LeliaThomas.Com

Testing My MySpace Theory, Post #1

In my experience of writing online in the past two to three years, I’ve learned there are three kinds of emails and comments. The first and most common is the neutral comment. It’s nice, but it’s likely a once in a blue moon thing, and that’s all right. The second most common is fan mail. Who doesn’t like to get that? The third is hate mail. Hate mail amuses me for a number of reasons (here’s one). Unlike criticism, which can lead to a thought-provoking discussion, hate mail aims to cut someone in half with petty, unsupported comments. My recent journal entry, MySpace, a Virtual Mirror of Society, created a few mild discussions, but it’s also equaled a few pieces of hate mail for me. Not that I mind; it gives me a giggle or two. But one person figured they’d be even more direct and get me on MSN while I was away from the computer (very classy). Here’s what I received:

Message #1: u don no wat ur talkin bout

Already I feel wounded. In my EYES and BRAIN. However, I’ve no idea what this person’s referring to. Topic sentences! Use topic sentences! And grammar! It is your friend! No, really!

Message #2: myspace is gr8. i met my bf on there n we ben 2gether eva since.

Message #3: ur jus jelous

Message #4: u prolly cant get a guy on ms.

I can’t get a guy on multiple sclerosis? Oh, oh. MS = MySpace. Sure, of course. And, well, I don’t know why I’d want to meet a guy on MySpace, but maybe this girl’s right.

Message #5: u don even no wat ms is lyk so u cant say nething.

After promptly blocking this user, so as to resist the urge to launch into something that would amuse me but would hurt her likely already fragile IQ, I thought on this a bit.

Am I “jus jelous?”

Simply put, no. Insanely annoyed by MySpace and a large portion of its possibly brain dead users? Yes, incredibly so. And this girl “wh0 met h3r bf 0n mYsPaCe!!!!!1!11!! omg” really proves some of the points I made, or so I believe. But maybe she and others prove a point. Maybe I “don no wat” it’s “lyk.” I haven’t had the MySpace experience, which is apparently veritably orgasmic.

So, I’ll test my theory, then. For the whole month of October, I will participate on MySpace. I will intermingle, even if it makes me gag and feel like a tool to the advertisements. I will chat (though I will NOT–cannot–subject myself to poor grammar). Every Monday for the next four to five weeks, I’ll post a report of what’s happened in the last seven days. I will protect users’ names and identities in general, but all messages I receive will be posted here. Let’s just see how powerful and wonderful MySpace is.

Want to help me with this project? Add me to your friends list. Whore my page like the crappy profile that it is. I mean, amazing and innovative profile that it is. Yeah…

October’s going to be a long month.

Comments ordered from oldest to newest.

Skept1C

Wow….Now this is one of the most interesting and fun things i’ve come across. Having a complete hate for MySpace as well. I was going to blog about all the reasons I cant stand it as well. But im not so sure that my disgust for it could be put into words so well. Its more of a spiritually deep rooted hate, that shouldnt be probed to far, LOL. Okay, maybe its not that bad, I just can’t stand MySpace.
Peoples bad spelling and grammar appears to be an epidemic in this world. It always makes me laugh to see the way people will abbreviate anything. Even if the whole word would only be 2 more letters to type.
I will certainly be back to watch this all unfold.
I was thinking of starting a MySpace account, and i-framing my blog into it, just to see what kind of traffic it generates.

Lelia

Hahaha, “spiritually deep rooted hate.” That made my day! I can almost relate to it as well. It’d take the whole water to wine miracle for me to like MySpace.

It’s only been an hour, but I already feel a little twitchy. When I visit MY OWN PAGE it even tells me that “Lelia is in your extended network.” No shit!

Brandon

I know Ive come in late on the screw myspace campaign, but most people who are on it have pimped out myspaces with ten billion so called friends. The fact of the matter is, I see myspace as a useful site, its just one of biggest annoyances on the web. If they could perhaps, get a damn server that runs correctly, and not have a group of 12 year old coders in a sweatshop coding their damn site, maybe it might actually be usable.

First off, every single time you log in to the site, you are greeted with this error at least once:

Sorry! an unexpected error has occurred.

This error has been forwarded to MySpaces technical group.

Translation:

Sorry! But were too busy swimming in our ad money to be bothered with minor details such as making a functionable site.

The error has been translated into a chain letter and sent to the people in your friends list.

Second, no one cares about your stupid chain bulletins or letters, no one gives a shit about the quiz you took, and I especially dont care if you put images up and you want comments. Alert me when you are drunk and doing strip tease on a web cam, then I might be interested. Heres another lesson you might want to adhere to, dont make your background color the same as your font color if you want people to read whatever the hell it is you plan on writing.

Third off, it is the slowest site on the internet, and its because of the stupid people who put animated backgrounds, ten videos, and 8 different shitty songs on each of their myspaces so they can be unique. Putting a glittery image that says PLAYA on it, does not make you unique, infact it makes you an idiot.

I know myspace is about freedom, but enough of these bullshit groups. Everyone has a group for themselves, BRENTS EMO CREW WOULD LIKE YOU TO JOIN THEIR GROUP. Oh and thats another thing, if you are EMO, YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE A MYSPACE. Im sorry, but putting up bloody images, and pictures of yourself in a trenchcoat doesnt make up for the fact that you are on the most trendy site in the world, if you want to actually be a unique snowflake, go do something other than write stupid blogs about how you are going to off yourself with a bottle of zoloft. This also rings true for bad asses and gang bangers. Why the hell are these people on myspace? If you are living on the streets, or going to bars and getting into fights all the time, why are you on myspace? That kind of kills any hard ass image you had, and you might as well be gossiping at the salon Do women still do that?

And another thing, why do people always say: I WAS FORCED TO JOIN MYSPACE or ALL MY FRIENDS WERE HOUNDING ME TO GET A MYSPACE. No one gives a shit less if you have a myspace, the site is useful, the site has a billion members, no one is going to cry themselves to sleep because you dont have a myspace. Face the facts, you wanted to join, you were just looking for an excuse, so shut up and join the rest of the herd.

What it comes down to, is myspace is just basically the MTV of the internet Even though there is MTV on the internet Its for a bunch of drunk idiots to post their meanderings, and for deep kids to post their sorrow. Either way, the sites downfall comes from its users, your god damn glitter images, animated backgrounds, friend spamming, group joining, band jockers, comment whores, message board participating, assholes are the reason the site sucks. Maybe if all the members left, the site would be okay.

Testing My MySpace Theory, Post #1 of Myspace Html Codes Blog

[...] Original post by Lelia for Myspace News Testing My MySpace Theory, Post #1 [...]

Skept1C

Wow….What a rant! Nice Brandon. Thats why I didnt want to go to deep, LOL. Its an endless pit of mainstream myspace garbage. The garbage has become the norm. Its not a person with a site anymore. Its a site hiding the person.

Ben

Excellent! I’m totally subscribing to your blog now, if just to read your updates. Superb idea Lelia.

Flower Delivery

Just remember what Elbert Hubbard said : “To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.”

Josh

I don’t see what the big deal is, myspace is like every other site that has user-based content. It just happened to be released at a time when computers became even more dirt cheap and internet became even more accessable nearly everywhere. Now /all/ the socialites can “holla at eachotha”

http://www.google.com/trends?q=digg.com&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all
http://www.google.com/trends?q=youtube&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all
http://www.google.com/trends?q=flikr&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all
http://www.google.com/trends?q=myspace&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all

I had multiple sclerosis, but I cured myself of it…

Lelia

Brandon: Simply put, I like you. I’ve just finished writing my first few days’ worth of “test” results, and you and I come to the same conclusions thus far. I don’t think I could even do this if not for AdBlock, and even it doesn’t stop the onslaught of poorly designed–if you can even use the word “designed” here–user pages.

Ben: Thanks! I’m glad you’re interested in this! If I didn’t feel like I was going blind after seeing so many seizure-inducing pages, I’d be more interested myself!

Josh: I have NO idea how you can think MySpace is the same as sites like Flickr or YouTube. The first obvious argument against that thought is that Flickr, YouTube and Digg all have eye-pleasing site designs; they’re also organized and fairly accessible. MySpace is none of that.

Next up is the fact that all three of the sites you mention as being the same provide countless bits of useful or entertaining information to the masses. Without Digg, a lot of sites and amazing articles would go unnoticed in the vastness of the Internet. Without YouTube, MySpace itself would never have considered doing a video service. YouTube has, thus far, been the only video service to truly provide a good system for users to upload content of all types. Without Flickr, thousands of beautiful photographs would never be seen. With the exception of Digg to a degree, YouTube and Flickr aren’t so entrenched in the sole purpose of social networking, even.

MySpace is the ozone hole of the internet, truly.

Josh

Myspace is just the same as flikr and youtube, as all it does is make it easier to do what is already possible on the internet. It dummies everything down for all the fools who can’t use conventional, existing tehnology. Not that i’m opposed to having conviences or anything… What am i opposed to then?

i dont know

“Without Digg, a lot of sites and amazing articles would go unnoticed in the vastness of the Internet. Without YouTube, MySpace itself would never have considered doing a video service.”

With that said, then Without myspace, hundreds of friends would be unable to communicate, share ideas and thoughts, and be able to share their experiences together.

So i guess in reality, myspace isn’t really whats so appauling, its the people who use it, and how disgracefully(if thats a word) they use it. Ok so it does have a really bad interface too. But our culture just has some dumb habbits which unfortunatly get represented on myspace as well.

Lelia

Myspace is just the same as flikr and youtube, as all it does is make it easier to do what is already possible on the internet. It dummies everything down for all the fools who can’t use conventional, existing tehnology.

I hear what you’re saying, and I understand it somewhat, but I think it needs to be pointed out that even though the technology is there to do all the things that Flickr and YouTube provide, it would cost a single user hundreds of dollars annually to provide the same service to themselves. Flickr and YouTube are mostly free, unless you want advanced features, and even then it’s cheap.

I use Flickr as a backup system for all my photography and some of my artwork–my art photography and my sentimental snapshots that are just for me. I upload full size pictures, each being at least 2mbs in size, up to 8mbs in size. For $25 a year, I basically end up with a full backup system for my pictures that I work on, as well as another way to show some of my work. I have a good host for this website, but not even they could offer that to me, even with my knowledge of XHTML, CSS and content management systems. Now that I’m taking some videos with my camera these days, I also plan to use YouTube as a backup for them.

Time is money, too. So you can build things like Flickr and YouTube for yourself? It would take lots of time, and depending on how secure you wanted it to be (considering why you’re using it), even more time. So yeah, maybe in some cases Flickr and YouTube are just dumbed down sites for people who don’t know anything about coding for themselves, but that’s not always the case. I am definitely not the only one to use the systems as a means of backup, and others have been known to use Flickr at least that I know of as a portfolio. They can get away with that, because Flickr is actually well-designed, unlike MySpace.

And MySpace…what is it used for outside of talking to people (that is, if you can get past all the errors you will undoubtedly encounter–not very functional at bringing people together)? I’ve seen bands use it, but unless they’re already major-label artists, I’d have to say MySpace offers nothing more for them than other prominent music sites like GarageBand, which will cater to their needs better, anyhow.

With that said, then Without myspace, hundreds of friends would be unable to communicate, share ideas and thoughts, and be able to share their experiences together.

My latest post really proves that MySpace is not a great place to do that. I’ve only tested the site for a few days now fully, and I can’t even begin to tell you how many errors I’ve come across. Millions of people have been communicating via chat and instant messenger for a long time. MySpace is hardly the first social networking site (ye olde Yahoo! Clubs, anyone?), yet it is the most popular and one of the worst designed and I would venture to say most erroneous. That is one of the major things I can’t get my head around. Why use–tolerate–a broken product when better things are out there? For free, no less!

Josh

OK. well I guess you got me on flikr and youtube… There are really no existing alternatives to them -for most people at least.

But as far as myspace goes, its only popular cause the populus is dumb. People aren’t looking for beautiful, seamless webdesign. If the site doesn’t do what they want it to do, they wont use it. I suspect that the majority of the errors you get on myspace are due to the high-volume of traffic it receives. Originally it wasn’t so error prone, and thats probably why it became huge. -plus i suspect the creaters are really social people with alot of friends.

Before my own social frustrations led to the deletion of my account, I followed a path of “friends” down to a circle of people in california, and i believe they’re all friends of the creators. Its a very social, non-rediculous group of people. Thats why it is so big. The designers are social people. If i had as many friends as they do, my site would be huge! i’d have friends who can tell friends who can tell friends and make me ooo so popular! To the point where my site is so popular that the average user doesn’t even know me. Thats how it is with myspace.

Myspace does exactly what people want, and its something that is so common, all their friends have it, so they need it too. They really don’t care about its problems because it’s minor to them and they can get over it. Function over design. The majority of the world’s people aren’t designers, I’m sorry to say, Lelia :P

Lelia

Haha, no, certainly not all users are designers, but MySpace’s poor navigation, errors (recent issue or not) and not just poor design but horrific design (black text on black backgrounds? neon green on tomato red?) is totally in opposition of our basic understanding of users’ experience. I mean, users customize everything, some even right down to the skin/theme of their whole OS. We like to perfect, like to strive for some ideal, and yet I just don’t see MySpace visually or functionally improving from when I visited over a year ago. Just really strange for me to understand.

The End of the MySpace Testing » LeliaThomas.Com

[...] Due to university life (mainly the drinking and going out part, but a little bit of the work as well) and the plague that is the MySpace Error, I didn’t get to participate on MySpace as much as I, uh, “wanted” to for my testing (see post #1, #2 and #3). And now with October coming to a close, I’m going to end this while I still have a semi-functioning brain and the will to live. Otherwise, it will come to this: [...]

Lisa

For what it is worth, I enjoyed reading your site and even caught myself “lol-ing”. You made many valid points, and even hit on one of my pet peeves….grammar. I don’t have perfect grammar myself, but I do know how to use spell check. Spell check is my friend, and I am not sure why anyone else hasn’t “buddied” that button yet.

I love myspace. I find it entertaining, and that is all it is used for… entertainment. I would never let anything get to me so much as to want to go on for days complaining. Now that I think of it, there is another little button that might help with the myspace hatred. Instead of wasting your life complaining about everything you don’t like about myspace, try logging out and hanging out with a few friends? I’m sure all of your myspace friends won’t mind.

Lelia

Lisa, it’s really fun how all of you folks think you’re very clever. For instance: “Ooh, I didn’t see your catty comment coming on! Sure did shock me!” If you could have pulled yourself away from MySpace for another 10 minutes, you might have noticed that this was post #1 of three, and in the third one, I left the shit hole.

Do you not understand that if MySpace is entertainment, joking about MySpace is probably a form of entertainment, too? Perhaps just a bit more intellectual and not a bottomless pit of time wasting. I only took up a few minutes of your life. MySpace has wasted how much, again?

See, you should be thanking me.

Lisa

No what is really funny is that you care what others have to say, so when someone tells you to get a life, you get embarrassed enough to cover yourself like it is all a big joke. Lithium, remember that, cause sick freaks like you can use it. Enough said, no need to comment further, unless of course you want to waste another few moments on a stranger you know nothing about? hmmm? *winks*… have a wonderful life, your dismissed!

Lelia

Need I remind you that you’re the one who searched up my website, Lisa? Then went to the extreme hypocrisy to complain about my complaining? Oh, and in case you don’t understand this, a website can be a part of someone’s life, but no, it is not my whole life. (It does, however, make me some side cash. In fact, you rather indirectly contribute to that by visiting.)

You’re (since, Ms. Grammar Nazi, you don’t know the difference between your yours/you’res) cute, though, Lisa. I bet you have a lot of friends on MySpace who love your terribly female bitchiness and arrogant, misplaced assumptions. Then again, lest I be a hypocrite, I shouldn’t assume. Maybe you don’t have many friends on MySpace. I don’t know.

And since this is my website. You’re dismissed, actually. :)