Getting in touch with MySpace
LCD Soundsystem’s song “Losing My Edge” pretty much says it all. Here I am just over five years removed from college and I feel like my grip is slipping on what is in and what’s out, what’s hip and what’s hop. (Do kids still say hop these days?) Even as I ironically mention a trendy band like LCD Soundsystem, I know there are some hipsters out there scoffing under their breath because LCD is so early 2005.
The most recent example of my fading cool self that I can point to is my total ignorance of the site MySpace.com prior to this past summer. It all started when I developed a crush on a contestant from UPN’s America’s Next Top Model. (Yes, I’m college educated and 27 years old and I’m having crushes on reality TV stars, and no I don’t have a girlfriend.) Her name was Kahlen, the coolest of cool girls (at least from I could take from a TV show), and through the message boards over on FansofRealityTV.com (again, no girlfriend) I discovered that Kahlen had a MySpace account.
Apparently a whole generation of kids is hooked on MySpace. My older brother, who teaches at a college, says it’s all his students talk about. That’s right, my older brother had heard about MySpace before me.
I’m definitely losing my edge.
In case you need a crash course, MySpace is this amazing community where you can connect with friends when emailing, instant messaging, cell-phoning, house-phoning, text-messaging, telegraphing and talking face-to-face just aren’t enough. MySpace also allows you to browse through the profiles of complete strangers and get the 411 on their favorite music, films, TV shows and books. Did you know that kc intense absolutely loves Trapt? Did any of that sentence make sense?
You can also view the comments people exchange with their MySpace “Friends” and have no fucking clue what they’re talking about, which sounds a lot more enthralling than you might think.
After months of indulging in this voyeurism, I figured it was time to create my own MySpace account … as an experiment for Crap Filter of course — not because I had some secret desire to share myself with the world.
The first thing I had to do was type in my headline, which most people use as their favorite quotation. As you might have deduced, I went with, “I’m losing my edge.”
A brand new digital camera (i swear I didn’t just buy for this) allowed me to upload the photo of me to be used as the flag or signature for my MySpace page. I probably went through about 47 different wardrobe changes and 84 different shots before coming up with an image that’ll do for now. Initially, I considered creating a MySpace page for my cat, Chocolate, and putting her image in the main photo, but I assumed the silly/phony MySpace page thing had been way overdone by that point, and I didn’t want to seem like I was… losing my edge. Still, to be sure I had a hint of tongue-in-cheek on my MySpace page I could fall back on, I included this quote in my “About Me” section:
“… people are starting to assume that the media is inherently useless and that there is absolutely no difference between news and entertainment. This will make the coming generation even more cynical than the current one, which is mostly bad (but not necessarily tragic). I think this is why so many teenagers are obsessed with things like myspace.com: They have lost interest in the world at large, so they’ve decided to just build an interior culture where they are the sole focus. They can live without the world.” - Chuck Klosterman
When choosing my interests, I was very careful to go with the music, films, TV shows and books that would make me seem smart and original. In other words, those that aren’t too mainstream or dumbed down for the masses, even if I actually enjoy them. At the same time I didn’t want my selections to be so high brow that they’d go over people’s heads (this is MySpace folk we’re dealing with here), which wasn’t really a problem, especially in the Books section. Once I was satisfied with my choices, I added the finishing touch to my Interests section be uploaded images of minipops, which are miniturized, digitized versions of pop culture figures that sort of resemble Atari people. I’ve been addicted to these things ever since I saw them in Spin magazine about a year ago. And I’m sure by now my friends are sick of me using them.
Then came the fun part, finding my “Friends,” or other people’s profiles that I wanted to include in my “Friends Space.” That meant searching through MySpace, either by name, school classes and other various means.
First, of course, I had to get Kahlen to be one of my “friends.” You do this by sending a “friend request” through her page and hoping she accepts. She accepted me, along with 1, 957 others as of this article. So, yeah, I feel special.
I also knew that my friend Greg, this guy I used to work with near Philly, had a MySpace account set up for his cool new band — Eastern Conference Champions. I actually discovered that a ton of decent music acts — Wilco, Stephen Malkmus — use MySpace to promote themselves, as does Borat.
After that I was checking my high school and college graduating classes. To my surprise I found some cool people who I hadn’t spoken to in years and was really interested in contacting. There were Matt and Jonathan, two people from my dorm floor during my Freshman year at Syracuse, and Steve, some kid that used to make my 12th grade English class a lot less dull at N.A. High. And I was reconnecting with these guys and going over good times in no time, all thanks to MySpace. So this venture ended up being productive after all and not just an excuse to connect with Kahlen.
I also did a little leg work for MySpace by getting my boy Andy to join (I think). Now we have another forum where we can exchange random Simpsons lines. And I’m working on dragging down more people.
And wouldn’t you know it, hot chicks have been contacting me out of the blue and insisting that they want to meet up with me. All I have to do is sign up with their adult personal sites for a small monthly fee and I’m golden. So sex is also something you can get out of MySpace.
I must admit, the initial excitement of setting up a MySpace page has sort of worn off a bit. You see, once you’re done setting up all your stuff on your page and communicating with those people you found again because of MySpace, there’s really not much to do. I even hear now that sites like Friendster.com and Facebook.com are even cooler community sites.
I’m losing my edge.
November 7th, 2005 at 11:36 am
After browsing a few (dozen) MySpace profiles, I’ve come to a few conclusions.
We can all rest easily because the young whippersnappers on MySpace aren’t any more with it than you or I. In fact, they’re probably a lot less with it. They’re just…something. I’m not even sure what. How’s “connected” sound? That’s the first thing I’ve learned.
Every time I browse through these things and find some profile that’s light purple with light pink text, I realize that they don’t know their asses from a hole in the ground, never mind anything worth knowing about music. They don’t have an edge to lose. If MySpace was at one point a haven of the with-it, the with-it have gotten drowned out in the sea of utter crap and stupidity.
I’ve also found out that attractive people have absolutely no idea how to use a simple camera. I guess that’s sort of the whole idea behind the fashion industry. If models could dress and take pictures of themselves, they wouldn’t need ugly people like designers and photographers. Seriously though, cameras are made so fucking babies can use them. It only further leads me to believe that MySpace is tailored for the lowest common denominator.
As I browse through these profiles and some stupid song starts to play or an embedded Windows Media file gives me some damn alert, I begin to realize that if this is what “it” is, I’m glad that I’m not with it “It” is generally created expressly for the unwashed masses, something so awful that everybody just has to go absolutely batshit crazy for it.
Let’s face it: The site is awful. I’m being extra kind when I say that. Normally I could have much worse things to say about a site where they manage to make the back button in my browser not work.
I’m generally too much of a goddamn snob about pretty much everything to get on board with anything like this, usually because it’s what everybody else is doing. Of course it didn’t stop me from making a profile.
If this is what the edge has become, then good riddance.
November 7th, 2005 at 11:51 am
I see MySpace as the ugly misguided child of the AOL profile and the weblog. And I hate both… except Crap Filter, of course. LOL! J/K! LYLAS!
November 7th, 2005 at 2:11 pm
MySpace, for a lot of people, is a new way to make your own personal section of the web look like 1997. Do they have the spinning arrow graphic or the piece of mail sliding in and out of the mailbox yet?
Retro is the new currentro!
www.myspace.com/matt_little