Byespace

In hindsight, one of Myspace's few redeeming features was that it got a lot of people into blogging. Personally, I've often found the idea of blogging somewhat ridiculous, and talk of the 'blogosphere' just usually makes me think that whoever is talking up this new 'phenomenon' might just be a little preoccupied with their own delusions of grandeur. Personally, I only ever used my Myspace blog to rant about things. People found it amusing, so I did it all the more.

I managed to finally extracate myself from Myspace about two months ago, after one abortive previous attempt last summer. Back when it first started, it was a mind blowing experience that connected people from all over the world with a shared love of music. It was interesting (and slightly voyeuristic) to take a look into other people's lives, and some people lead very strange ones. One person who sticks out in my mind was a young lady who called herself "Vaginal Blood Fart" and had as her profile picture a shot of herself in a pretty white dress, splattered with blood and with a really disappointed look on her face.

It wasn't long at all before Myspace started to take the piss. I listened to the first few bands that tried to add me as friends, usually local chancers trying to ride the same wave that was propelling the Arctic Monkey's to fame. Their songs were often rubbish, badly recorded, and it was apparent that the only real reason they wanted to add me was to increase the amount of people at the friends list, while at the same time leaving an impolitely sized comment on my page saying "Thanks for the add!" which would then link back to their page.

Still, there were redeeming features. Bizarrely, it took me some time to discover the "Browse" function, and if you set the parameters correctly, you could list all the single girls within a 25 mile radius who were up for a bit of dating/serious relationship, between a certain age and some other handy variables. I got a bit of mileage out of this, befriended one girl who was quite nice, went on a date with, I also got taken out on a date by another girl (the first time that's ever happened), and as a result of Myspace (if not necessarily using it a great deal) met the one and only friend I made the entire time I lived in a nearby town. However, perhaps about this time last year it became clear that the mood of myspace was changing.

I was listening to a documentary about Britpop a few weeks ago, and Noel Gallagher remarked something to the effect of "That's when we made a load of money, when the squares got involved," because Whats The Story Morning Glory had appealed to people outside of the bands original indie crowd. Well, with Myspace, it was kind of the reverse - it was all the squares involved at the beginning, but all of a sudden, people who blatantly had no business even turning a computer on were getting their myspace accounts. Silly girls from various provincial towns who fancied themselves as soft-porn stars started to put in friend requests. Looking at their page usually revealed another unpleasant Myspace phenomenon, the oversexed illeterate alpha-male, marking their territory in the comments box with messages like "Ur hot babz, PM me so we chat chat some more." People with no consideration to the fact that people would actually visit their page attempted to do their own web programming, cramming their pages with six simultaneously playing Youtube clips that meant the page took five minuted to load. And then new owners Newscorp started with the marketing offensive. The final straw came when all the hacks started.

So, with girls preoccupied with their need for validation, wankers who were getting all the action, shit advertising, bad infrastructure and people just trying to fuck it all up, Myspace stopped being escapism, and instead just became everything that's bad about the real world on one website.

The vast majority of people I wanted to stay in touch with - in the end just people I actually knew in real life anyway - defected to Facebook, and joined too a couple of months ago. Initial reactions are good, it does actually seem like a reasonably fun way to keep in touch with my friends, without everything that annoyed me about Myspace. One of my friends remarked that it looked "a bit preppy" but I like it - it'll probably go down the pan when all the trendies get on there and I've already denied a few people who look they just want to increase their friend count. If and when that happens, we know we'll just move out a bit further west.