Myspace endnote

While I posted a brief farewell bulletin on the deletion of my Myspace profile, there's a little more to it than what was contained there. The post did hint at my dissatisfaction with the growing corporatization and marketing schemes of Myspace. I mean, I get why companies would want to extend their influence into that arena. But I guess I'm an aging purist who remembers the early years of Myspace when you could sign in without getting assaulted by advertisements for the new T-Pain album and receive a message from somebody you didn't know - and I don't mean porn or garbage noob bands.

Speaking of Myspace's involvement in music, my feelings are mixed. It is a convenient manner of checking out new artists. And I fully support it as an alternative to forcing bands to shell out loads of cash for an overblown java/flash website; it's got the essentials: songs and tour dates. Though I do see an overall downside to this convenience. In terms of discovering new artists, it contributes to the overall disposable nature of music by making it too accessible; listen to a track by a band - don't like it - band is wack - next (and the process repeats). The art of appreciation gets lost when the product becomes too easily attainable, which in turn increase the number of band jockers/shit-talkers who form their dubious opinions upon insufficient evidence. To be fair, these issues of convenience and disposability in music are much bigger than Myspace, being deserved of a more in-depth exploration separate from this entry.

But the reason I killed my profile has more to do with the virtual social networking aspect of Myspace. Or lack thereof. I, of course, only speak from my experience; there are assumedly others who fully utilize this service which Myspace provides. But for me, in the end, Myspace deteriorated into a sort of graveyard. The majority of 140 or so "friend's" profiles were more like tributes to past friendships - ones that will most likely not be re-established - rather than a way to keep in touch. So if you are reading this, you can probably count yourself as one of those whose headstone I am not referring to.

Part of me felt like I was trapped in a piece of science fiction. That if I didn't pull out of the simulacrum soon, I'd become forever dependent upon communication by virtual means. That there would be no definite separation between the human and the computer. While I'm exaggerating a bit here, I did develop this compulsive need to constantly check my profile for new messages. I figure that I should try to curb that compulsion towards more constructive activities - like reading a book, riding a bike, pushing weight, or maybe even having a face-to-face conversation with someone.

I don't want to come off like a technological nihilist. Technology is good if it improves the quality in some aspect of life; the fork and knife, excellent upgrades in the category of food consumption. But problems arise in defining the slippery slope of "quality." Most people will blindly substitute "convenience" (making another appearance here) for "quality," not taking into account that ratio is not a constant 1:1. Communication on Myspace, as I found, suffered from a loss of quality by way of convenience. It was an acceptable system for sending whimsical Chuck Norris jokes, but not in the forging and tending of human relationships. The convenience factor, if anything, has an isolating effect: so many "friends," and nothing to say. The issue is not one of aesthetics. There are severe limitations upon a communication more or less fixed outside of real time. Rapid-fire interjections like "shut up, douche" and "my bad, I didn't realize your brother was actually a retard" are necessary to establishing a basic connection with another person, and they lose their potency when trapped statically as "comments."

Those be the facts, albeit presented in an incoherent mess of text. Summary: disconnect from technological convenience when it threatens to cheapen your humanity.

See you on Facebook.