profile. So really, what you have is a community that is equal to glorified electronic yellow pages. A lot of people have switched to using their Myspace profiles for their email because of the handy device that tells you if and when your sent message has been read. This is good for people in stage 3 trying to hook up so they can torture themselves with the thought; "He read my email three days ago, why hasn't he replied to me yet?"

Stage 5: You dabble in the other stages but for the most part you just use it to find new music and get a free download every now and then.
You have a certain rotation of profiles you click on regularly because you know they change their songs/content/blogs regularly and that helps entertain you when you are bored at work. You rarely get on Myspace on the weekends or after 5PM on the weekdays unless you get an email that says someone left you a new comment or a new message. These days you use the Music Search way more than the Friend Finder and you have at least a CD's worth of free music and a collection of ridiculous emails from the Myspace whores. You threaten to delete your profile at least three times a week and you curse yourself for even bothering to log on anymore because you realize what a colossal waste of time it is.

*There is a stage I skipped because not everyone does it but I call it the "I just discovered the bulletin feature" stage of Myspace. This is a stage that is split down the middle. You either do or don't. Those who do seem to do it a LOT and those who don't, you may never see their name roll up on the bulletin scroll. So I would call this Stage 2.1

1 comments:

Earl said...

Hey wuz up - thanx 4 the add! (Insert rude, inappropriate, silly or corny graphic here).

Ugh - I hate myspace. It is so...superficial.

 

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