August 28, 2005 1:55 pm

To Myspace or Not to Myspace

:note: Cake – “Satan Is My Motor”

I’ve been meaning to write this post for weeks, but for some reason I’ve only started it now. The following is my opinion of Myspace.com, the popular networking website.

On one hand, I think Myspace is fantastic. It’s a great way for people (like all my friends from high school) to keep in contact with one another even though we’re far away. Freya’s in Spain for chrissakes, and we talk more now than we have in a while, simply because Myspace makes it easy. You can send message, upload pictures, make comments, post blogs… Everything.

It lets people you haven’t seen in forever get in contact with you. I used to be friends with a guy named Chris when I was in high school – he hung out with Daniel’s brother and some of their friends. I always thought he was cool and I recall wanting to steal a bunch of his t-shirts. Anyway, he graduated when I was a sophomore, and the last time I saw him was for about five minutes sometime during my junior year. He recently sent me a message on Myspace and we caught up with what the other had been doing for the past four years or so.

On the other hand, Myspace profiles tend to be the degenerate form of the internet. All the things I thought we had overcome (7pt hot pink Comic Sans, marquees, embedded video codes, huge tiling background images that take days to load, text that can in no way be read over said background image, chat speak, crappy email forwards, sticky caps… etc) are all back with a vengeance.

Case in point:

OK THiS iS HOW iT GOES……THiS iS CALLED THE HOOK-UP GAME….iF YOU WANNA HOOK-UP WiT THE PERSON WHO POSTED THiS….THEN REPLY TO THEM iN A MESSAGE SAYiN…..”i WANNA HOOK-UP”……NOW REPOST THiS N SEE WHO WANTS TO HOOK-UP WiT U…..BUT IF DONT REPOST THiS N DECiDE TO BE A LiL PUSSY….THEN U WiLL NEVER FiND OUT WHO WANT TO HOOK-UP WiT U….SO HAVE FUN…..NOW REPOST THiS……N SUMTHiN GOOD WiLL COME OUT OF iT JUS TRUST!!!!!

Gah! :yuck: No offense to the person that posted that bulletin (they’re actually very nice), but JEEZUS. That’s completely unreadable, offensive, and ugly. Why perpetuate it?

The “personal website community” has finally overcome most of these disgusting trends (thank god) but notice how long it has taken us- five, six years? I hate to think that it’d take Myspace profiles that long to shape up. There are people “pimping out” their profiles and making them so “cool” that they’re virtually illegible. Can they read their own profile? Because I certainly can’t. Gah.

My advice to Myspace users:

  1. If you’re going to “customize” your profile, please ensure that it is, in fact, readable. Don’t use busy backgrounds. Make sure your type isn’t too small, and please please try not to use Comic Sans.
  2. Don’t embed videos. I’m typically listening to my own stuff, I don’t need yours interfering. Also, I’m on dial-up, so your videos look like crap to me anyway.
  3. Make sure your images aren’t gigantic. What’s the use in having a cool image if nobody can see it? If things take too long to download, I’m gone. I won’t wait for it, unless I’m expressly coming there to see that image and really really want to wait around for it.
  4. Avoid chat speak and sticky caps like the plague. Chat speak is talking like, “hey u, r u thr? y u not say n e thing?” and sTicKy CaPs TeNd To Be SeLf ExPlAnAtOrY. They make you look dumber than you really are. Is it seriously that hard to type “you” instead of “u?” It’s also very difficult to read, since we’re not used to the word “anything” looking like “n e thing.”
  5. Don’t use marquees. They’re the words that scroll back and forth on the page. They’re just obnoxious.
  6. Same for badly animated gifs. Obnoxious and irritating.

My hope is that this list can help someone redeem their Myspace profile. Because really, on a whole, the site is a pretty cool networking tool.

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2 Comments

  • I am not familiar with myspace, but I agree that it makes me insane when people dont just type real words. Are their fingers too lazy?

  • Meggan says:

    Man, I don’t know. It takes so much longer to type that way for me, because I’m not used to it. Takes me longer to read it too.

    Like I said, people read words as a whole. That’s why you can mses up teh oedrr of lterets adn slitl be albe to raed snetenecs.

    “Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.”
    Slashdot

    That is sometimes easier for me to read.