A long-time friend from my days in Adolescent Hell emailed me over the weekend, bubbling over the boil with tales of his misadventures from the other side of the pond and brandishing his new MySpace profile like a shiny badge on the lapel of a prefect’s uniform.
I’ve never been one for MySpace. I know most (read: sane/level-headed) people hate it due to the hideous way most vandalise their profile and blog pages with text speak, city slang, punctuation doodles and looping MP3s which, used to send both my browser and 56k modem into melt-down, and now I’ve upgraded my connection, simply startles me to nigh on the very gates of Death Itself and simultaneously swipes a good decade from my life expectancy.
Minus those bits though, I still dislike it. It’s got an atmosphere to it, like the school cafeteria — only not a real one that we remember from personal experience, but an ultimately more hideous one with the sheen, gloss and generic clique memberships of US “Teen Flick” fiction. All of which, is seen through the huge grainy alien-like eyes of the bershon expressions shot at a 75 degree angle, at point-blank range, with the flash at full throttle. Obviously.
I know it has its good points, its been very successful in getting lots of people online and interested in what it takes to personalise their own spaces, whilst also letting a lot of people keep in touch outside of school/college/uni/work etc. It’s opened a door to the wider public about the concept of blogging, for example, every time musician Lily Allen is mentioned in the press, the words “MySpace” and “blog” follow almost immediately after, and that’s a good thing. I think.
Being the dutiful and supportive BFF that I am, I took a deep breath and clicked my way into my friend’s Beyonce Knowles-drenched online profile. I wanted to click on the photos seeings as I hadn’t seen my mate in about 6 months, but couldn’t without doling over my contact details, getting myself an account and signing in. That meant being on MySpace. So, I sold my soul to the Devil and registered, after all, I am his BFF — it was my duty, right?
I’ve since cancelled my account. I just couldn’t get on with the idea of being on MySpace.
You see, every now and again K and/or I will bump into some ghost or another from our time in both compulsory and voluntary brick education.
I think everyone’s done it: Just popped out for bread and a packet of Tampax, looking like yesterday’s dish-rag because you tell yourself that the day you make a special effort to look good when going down Debden Broadway to buy tampons, is the day that there’s clearly nothing else to do with your life other than to sit in a grubby dressing gown, watching Claire Balding at the horse-racing on TV and wait for your Maker, quite frankly.
So with this in mind, you embrace the fact that you’re not wearing a bra and haven’t raked a brush through your hair since Thursday. When all of a sudden, you’re face-to-face with someone from your old school/college/job and lock eye-contact before you’ve had a chance to snap away quickly and claim ignorance. Sod-it.
Both of you wish you hadn’t seen eachother but now feel obliged to smile weakly and acknowledge that you recognise the other. Once passed the “How are you’s?” and “What do you do now’s?”, conversation is awkward and strained, it doesn’t help that you know full-well that this person was as two-faced as the Jack of Diamonds during the time you were “friends” and didn’t particularly like you very much anyway. Thus, the feeling is now reciprocated, not to mention you can’t help thinking “Oh my god, they’ve lost so much weight/done so much/got a great job/husband/kid etc” and wish that your life didn’t sound quite so mundane and that you’d bothered to at least wash last night’s mascara from off your face.
Cue the obligatory “stay in touch” blurb, only now it’s not your mobile number that’s requested, oh no. So when reaching for your phone (because no-one can ever remember their own mobile phone number), you just get a smiley refusal with the chipper and oh-so veiled threat: “Oh it’s ok, I’ll just find you on MySpace”.
If that isn’t reason enough not to be on MySpace, I don’t know what is.
But, I did sign up on Vox. To me, it was my idea of a compromise: I’ll agree to have a profile on some social-networking doo-dah, just one that’s not MySpace. That’s better, isn’t it? Or is it just a case of same thing, different hat?
I’m not sure what to do with my Vox profile as of yet, I’ve found a plugin that allows me to cross-post this content over to my Vox account, but I’m divided as to whether to duplicate my content in this way. Admittedly, it would mean that Vox users that conduct most of their blog-reading faithfully on Vox are able to “read me” without navigating away from their social-blogging-network-wossit of choice, but am I needlessly dividing would-be readers/visitors into unnecessary groups? Would the duplication give way to superfluous choices?
For those of you that have online presences in addition to your personal sites and blogging domains (Vox, MySpace, LiveJournal etc), are these simply alternative venues for duplicated/syndicated blog content? Or, are they separate entities with altogether alternative content, perhaps aimed at at different audience entirely? (LiveJournal for family only etc.)
I’d be interested to know as I’m sitting on the fence with this one… Go on, persuade me…
A full-time wheelchair user since 1998, Claire lives in an adapted bungalow in England with her Partner of 10 years and their two dogs: 
Claire, I hate MySpace too you know. For pretty much the exact same reasons that you’ve mentioned above! Also the way that the whole thing is presented, blog-wise that is, makes me draw comparissons to WordPress or any other advanced blogging tool (not sure about Blogger…). If WordPress a nice modern painting then MySpace is something done by a 3yr old in Crayola. Bleagh…!
Anyway! Vox looks nice enough — you can use it to attract more readers from different social online groups. You’ve firmly established your blog, so you’ll just be using the external site as an extension.
I still don’t get the allure of Vox. I really don’t. Especially if you already have a blog — why is Vox better than having your own domain? I’ve also never understood why people with domains/blogs have Livejournal accounts that are only used for cross-posting purposes. It has just never made sense to me.
I have a MySpace account that I use merely to keep track of people I went to school with. I don’t add anybody I don’t know. Many of my friends are not particularly web-savvy and aren’t likely to check my website for updates or have their own site to post on, so MySpace is an okay compromise. I can keep up to date with what they’re doing and they can keep up with what I’m doing, but I never post blogs, bulletins, etc. on there. I just have my info, some pictures, and I comment occasionally.
I’ve written a post about MySpace being like the early days of the web — badly animated gifs, “glitter” graphics, chatspeak, sticky caps, idiotly resized pictures, etc. All the things I thought we were finally moving away from are back with a vengeance on MySpace. It’s depressing. I haven’t customized my profile much at all — I just put an image in for some useless text at the top. God, and the auto-play music. Hate that. HATE it. There’s a setting buried somewhere in the preferences that you can check/uncheck to have it auto-play music or not, but it’s near impossible to find (the hyperspace bypass plans from the Hitchhiker’s Guide come to mind) and you wouldn’t know it was an option unless you stumbled on it (not likely).
Gah. In sum, I still think MySpace is a bit… well, daft, but I like that I can keep in contact with friends from high school. I flat out just don’t get the appeal of Vox, and I think having a domain with a blog outperforms any of those social networking sites.
Myspace is my nemesis. All social things on the web are. it’s wrong.. it’s so bad it’s wrong.… it’s badong!
I have a rarely used livejournal. Set to be even more rarely used now it’s such a bloated setup! I can’t be bothered with the load times.
As to myspace etc…no, not a fan. All the kids here seem to have them..or even worse, Piczo.
I’m forever running into old school friends. With my limp, I’m more identifiable to them than they are to me. They never bother with the “stay in touch” bit..and the only one who tracked me down on the web is Stuart.
Be careful on that fence, claire..you may get splinters..;)
I have a MySpace, but I don’t use it for anything other than keeping in touch with a few friends. I have a simple hyperlink to my actual blog on my profile, along with a picture, but that’s all. I wrote a little rant about it myself last week because whilst in discussion of things we had written in the last week during my English seminar, I mentioned my blog and my tutor said, “Oh, like MySpace.”
If I could have explained that my blog was in fact NOTHING like MySpace with the completely unreadable text and the flashy gifs without sounding like a total freak I would have. As it was I just settled on, “Something like that.” And then grumbled to myself that my blog was NOTHING like MySpace.
Do you live in Debden? A friend of mine lives near there. Small world huh?
Well, you all seem pretty certain that MySpace has gone to the dogs, so at least we’re all clear on that, though there seems to be differing views on Vox…
Starrynite: Really? Which Debden are you referring to? I don’t live in Debden, no.
I hate MySpace too. I have one though. I’m such a sheep.
I have two journals that I use — FA.com and my LJ. My DJ and WP.com and Vox etc . etc. etc. are all empty and dusty. I have no idea why I bother.
V xx
Well, I will buck the trend and announce I like Myspace. Mind you, I am of the generation and from the background where most of my school mates are either busy with family to mess around on computers, not computer literate, doing time or have met the grand maker. I like it because it has introduced a variety of new music which I would not have experienced without it. I love somafm, but its very ameri-focused. Myspace can lead you to what ever you like, from where ever. I would concur with the negative points stated above though. I say all this at the moment, I have only been using it for two weeks! (This message is subject to change once I am subjected to stalking by some gun-obsessed rubber-clad yank)
Vixx:
I see from your LJ that your public posts are cross-posts from FA (I can’t speak for the private posts as I don’t have access, are they non-FA content, is that the distinction between the two journals?) Does this duplication add a dimension to your readership and the “Vixx-ness” or do you think that the FA post access on LJ poaches potential FA commenters/visitors?
I do hope you’re not referring to FA
Lee T:
This is possibly MySpace redeeming feature…
Naturally…
Yep the Debden in Epping. My friend has a flat in Debden just of the broadway, but spends most of her time staying with friends in Epping. I’ve been there loads. It’s not too much of a drive from here, I can do it in less than an hour as long as I don’t get distracted and pop into Lakeside on the way haha
Gotta agree with you in the most part. Luckily I’ve reached a stage in my life where I don’t care if people from my past want to stay in touch or not. Frankly, if they do then there must be somethin about me that they like, and who am I to say I’m above giving them some of my time. If someone just wants to drag up past indescretions on either part I’ll just give as good as I get and philsophically rip their tawdry adult lives to shreds and leave them crying in to their beer. Sorry, I’ll calm down.
Starrynite: Really? Wow, what a small world — I wonder if I know your friend? You never know!
Although I can completely identify with the rant. I think many people still carry a lot of unvented grief about the people they went to school with, when the subject is opened up again. Especially, now being adults that are perhaps older, wiser and less willing to stomach what they put up with back then. To this day, conversations referring to past classmates still touch a few nerves with me.
Lew: LOL, Breathe darlin, breathe…
Ah, MySpace. I hate it, hate it with a passion… and yet I’ve never seen any of these badly coded, music-drenched profiles that people speak of. My opinions are purely based on those of others and that’s the way it is staying.
I do have a LiveJournal though. Admittedly it’s from my before-blog days when I barely knew how to update my website but I do still use it. It is handy for quick posts about crap I won’t discuss in ‘public’ — work, family, etc and for the communities. There are some topic-specific communities on the site that can provide better support for things than your average forum or blog (I haunt the LJ PHP community in particular). I wouldn’t die if my LJ suddenly expired but it does come in handy. (Oh, and of course my blog feed is syndicated through LJ which helps my old LJ friends keep in touch even when I’m not using my actual ‘journal’.)
Don’t plan on touching Vox or any of these other “desperate attempt to make some money selling the company off at a later date” social-networking schemes.
I forgot to say — if you do use a Vox account for replicating content here, be careful.. Google can penalise your page rank/overall listing in the SE because of duplicated content!
Yeah, I know — this was one of my reservations regarding cross-posting
I use Vox for photos mostly, and for finding new blogs to read. Vox also has that sheeplike question of the day that is oh so addictive.
LJ I use for a specific group of friends (mostly) from an online community I belong to. It’s also a bit more, I dunno, personal, as I have (more or less) complete control over who gets to read what. Obviously I have that option with WP as well, with password protection of posts, but then I’d have to actively tell people “no, sorry, you can’t have the password for that one.”, and I’m not very good with that. Oh, and LJ also has a few communities that I keep an eye on.
I recently signed up for a free WP blog as well, in a futile attempt to make myself blog in Norwegian every now and then.
I did sign up for Myspace as well, after a friend went on about how addictive it is, but…eh. Not my cup of tea. I keep getting friend requests from all these heavy metal bands even though I abhor metal and do not have any indication whatsoever in my profile that I feel otherwise about it. It doesn’t take much more to annoy me, really…