Who'sspace?

So, I finally succumbed to the oddity that is myspace. You may check me out here.

Myspace is really not user-friendly, so in the massive amount of time it took me to figure it out, I was imagining dumb teenage jocks making super-cool sites while I'm scratching my head, putting on my bifocals and drinking metamucil. I've mastered the theory of relativity faster. I got a spiffy slide show up at least, and some friends - let me tell you, it's really depressing to see TOM: the founder, as your only friend. Although Tom is probably more tech savvy and owns more yachts than my real friends. I had to have at least 10 'friends' before I'd stop asking people to join my group. However, now that my profile is up - I don't really know what there is to DO. It's like sitting in a bar where there are no drinks, and nobody will talk to you, and you're blindfolded and deaf. Bad analogy, I know...but it's the best I could think of.

It seems to be a breeding ground (and I use that phrase specifically) for weirdoes looking to get laid, full of ripe stupid high school students with a lot of time on their hands. The concept is great, it's the actual people online that I have a problem with. Does that make me a mysnob? It seems to be humanity in the raw. The cross section of people you see at the airport, not the cross section from your local Barnes and Noble. And much like humanity at the airport, it seems to be the 'bitter-angry-crying-seething' mass, not the 'wow!-we're going to grandmas!' cross section.

I freely admit I don't 'get it'. It's a free personal web page builder, but without any real means to connect save randomly. If I wanted to connect randomly, I could go out to a bar and talk to the person next to me. Which is basically what myspace is...it's an internet bar for teenagers. It's a meaningless sub-division of the web. It's the suburbs for kids too scared to actually post their own site in the big city. It's a clique. So in a way, it's really is like high school all over again. Oh my god, did you see Stephanie's hair today? It's so 1988.

And it only took me 48 hours to see the myspace cliches. The horrible eye-searing page designs. The 'I took a photo of myself at arms length' photo. The 'I like everything!' comment under music likes. The bands and porn stars on your 'friend' list - yeah, like you really know Jenna Jameson. The stupid bulletins on meaningless things- unless you plan on jumping out a window, I'd prefer to not know the minutiae of your life. And really sappy love songs - I wouldn't have that on my profile - why does the 35 year old construction worker?

Fortunately for me, I'm so lazy that I'll probably never go back to log in and see what's there. I mean, my real friends would e-mail me directly through my blog or standard e-mail, right? I feel pretty ridiculous going back to myspace to check and see if some non-friends wrote me! Unless they're hot guy non-friends. Ok, fine... I'll check it hourly.

Despite all my complaining, I managed to find quite a lot of my 'real life' friends on it, and they're certainly not 'ripe stupid high school students'...but clearly they still have a lot of time on their hands. Are they victims of the craze, or do they actually get something out of it that I don't? Who knows? But I don't feel like sticking around Lord of the Flies-ville to find out.

So it's not my space. You can have it.