August 2, 2006

• MySpace Dominates Blogging Sphere

  In a steady and underground manner MySpace crept up on the rest of the Social Networking Sites in a way that primed it for the burst of adoration it is now receiving.  Mainly, it has a more appealing name.  In late July MySpace overcame all other blogging sites and entered the top 10 most visited websites in the U.S.  Somewhere, a Yahoo! stockholder cocks an eyebrow. 

  The rapid onslaught of the MySpace phenomenon has left Xanga conservatives baffled. The most perplexing angle of the MySpace craze is that it is a craze for a blogging site that no one seems to actually blog on. 

  Right-wing Xangans have often questioned that if there is a negligible amount of posting, what do people comment about on MySpace?  The answer, expectedly and unexpectedly all at once, is “nothing.”  Without posts to revolve around, the comments usually resort to a declared need to hang out between two people who, judging by the comment, have spent too much time on MySpace instead of hanging out.

  Blogging philosophers have posited that the major shift from Xanga to MySpace occured because of the pressure people experienced to “update” their xangas.  In short, people had nothing to say.  This serves to show that the half of America that blogs is also the half of America that didn’t vote, for if bloggers were voters they would have plenty to say. 

  If not posting, what do people do on MySpace?  As opposed to a place of venting daily thoughts, MySpace really serves as an online human dictionary, where browsing a person’s homepage is really a way of reading a one page summary of that person.  While Xanga showcases the post and limits the profile, MySpace showcases the profile and limits the post. 

  Somehow this format has bloggers across America hooked.  Shockingly, people prefer browsing a site that is conducive to memorizing other people’s zodiac signs and body types rather than a site that creates a perfect opportunity to peruse another’s ruminated thoughts. 

  One celebrated feature of MySpace is the freedom the user is allotted to design his or her own site.  In other words, we live in a country of zealous blog decorators.  People advanced in online coding are elated at the opportunity to concoct their own optimal websites.  Homepages are often smothered with videos, pictures, and long (and quite random) quizzes.  People frequently overcapitalize on most of these options and, in turn, create scrolling nightmares.

  Stalkers have quickly recognized the potential of the site that presents a homepage that includes all the information they need in a neat, categorized setting along with a mini photo gallery of the user.  In fact, MySpace is in court because of the blatant lies they told their users about the users’ privacy.  The users’ information was not being protected, and state governments were not very excited about that.  Politicians are always quite vehement about protecting personal information, which is assumed to stem from their personal experience of trying to hide their own from political opponents during campaigns for office. 

  So, then, what is holding MySpace together? The ease of  learning a person’s entire educational history?  Being able to flex one’s digital camera muscles?  Satisfying a virtual crave for bandwith?

  No, the special ingredient of MySpace is none other than the “friend.”  It all starts with Tom.  He is the first friend of every MySpacer, symbolizing the first domino in the line of innumerable potential friends all out there browsing around, or lurking around, on MySpace.  People relive the days of being a 5-year-old meeting fellow 5-year-old in a sandbox, only this time it’s on the net instead of in the sand, but the simple action of “asking to be a friend” has remained the same. 

  Who knew technology would see the day where the norm is to have a digital roster of friends you may or may not actually know, and to follow this fact by spending hours scanning and reviewing another’s image as they present it in a computer-generated environment?  The idea of having a repertoire of “friends” as close as a click on their 1 inch x 1 inch face away has people dazzled.  Medieval peasants wouldn’t know what to think. 

  Also, people can attain the dream-status of being “friends” with their favorite band.  Before MySpace, people could be fans of a band.  Now people can be friends with a band.

  However, much of the success of this feature is simply because it is entitled “friends.”  People fancy the idea of being friends, whereas real life contact is most likely only made with only a portion of them.  The other “friends” will only sit as a direct link on the page, a link that leads to a shortened description of that person, and also all of their friends, whom the other user may now ask to be friends with. 

  This is it.  This is what MySpace amounts to.  The endless and passionate quest of an online blogger seeking to add other MySpacers’ links to their own page, i.e. adding them as a “friend.”  Sounds fulfilling.  But then, there’s almost nothing to talk about, except for maybe, “What an interesting profile you have there.” 

  My little sister has 348 friends.  No joke.  With the ease of adding friend after friend, especially when most of these friends will hold solely impersonal relationships with one another, MySpace sites become like rapidly expanding enterprises, just with no revenue.  In the future I see this massive connection device as a prime opportunity to start cults.  Start with a friendly “bio” and a few “friends,” and soon gradually shift to a “creed” and a few “followers.”   

  This is why Xanga is superior.  The emphasis of the post.  I remain true to Xanga, like a true Xangsta would. 

  The balance on Xanga is ideal.  Some interests, a few Blogrings to read the thoughts of people similar to oneself, and the focus on the post is all so wonderfully designed.  Not to mention the mystery of the eProp, which no Xangan may so properly explain.  Here I remain content, on a blogging site deprived of stalkers, mini-biographies, and portals of pictures. 

   Let us rejoice, fellow Xangans, in our Xangahood that no one can take away, save for the site creators. 

  • 9:27 pm
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