I actually joined MySpace about a year ago. There had been so much talk about kids and teenagers on the site and school districts desperately tying to block access that it sparked my interest. I wanted to understand all the hype so I decided to join. Naturally I didn't upload a picture ( at the time) fearing a student would see my face on this "subversive" site. But I did search around a bit. I saw tons of pictures of mostly young people with all sorts of profanity and suggestive pictures, which made me, believe there was some truth to all the stories I had been hearing. Then a close friend sent an email forward about a young girl, in her niece’s eighth grade class, who was killed after 'meeting' a man she met online. The story made the newspaper and MySpace, in my mind once again was this Internet networking site that allowed impressionable children to fall prey to child predators so I immediately deactivated my profile on the site. Case closed. MySpace was bad and had to be stopped. A month or so went by and I met a musician who told me about his MySpace page. I asked him (as we were the same age) if the site was just for kids. He told me that all the musicians he knows are on MySpace and he uses it to make new contacts, keep in touch with out of town friends, and to showcase his work. Really? I asked if there were people "our age" on MySpace and he responded there were thousands. Really? I decided to give MySpace another try.
This time what I found was much different. Naturally I went to his site first. I saw video performances of him on stage during Live8, photos of him on tour, heard original music he composed, and pictures of his "friends". Wow! It was a "living" resume for a musician. Not static, boring online resume I was accustomed to seeing. There might be something to this MySpace "thing" after all. So after a few hours of browsing through his "friends" (although I felt like a cyperstalker) I decided to join once again. It was slow going at first. The only "friend" I had was Tom (the founder who appears on everyone's profile). I felt like the high school outcast who wants desperately to be one of the "in" crowd...I wanted more friends. So I reached out. I started to send out "friend" requests to others, searched for old friends, and searched the alumni pages for college pals. One of my first friends was an ex-boyfriend who I kept in contact with and who used the site to promote his networking business. We talked about why we decided to join and what we have discovered about the site. Then I started to get "friend" requests. These requests were mostly from men (my age) who lived in the New Jersey/New York area. Heck, I'm a single gal and have learned that Internet dating is much more "acceptable" then it had once been but I wasn't too keen on "meeting" someone from MySpace. But I thought I would be "friendly" (pardon the pun). A few of my MySpace 'suitors' began to ask for my IM (I don't regularly IM so I had to create an identity on Yahoo Chat in order to communicate). (Random thought- we could apply the same "new literacies" paradigm to the shift in the way single people meet & date...but that is a blog for another day.) Before I knew it I had friends, IM pals, a new dating prospect, and funky new wallpaper for my profile. All my prior inhibitions seemed to go out of the window. That was then, this is now... Most of my "top friends" are family members, students I worked with in grad school, and some of my current favorite musicians. I visit MySpace almost daily, have posted a few blog entries, keep my current favorite song on my page, and have added more photos from my summer vacation in Maui. Since I am an obvious music lover, most of the current "friend requests" have come from bands/musicians, which I am happy to add. But I reserve my Top Friends for my favorites (A girl has to have standards! smile) I am not your average cyber-groupie. So that is my MySpace story. It has become another extension of who I am, what I value, and whom I care about.
Here are some of the other ways I have used MySpace...
* Sent birthday greetings or post holiday "comments" on my friend's/family's profile
* Rearranged my Top Friends to reflect those people I am currently in contact with
* Searched for and sampled new music and the profiles of my favorite musicians
* Visited my friend's profiles and read their pages
* Responded to friend's blogs (even read a short story by an aspiring writer and gave him critical feedback-he never
Responded)
* Visited sites of old boyfriends (I know it's cyber stalking but I can't help it)
* Saw pictures of my friend's families
* Laughed at some of the videos my friend's have uploaded
* Organized a reunion with my students from grad school
* Responded to a friend’s bulletin request for help with a creative project
* Sent my URL to friends
* Arranged to meet a "friend" in Chicago (but chickened out when I got there)
* Dated a guy for about three weeks after "meeting" him on MySpace
And in a bizarre "small world" story- I met a guy at a club in the city, only to find out later, that he had reached out to me on MySpace about 9 months earlier. I never put it together until I was clearing out old messages from my Inbox and saw his face! I thought it was interesting that neither of us would have ever figured it out nor did we recognize the other when we met.
http://www.myspace.com/courikym
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3 comments:
I enjoyed reading your entry. Don't worry about cyber stalking exes [I call it cyber lurking]---it's innocent fun:) I like to look at alumni from my high school and find humor in the people who used to be rail thin and now are heavy. Who knew myspace could be a confidence booster? I agree with what you said using "Top 8" to reflect close people you're in touch with. One thing that I find bizarre about myspace is how some people have 200+ contacts on their friends list. I only like having "real" friends on my friends list. Cyber etiquette and behavior....it's so interesting.
You're absolutely right about the ways in which technologies have shifted dating and relationships. I have seen this as a single woman as well as a married one (and now a divorced woman in a relationship) and at each point, technologies have shifted what it means to relate to potential partners as well as current ones.
Thanks for all you've posted -- I think this kind of information goes a long way to help us all understand what goes on on these sites.
My grown son (who has a MySpace page) said he doesn't want "my Mom' on MySpace. I have since developed a MySpace page. It's not quite the way I want it. Borrowing from America's Choice, it's a "Work in Progress" and has not yet "Met the Standard". HAHAHAHA!
There are some things, however, (I don't care how computer savvy I become) that I will probably never do online.
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