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Myspace a waste of space?

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Kali, Queen of Kitteh

17:21 / 29.03.06

I admit it. I caved and created a myspace page. I had a friend help with it and now it looks really good. (For God's sake, there's a giant photo of Chris Eccleston as the new Doctor Who on it.) But here's the thing: having a page like this requires constant upkeep because your friends are doing the same. Sort of like keeping up with Joneses, if you will. There are always photos to post, blog entries to write, and more people to invite to be your pals on the damned thing. I mean, it sounds fun at first, and then you realize you're spending excessive amounts of time on it.

So, let me ask, are pasttimes like this ever healthy?

17:29 / 29.03.06

Sounds like World of Warcraft, only less fun, less expensive and less addictive. My advice is, cancel your account; you sound as if myspace´s bothering you already.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

17:32 / 29.03.06

Are you calling World of Warcraft unhealthy?

I'll fight you!

I will!

17:34 / 29.03.06

You can´t.

I don´t have a WoW account! Ha!

Tryphena Absent

17:34 / 29.03.06

Pastimes like this are very, very healthy. You should use Myspace more. You should pay to use it.

17:38 / 29.03.06

Have you seen Myspace - The Movie? It might help you with some of your questions...

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

17:55 / 29.03.06

That movies is the greatest thing ever.

I found an online store selling "Tom is not my friend" t-shirts once.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

18:23 / 29.03.06

I remain undecided. I mean, if you're likely to meet some nice young man, you can give him your myspace page instead of your phone number, that way he gets a better idea of what you're like. (Of course, the pics and comments on mine might frighten you.)

I dunno.

All Acting Regiment

18:58 / 29.03.06

Are you going to show us this fabled page then, Kali?

And does it have any pics of you beheading Rakitivira?

Spyder Todd 2008

19:19 / 29.03.06

I don't have a MySpace, but I did cave in a year ago and get a Facebook account after an ex-SO kept hounding me to get it. Looking back on it, I have no idea why I listened to them of all people, but whatever. I update like once every six months, so needless to say I haven't the thousands of friends that some people have. People who update these things like crazy can't be that healthy. Yet, I feel guilty when I go more then 3 days without updating my real website. So I don't know if I should really be judging the health ramifications of these things.

*

20:05 / 29.03.06

I have a myspace page which is a placeholder. I only go when I get a notification that someone wants to friend me. Very low maintenance. It's mostly a "hey, what happened to that one person from high school" filter, for people who are slow on the uptake.

paranoidwriter waves hello

20:08 / 29.03.06

I feel guilty about having a profile on MySpace. Originally, I made it to keep in touch with and read the blogs by a couple of friends of mine, one of whom lives overseas; but I've since met other interesting people on MySpace who I fear would be less inclined to keep in touch via Email. i.e. it's all well and good talking to someone called "paranoidwriter" via MySpace, but many people are (understandably) apprehensive about giving out Email addresses to strangers and I certainly wouldn't dream of asking them. Plus it's quite nice when people send you a "friend request.

So, let me ask, are pasttimes like this ever healthy?

Hmmm...dunno. I've got a few friends who've admitted to being MySpace addicts, spending hours and hours on there to the detriment of their meatspace social life. But then, I'm (ahem) almost addicted to Barbelith, so...

I've also never done the whole decoration thing, nor added music. It seems to slow things down for a lot of users (myself included).

Er... I have, however, put a link to Barbelith on MySpace in my "favourite websites" section. Is that bad? You know, creating a tunnel to our hallowed walls from (allegedly) Satan's kindergarten*?

*To Murdoch's lawyers: that is in no way intended as being a substantive fact.. It was just a rumour I heard once... in a dream.

Bubblegum Death

20:16 / 29.03.06

I got bored one day and set up a Myspace account. I'm still bored. I like how you can personalize your profile, but I haven't found a whole lot to do on Myspace that's actually fun. But, I'm not really interested in meeting people and am cautious about giving out too much info.

I will say that spending time in the various groups has made me appreciate Barbelith a lot more.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

20:22 / 29.03.06

I consider Barbelith a good addiction. Y'know, like puppies or candy.

And I apologize, I did mean to put the link on here.

paranoidwriter waves hello

20:27 / 29.03.06

I got pissed one night and thought it would be fun to "collect celebrities" via MySpace like Top Trumps or something. i.e. by typing random names in the search function and sending them a "friends request". Some of these fakes are actually quite funny and clever, but I kind if wish they weren't there now as I look like weirdo fanboy autograph hunter. Thing is, it would feel rude to delete them.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

20:29 / 29.03.06

Here's the accursed time waster.

Mind you, I have never liked a single bloody picture ever taken of me.

20:57 / 29.03.06

I think you look cool, especially in this photo.

I like your groovy kaftan lady background as well.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

20:59 / 29.03.06

For the sharp-eyed, that's October Ghost sitting there with me.

21:57 / 29.03.06

I have a couple of friends who have spent time harassing me about getting a MySpace page, but I already have a Friendster page - which probably the same people made me get a few years ago- that I hardly ever use. From what I can see hardly anyone I'm Friendstered with ever uses their account either. I'll be damned if I can figure out what the point of these things is. It's like some weird Zen exercise that everyone seems to 'get' but me. Part of me is almost convinced that if I sign up for a MySpace account I will finally get it and love it and be cool and happening... but I can't do it... all these dumb little blogs and profiles I've already started and abandoned... it's like I've left my dirty panties at bus stops all over the city. It makes me feel icky.

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

00:05 / 30.03.06

Yes, yes they are (healthy). Especially if everyone makes an extra special effort to get me a date.

00:21 / 30.03.06

I don't quite understand MySpace. It seems to be a adolescent measurement of popularity by "Profile Views" and how many "Friends" and "Comments" you have acquired through extortion and coercion. I have a MySpace page that I never bother even looking at. I haven't logged in in yonks. The only time I do is to report the spam that gets sent to me ("Hey, baby. I saw your profile and thought we could talk. Come on over, www.sexywebcams.expensive.scary.com")

Currently, Hi5 is really cool among the younger set at my work. I also have a Hi5 page (I know, I know: hypocrite) and this was only to stop the barrage of e-mails of my friends asking me to join ("[Blank] wants you to join Hi5, the new network of bullshit connections and scary stalkers")

That being said, when I was in Grade 5, your relative worth as a human being depended on how many "Pogs" you owned and I owned a decent amount.

semioticrobotic

01:55 / 30.03.06

Facebook is the university-level MySpace my friends, classmates and students constantly fawn over and check compulsively. I even caught one of my students checking the site mid-class this afternoon.

And so, inevitably, I've become That Guy who doesn't have a Facebook page.

I suppose, at one level, I just don't understand the attraction. Maintaining an account seems to require lots of time and, as someone's already noted, appears to be a "keeping up with the Joneses" sort of practice. I see people using the service to project an idealized image of themselves (which they work dilligently and persistently on crafting and maintaining), and reap an unsettling amount of pleasure from doing so.

At another level, I do understand the attraction, but it doesn't appeal to me. Being under constantly surveillance by people I'd like to forget about (but who can watch me forever because, once, we went to the same school) actually creeps me out a bit.

miss wonderstarr

06:11 / 30.03.06

it's like I've left my dirty panties at bus stops all over the city. It makes me feel icky.

Panties with your nametag sewn in. I feel kind of the same. I started a Friendster because the cool girl in my online gang was doing it and got all "why is everyone not on friendster!", so we joined up and mostly just had each other on our friends lists, like some desperate incestuous circle. Someone once got a message from one of the guys in ties from Franz Ferdinand, after they won a music prize.

Then another cool girl added me to her LiveJournal so I started that and wrote a diary for the first time in years -- it helped that I was in hospital during that month and had some genuine experiences to log, though this meant I was writing in oldskool longhand noteform and then typing it up afterward. More people I knew joined LJ and I realised I didn't want them all reading my insides, so I shifted my diary into a jokey fakesuit register, and let it die.

At least Flickr, the photo showcase, has a point beyond just messaging people and adding "friends" to lists. I don't think I'll be joining MySpace. I feel too un-teen for it, and am not in a band.

Rather than pants, another parallel: the Swamp Thing, leaving those husks of himself around.

06:30 / 30.03.06

I'm on it. As are the majority of my friends. It is silly, but I am able to keep in touch with alot of people easily. I like that. Other than that it's pretty silly (and yet I waste hours on it hmmm?)

*

06:32 / 30.03.06

I quite liked tribe until it got all prudish and censorious. I've recently signed up with Free Association, which is still very new and needs some bugs worked out. But we're hoping it'll never go anti-sex, since it's hosted on non-US servers... *crosses fingers*

Regrettable Juvenilia

06:41 / 30.03.06

I've never found any of these to have enough stalker-friendly functionality built in.

semioticrobotic

11:17 / 30.03.06

Would assyudin and others who say they use social services be able to elabroate on the ways they use the services to "keep in 'touch?'" What methods of maintaining contact can one use? And how does one manage to juggle and keep "touching" an ever-burgeoning web of friends and friends-of-friends?

I ask because the arm of my thesis research on which I'm currently working revolves around "touch."

12:02 / 30.03.06

I really really don't understand the attraction of myspace, which makes me feel old / no longer down with 'the kids' / afraid of modern technology and all its wizardry. Why would friends insist that one of their number gets a page? Can't they all stay in touch by conventional means that don't involve public declarations of favourite colours and star signs, such as carrier pigeon, semaphore, telephone, or a careful programme of targeted telepathy?

Are these characters on myspace *really* your friends, I ask?

Regrettable Juvenilia

13:18 / 30.03.06

All the bands whose music I've never heard are. They asked me to be friends with them! Fancy that! It's the affirmation I've been looking for my whole life.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

15:06 / 30.03.06

Sadly all the friends I have on my Myspace page are in fact the carnival of freaks and weirdos I spend all my time with.

I just checked my page and am quite disturbed by the picture of the giant phallus my friend Mark left me on the comment space. I don't even want to know where he found it.

All Acting Regiment

15:09 / 30.03.06

I think it's from Caligula, Kali.

Anyone noticed the sort of irony sort of not of a social internet thing being run by someone called Tom who everybody loves?

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

15:10 / 30.03.06

I can think of a way to begin a really sappy speech from that question....

semioticrobotic

00:31 / 31.03.06

I wish I knew more about Orkut, but its doors have been sealed tight forever. Anyone use this? Because it's "organically growing" by invitation only, it might contain less of the unmitigated bopper-ism of MySpace fare.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

02:58 / 01.04.06

I don't think of myself as typical Myspace fare, but I do find amusement at my blog entries.

Amusement, or the overheated cries of a randy girl...

Now off to watch the next installment of the good Doctor.

04:03 / 01.04.06

I've had a myspace page for years and it really does help me keep in touch with my friends all over the globe. I@m not an addict. REALLY!

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