An Open Letter to MySpace, My Former Flame
Dear MySpace,
How I used to love thee.
We were like best friends. I mean, you were there when I needed skeezy strangers to hit on me. You were there when I needed people to steal my photos and info and make fake profiles of me. You never denied me the spam I so desperately craved. And, of course, you were always there when I needed a new boyfriend.
But, honey, you need to face reality-we’ve drifted apart.
Thousands upon thousands of MySpace users delete their profiles every day. You started hanging out with a punk crowd and a lot of people just got fed up with it. But plenty of people who don’t delete (because god forbid they lose that sense of pride associated with knowing that they’ve had 68,293 profile views since 2005) don’t actually USE their profiles anymore. We all know how you love to feel used. Now I read this, and it’s heartbreaking watching you beg.
So, MySpace, your idea of foreplay is to sift through my interests and give me targeted ads? Romantic. Attractive… No.
I’m not coming back to you because you think you know me now. You couldn’t possibly know what I want from a tiny list of half-sarcastic interests. For all you know, the whole list could be a joke. Yes, I want you to be concerned with what I want and what I like, but if you only ever scratch the surface AND have no sense of humor about it, you’ll never reach anyone, let alone me. I can picture you sitting there saying, “OK, so Amanda says she’s interested in ‘ice cream, pedicures and poop.’ Time to work the ad magic.” If you take that route, babe, you’re hopeless.
It’s like a bad teen movie coming to life. I mean, this sort of feels like you want to look inside my underwear drawer. Everyone knows I wear underwear and I’m sure plenty of people have seen some of my stash, but it’s like you turned into some loser after I left and now you want to put your digital paws all over my skivvies to reconnect. Who do you think you are- McLovin?
My favorite quote of the Yahoo! article comes from Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a California-based nonprofit: “Many young people don’t seem to have privacy protection instincts.” Well, maybe we’ll develop said instincts once we feel that sites we once loved are becoming shady and intrusive. We grew up in a world where information flows freely and our peers weren’t afraid to share. Day by day, though, that’s changing. Ask any man out there: you can’t read minds. Don’t try.
Oh, and what are you going to do with people who haven’t updated their profiles in two years? We both know that I’m not interested in the same things today that I liked back in 2005. Yeah, I used to be interested in college and dating, but I’m over all that. It’s like when you’re 17 and one of your relatives gives you a goofy stuffed animal as a birthday gift. You force a smile for a second because you noticed the effort, but inside you just want to scream, “WHY DID YOU SPEND MONEY ON THIS?!”
MySpace, you look really desperate right now, but I’m over you. You used to be fun and social and-dare I say it- sexy. Now you’re just boring. Maybe you should go prey on these easy lays, and please, please try to get over me.
Social Networks | Comments (13)13 Responses to “An Open Letter to MySpace, My Former Flame”
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I think for whatever reason when communities get too big they become uninteresting. There are many theories on this, but it’s kind of true in real life, too. Groups like colleges and sororities and fraternities don’t have this problem because as many people always leave as they join. Most organizations start splitting off into smaller groups when they reach a certain size. Since myspace is hell-bent on becoming as big as possible, their users become disenchanted and eventually left behind as it grows and leaves no way of feeling like a community.
I agree with Paul’s comment. I’ll also add that it lost a lot of glamour when Myspace became super restrictive and started deleting profiles left and right for tiny infractions.
What fun is a site where I can’t impersonate an angry Native American threatening people or sift through slutty barely-over-18-year-old skanks posting their underwear pictures?
What’s MySpace?
The point I’m driving home is that there’s nothing sexy about “safe”.
And when a site previously-perceived-as-edgy site like Myspace goes way overboard on restrictions, it’s no longer cool.. it’s square.
Rings true to me. And, I learned a new word: skeezy.
I’ll be back.
Q… you spelled your own name wrong! But thanks for the comment. We can discuss “skeezy” in class- I’m sure some of the girls will have good examples.
Good article, well written and thopught out. Amanda, you’re going to be famous.
Prediction:
In a year, there are going to be reports about how Myspace is freaking out, trying to revive the buzz.
And I’m going to point back to this comment and say that I called it. ;)
I can’t help but wonder what the next big thing will be…
Why browse barely legal photos when you can make a 14-yr old profile and browse illegal photos?
But really, not only are myspace’s privacy functions against the spirit of the site, they actually don’t work.
This is an timely piece for me, after using MySpace for 3 years, I deleted my account yesterday because my account got phished for the second time. Ridiculous. Apparently I had been sending spam messages to my friends and no one told me until yesterday. Sigh. I’m over it, too.
On June 21, 2007 I said
poignantly, “myspace is a gong show. A show about a gong. It is not for me. Period.”
Words to live by. Indeed.
PS. love the new blag. can’t wait to hear more buzz and honey and poetic waxing… bad pun.. from you!
I have to say, that I could not agree with you in 100% regarding en Letter to MySpace, My Former Flame at Social Honeycomb, but it’s just my opinion, which could be wrong :)
Yes, that’s cool. The device is amazing! Waiting for your next one!