{"id":149,"date":"2006-03-26T02:09:56","date_gmt":"2006-03-26T07:09:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/devinreams.com\/2006\/03\/26\/myspace-the-internets-dark-alley\/"},"modified":"2006-03-26T02:09:56","modified_gmt":"2006-03-26T07:09:56","slug":"myspace-the-internets-dark-alley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/?p=149","title":{"rendered":"MySpace: The Internet&#8217;s Dark Alley"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve figured it out: MySpace sucks becuase so many people are on it. Yet, there&#8217;s no underlying commonality that anyone shares. Well, except the fact they&#8217;re social, they&#8217;re bored, and they like to spend time online&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/\">Facebook<\/a> is about college students, parties, pictures, and hook-ups. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/\">Linked In<\/a> is about professional connections, finding jobs, and building an online presence. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.43places.com\/\">43 places<\/a>\/<a href=\"http:\/\/www.43things.com\/\">things<\/a>\/<a href=\"http:\/\/www.43people.com\/\">people<\/a> is perfect because you find people based on the same interests\/things\/places. MySpace? People make profile&#8217;s becuase&#8230;um&#8230; everyone else already has?<\/p>\n<p>This sucks because social circles overlap&#8211; nay, they collide. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.recordonline.com\/archive\/2005\/04\/17\/myspacew.htm\">Children collide with creepy men<\/a>. <a href=\"http:\/\/blogcritics.org\/archives\/2005\/07\/07\/173810.php\">Stalkers collide with pretty women<\/a>. <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20060326\/ap_on_hi_te\/myspace_arrests\">Rapists and murderers collide with&#8230; well, each other<\/a> (interestingly enough, MySpace was both the problem and the solution in this latest case).<\/p>\n<p>Honestly, what little good has come from MySpace? Sure, you keep in touch with people you otherwise wouldn&#8217;t have. But can&#8217;t you can do that with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gmail.com\/\">email<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/talk\/\">instant messaging<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/\">photo sharing<\/a>, etc? I already mentioned the &#8216;cons&#8217; to this crappy site. What is it that keeps teens on it? What benefit out-weighs all the nonsese?<\/p>\n<p>Oh, right: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.danah.org\/papers\/AAAS2006.html\">freedom<\/a>. This article is a great analysis of why teens are hanging out in the &#8220;alley&#8221;.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>By going virtual, digital technologies allow youth to (re)create private and public youth space while physically in controlled spaces. IM serves as a private space while MySpace provide a public component. Online, youth can build the environments that support youth socialization.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The internet is one of the only places the adults aren&#8217;t monitoring. Hah&#8230; well, they weren&#8217;t. As the groups collided people become very interested. I wonder how many parent&#8217;s are oblivious to their child&#8217;s internet activities&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>On top of that, I think one big factor in MySpace&#8217;s popularity is the ability for MySpace to parallel the typical <strike>teenage<\/strike> social &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.paulgraham.com\/nerds.html\">values<\/a>&#8221; (read: being anything other than a nerd).<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The main reason nerds are unpopular is that they have other things to think about. Their attention is drawn to books or the natural world, not fashions and parties&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s true. Instead of focusing on school, learning, reading, playing, biking, hiking, etc., kids have become ever-so focused comments and friend counts. For example, &#8220;comments&#8221;, as mentioned in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.danah.org\/papers\/AAAS2006.html\">this article<\/a>, are social dollars&#8230; and, in the case of MySpace, money <em>does<\/em> buy happiness. If you have a picture of yourself drinking, you&#8217;re cool. Do you have 927 friends? You&#8217;re <strong>very<\/strong> cool. I find this <strong>very <\/strong>sad. Who&#8217;s to blame? Adults and school (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.paulgraham.com\/nerds.html\">read Paul Graham&#8217;s article<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>I wish some hackers (similar to &#8216;V&#8217; from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/url?sa=t&#038;ct=res&#038;cd=1&#038;url=http%3A\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt434409\/&#038;ei=QjsmRPjsJanYigHIos2ZCQ&#038;sig2=uUtjjQuzo8RKY7BzXQ5Ygg\">Vendetta<\/a>) would figuratively blow up MySpace. Unfortunately, the&#8217;re too busy filling out &#8217;50 question&#8217; quizzes on their friend&#8217;s bulletin space&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>References:<\/strong><br \/>\nDanah Boyd. &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.danah.org\/papers\/AAAS2006.html\">Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace<\/a>.&#8221;<br \/>\nPaul Graham. &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.paulgraham.com\/nerds.html\">Why Nerds Are Unpopular<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>[tags]myspace, sucks, social networking, society, education[\/tags]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve figured it out: MySpace sucks becuase so many people are on it. Yet, there&#8217;s no underlying commonality that anyone shares. Well, except the fact they&#8217;re social, they&#8217;re bored, and they like to spend time online&#8230; Facebook is about college students, parties, pictures, and hook-ups. Linked In is about professional connections, finding jobs, and building [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,103],"class_list":["post-149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet","tag-people","tag-websites"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}