Now You’ve Done It…
| Category: General, All about me | 1 Comment
It started as a passing fancy. A lark, from Markalark, to be exact. A casual reference to it on The Colbert Report, an attempt to understand the generations after us. Really, it’s an investigation into social networking, social literacy, Web2.0 at its best/worst.
I never meant for it to go even this far.
After a poker game during spring break, I was too amped to go to bed, so I started taking a serious (albeit bourbon-tinted) look at the wonderful world of MySpace. Yes, I created a profile. Yes, I started looking for friends. After my high school reunion, I keep wondering about what happened to the people I used to hang out with and talk to throughout my formative years. So little by little, they’re coming back into my lives. It’s quite stalkery, really, what with the ability to hop, skip, and jump from person to person, as I have little dawns of recognition at peoples’ names. For me, the journey of remembering what I’ve long forgotten seems to be the most interesting part.
My MySpace Goals started out like this:
1) See who was around from high school
2) See if I could track anyone down from college.
3) Observe to ascertain any correlation between age, intelligence and devotion to MySpace layouts. (Working theory; the younger/dumber you are [not necessarily younger AND dumber, it’s an and/or proposition], the more unreadable your MySpace page becomes. Remember, there are always exceptions to the rule)
4) Try to remain neutral, unafflicted, and “too cool” (translation: too old) to get sucked in.
And for a few weeks couple days, it worked.
But now? I’m on MySpace for about an hour a day, just looking around to see who’s out there. Suddenly, I spent a Saturday evening with my good friend Jim B., TLEMK, and Dev, cruising the vapid wasteland that is MySpace.
I hate it. I can’t stand the crappy layouts, the “hollas” at everyone and that STUPID SPARKLE GLITTER crap that every insane person on that site seems to have.
I can’t stay away from it. It’s so awful that I am irresistibly drawn towards it (Insert cliches #1 and #2: Like a moth drawn to the flame. Like a car crash that you can’t look away from. /end cliches).
I even went so far as to put a layout on it last night. And then reason took over and said:
NO.
You cannot do this. You cannot spend time judging people for using ALL CAPITAL LETTERS WHEN THEY LEAVE A COMMENT SO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU’RE BEING SHOUTED AT THE ENTIRE TIME. It’s unfair, because these people you know are decent human beings. It’s just so easy to have a visceral reaction to grammatical errors, lack of coherence, and the inability for people to understand that they shouldn’t use background images that don’t scroll well or integrate with your type makes it almost impossible to read. In the immortal words of Stuck’s reminders on his phone, I need to “Be a better person.”
I am clinging to the hope that these pages are not representations of the entire mind, body, and soul of the people on them. That they’re just the way that people let loose and have fun. Because, at the risk of sounding old and curmudgeon-y, I think the next generation is screwed if this is the best they can do. I will remain the optimist and try to see the benefits of MySpace, and believe that everyone is just having fun, and it is no way indicative of future performance in the real world. (For the record, I do have a Facebook account too, but it’s not nearly the guilty pleasure of MySpace.)
Besides, blogs are so passe and passive, right?
Gotta go and see if I have any new friend requests.
