Thursday, March 09, 2006

myspaced out

I’m getting sick of myspace and I’m not even kidding. I joined, about a year ago, because all of my friends were doing it and it was fun, at first. Friendster is dull, Facebook, elitist, and Dodgeball, scary.

It’s hard to have less than 100 friends, if you’ve attended more than one high school or college and, soon enough, your account begins to look like the end of some Fellini film, with all of the layers of your social life colliding into one. Also take into account the bands you add, to, you know, keep up with their tour schedules, and the people you accept, out of social obligations, even if you don’t really like them.

It does have its advantages, as far as networking goes. As an email account, it has more perks than Gmail or Yahoo and fine, I also use it to spy on ex boyfriends, but doesn’t everybody? myspace also works as a first-rate social crutch. Only knowing about three people when I moved to this city, I found it to be much easier to “myspace” a new friend, rather than cold call them.

While myspace Tom, bless his nerdy heart, did sell out to Murdoch, you have to give him credit for surpassing those Napster guys, in so far as entrepreneurship is concerned. He doesn’t get to me, as much as he does to other people; I actually get a kick out of his omniscient-creator-of-all attitude.

But talk about lackluster addictions! In college, I remember going to the computer lab during finals week, only to find everybody’s monitors flashing with ‘online now’ lights. Now, when I’m supposed to be in the real world, I hear of friends who are no longer allowed to sign on at the office, because of foolish coworkers who would stew in myspace all day long. So I feel justified in blaming myspace for my distinct drop in productivity over the past year or so.

Yet when I am stuck, staring at a computer for eight hours a day, it’s a comfort to sign on to myspace and see those signs flashing, along with the synthetic energy they emit. To know that my friends (by that I mean, my real friends) are also fixed at a computer, while on myspace, helps me get through my days. The ontological strangeness of everybody being ‘on’ in cyberspace and ‘off’ in reality will never grow old.

As for you, Toby Shuster of Jerusalem, I took the liberty of creating for you a myspace profile of your very own. I didn’t want you to feel left out.

5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

i'll delete my profile if you do.

- jimbo.

3:45 PM  
Blogger Toby Shuster said...

are you suggestion some kind of joint myspace suicide?

3:47 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

me? myspace irritated me too much over time so I deleted my account and haven't really regrettted it decision. I did stand up my own blog though, so i'm still online. just a little more reclusive.

9:28 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It [Myspace] has become an irritating addiction. I'm only hanging onto it because of the friend networking aspect. Nobody emails anymore!

4:39 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I know it's easy to get sick of, but to be honest, I think it's kind of hilarious. Where else would I see these awful people from my past, and get to have mini heart attacks imagining that they have some way of knowing that I viewed their profile? Plus, I'm only online when I'm at work, which is really fuckin' funny.

10:50 AM  

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