Slashdot Comment of the Day - MySpace

I read Slashdot a lot, and have been for years. Normally I lurk around an just read the comments. The constant flow of tech stories was what first attracted me, but over the years I found myself clicking on the stories less, and reading the comments more. Slashdot is a huge geek site, and because of it's notoriety and history a lot of smart and funny people post to it. Thanks to the excellent moderation system it's easy to find some true gems and actually learn something interesting or scathingly funny.

Over the years I've noticed my thinking is almost warped by all the commentary, not because I don't have any thoughts of my own, but a lot of the older and wiser people say exactly what I've had mulling in my head but never put into actual words.

For example, over the last few months I've had a protest of the popular social networking site MySpace. I just plain don't like it. Eventually I put my thoughts together and came to the conclusion that I don't like it because:

1. It just looks horrible
2. Its way to easy for someone to make a horrible crufty looking page
3. It plays to peoples vanity
4. It creates a "social cliche" on the Internet
5. It actually shows you who the millions of Internet users are
   

The first two are purely cosmetic and as a semi-web designer make me gasp with disbelief when I stroll onto a myspace page that causes my horizontal scroll bar to balloon outwards with text impossible to read because it's the same color as the static background image. The pages just have poor taste and it's hard with all the buzz of "web 2.0" to see something that looks like a site from the mid nineties but still takes 10 minutes to load and usually crashes your browser.

The vanity on the site is disgusting, it's like the virtual culmination of a deadly sin. All that "bling" and slang thrown around on a page that looks like it's from the mid nineties. Just look at most of the pictures, and the majority of people trying to be as outlandish or depressing as they can simply to garner the most attention from virtual eyes. Not to mention the friend counter that shows you how popular you are, as if linking to another persons crappy looking site makes you "cooler" somehow. It's just one big me fest, hey, probably why it's called MySpace

Fourthly is the "social cliche" that comes with the above comment. It's just like the high school lunchroom all over again. Finally, the Internet, the great equalizer, where you the celebrities were known for their technical skills and intelligence has been reduced to who can have the most craptastic looking page. Additionally, MySpace spills out into the real world, and everyone has a page on it now. You hear them talking about it in clubs, in the malls, everywhere. People who just a few years ago gave us geeks shit for having your own website or going online are now more addicted than we ever were. To make matters worse, if you don't have a myspace page people give you the look of "what's wrong with you". You know what, I don't want to be on your crappy site looking like an idiot and telling you how cute I thought Jenny looked the other day. I know how to run my own web server and publish stuff online using fully XHTML and CSS compliant pages (course blogspot sorta negates this, but at least it's a bit more professional looking).

Finally, I don't want to see what type of people use the Internet. I already know who's online, and it's scary. To have a bunch of hobgoblin teenagers, stay young forever old people, and club loving twenty something start posting their greatest picture (taken from the side) of all time while telling in their favorite book section that they don't read because "any book good enough will eventually be made into a movie", makes me want to unplug the cable modem.

To conclude, here's the Slashdot Comment of the Day by Monoman:

Myspace is just another proof that quality is always what is important.

My impression after seeing Myspace for the first time was it was like the early days of web page design. The users were more atrracted to the cheap "gee whiz" stuff. Inline audio and video took the place of flashing/scrolling text and huge animated gifs.

I have some friends that like to use Myspace so I check it out every once in a while. It is still a horrible site from a snobby tech geek point of view. To others, it is a great thing.

He sums my thoughts up pretty well. I am a geek elite, I know this, and therefore I look down on the "masses" when they come teeming to the latest greatest newest thing. Right now it's Myspace, before it was Original Napster, and before that was Geocities (which I was guilty of making a crappy looking self promotion website using non-standard web practices in high school).

As much as I hate MySpace I understand and I applaud it. It gives the technologically challenged an outlet for their online lives, doesn't discriminate, and it grants almost total anarchy to those who want it. Too bad all it's users profiles, comments, and anything else published under it is owned by Rupert Murdoch.