Molested by Myspace

How matjohnson1 Was Born.

The first weekend in April I'm heading over with to London, making the trip for the first time in seven years. In preparation for this brief trip, I have been trying to contact old friends and fellow writers to arrange meetings while I'm in town. One of the people I've been trying to reach is Ray Shell, author of the novel Iced, a book that was huge hit in Britain back in the olden days when I lived there. Ray was the first writer I had ever met, was an early mentor, and even made it into my first novel as one of the central characters: David the lunatic boss. The only problem is that I can't find Ray's email anywhere, nor his number. So after various attempts, I realized that the only way I had to reach Ray was to contact him through his Myspace page.

The thing is, Myspace doesn't allow you to just email the person who has the page. No, to use the button that says “send a message,” you have to actually join and become a Myspace member yourself. After weeks of resistance and with the trip looming, I finally did this last Thursday, reluctantly. I told myself that I would do it just to email Ray and the other people I was trying to connect with, and then that would be it, I would be done. So I spent an afternoon setting up an account then contacting the people I was trying to contact, and then I was done.

Or so I thought. But what I hadn't considered is that by setting up my own Myspace page, I had bought a piece of realty. I now had another plot of land on the Web that was identified with me, of which I had ownership. I couldn't just leave that property unattended, could I? Let it sit in a state of abandon and neglect? What would that say about me as a person to all who stumbled through the page by mistake? I would be like that guy who doesn’t mow his lawn, or has a big dead car with no wheels permanently in the driveway. No, I had to develop that land, make it respectable for visitors. Next thing you know I found myself answering inane questions like "Who I'd like to meet" and confessing my Zodiac sign. Unable how to figure out how to delete the whole mess, it was too late to turn back.

The stunning ugliness of Myspace has been well documented and discussed. But to actually experience it on the other end, as one who must make a personal selection among the horrors for one's own page, takes the experience to another level. A task I originally hoped would demand a mere half hour drifted out over the day. In order to dress your bare Myspace page, you have to get a designer’s html code, adjust the text within it, and then paste it into the “About Me” or “Interests” sections of the page. Why is there no special place to paste the actual code as opposed to slipping it into this totally unrelated profile boxes? I have no idea. Like much of Myspace, it is irrational, and seems to hint at a system that grew organically with very little intelligent design.

My first inclination was to rebel against my unsuspected entrapment by creating an anti-Myspace Myspace page. I intended to do this with the use of an overlay, which basically enables one to plant a static cover page over his or her Myspace page, free of comments and “friends” and all of the other hallmarks of the site. A good three hours of figuring out how the code input worked and then carefully trying to get my information and links embedded within that code led to my first attempt. I thought my page was textured, well-designed, and sophisticated, and was very pleased with my accomplishment. My wife came home from an event, took one look at it, and declared that while the design was nice it looked like the page of a “sixteen-year-old suicidal white girl,” thus sending me into a rage of frustration, for to my great horror it suddenly became clear to me that she was right.

Two hours after that, I completed the installation of another overlay, this time opting for something simple and elegant. On calling a friend to inform him of my great accomplishment (for my wife was no longer speaking to me on the subject) his response was, “Dude, that’s not a Myspace page. You got no space for friends, no space for comments, nothing. What’s the point?”

These words haunted me until the next day. What was the point, indeed? I decided it would be most respectful and realistic to just use the existing Myspace format like everybody else. What was I fighting? Waisting another 2 hours browsing through the design atrocities at pimp-my-profile.com (an apt name, for after using the site I felt cheap and whorish), I ended up, as always, just choosing black: the non-color that has always allowed me to be aesthetically lazy and fashionable all at the same time.

One chooses either to conform, or does not. Half measures are usually useless, meant more to address the conscience than the situation at hand. Despite its crappy design and layout, and seeming pointlessness, there is a highly efficient system functioning at Myspace. It's not built on good design or html code, but on our need for community, our curiosity, and our pride. Myspace is a machine that functions not on utility, but on emotion. The site itself is shit, and no one seems to disagree on that point. But like the tar baby, punching it just gets one caught in its mess permanently.