MySpace: A Place For Barely Acquaintances

MySpace has become, for me, the place where all my hopes go to die. An online trash bin of superficial pointlessness, that, like the all day suckers of cartoons past, keeps me coming back to its monotonous droning hum that sticks in my ear like a handful of snot. So why am I still on it?

Though originally attracted to the site for the same reasons I got all atwitter about chat rooms in the mid 90s, this site, and therefore vicariously "Mysite", has slowly withered and atrophied into the sad and pathetic husk of a man that. . . no wait that's me. MySpace RULZ!! LOL!!

I started years back when the site was not very well known, by putting up a page for my music project (see: avoiding the word band, due to social stigma) after a friend suggested it might be a good idea. I thought "What the hell?" Or more accurately, "What the ass-groping donkey-cock-guzzling shit-wrangler?" Not long after that, I figured I needed a personal profile as well, due to the potential hundreds of emails I was likely missing from gorgeous, intelligent women, who until then, had no way of contacting me, let alone seeing what my favorite movies were! (You see, 'cause that's really important).

My early exploits with the site yielded fairly socially relevant results. I talked to many new people, went out of my way to find friends (mostly female), and even ended up dating a girl I met on the site (who now gets to be a target of my new interest in psycho-analyzation). But I noticed an annoying tendency for a lot of people to friend request me, who had gone to my high school, worked at a job with me in the past, or had frequented a social scene that I constantly made fun of, but still ended up going to anyway (long story). Needless to say, these are people I would not like to give my phone number to, but don't mind accepting a "friend request" from, to be nice, and due to its complete lack of interpersonal connection.

Fast forward to the present day and I can't remember the last time I was contacted by a new person who was interested in becoming an actual friend of mine. But boy, do I get my fair share of spam requests! Usually shit bands (truly terrible) that I end up writing about how awful they are (hint: look for a future blog), or porn bots who "just moved into town," seem to think I'm cute, like my generic profile, then want me to click their webcam or send them an email to a suspect address so I can give my computer cyber herpes. Obviously I'm still good friends with them now (the last holiday letter I got from spam bot "JuicyGurlXOXO69" was really heartfelt and sweet. I hope her family is doing well).

Likewise, I rarely, if ever, feel compelled to search for people based upon common interests, in an attempt to find another friend, or someone to share hobbies, music styles, philosophy, advice etc. I usually don't care much. At least online. Now, meeting someone in person who is interested in philosophy, analyzing everything to death, and making fun of creationists (not to mention the occasional genital humor) would be fine by me.

. . .Which begs the question, why am I on MySpace? What is the point, if I don't find new friends, new friends don't find me, and the "friends" I do have mostly consist of old acquaintances I never talk to, nor have a desire to talk to? It serves no positive purpose for me. The only thing I can think of is self promotion.

Like most people, I seem to use it as a promotion tool. Obviously I have been writing a lot more this year. I am quite enjoying putting all of my random social, philosophical, psychological and humorous observations and stories out into the world, and I do have some eventual bigger goals in mind for them. The only thing I've really used MySpace for recently, is to announce any new blogs I post on my King Of Deprecation site, in the, *pause*, hope (I hate that word) that a few people might be interested enough by a topic or description of one of the blogs to actually go to the site and read something. However, I doubt it's really worth it. Since I rarely (never) interact with them (you know, THEM?) why should they give two shits about me and what I'm promoting? Answer: they don't.

But wait, I'm probably being too negative. On the plus side, I can view a bunch of random people's bulletins! Hopefully they are a bunch of trite surveys about what they are doing right then and there, what their favorite bands are, and who their celebrity crushes are!!! OOOOOoooooOOOooooOOOooo!!!

Yep. They are. And if they aren't, which is rare, it's just advertisements for people to "go to this club! Go to this show! See this band!" If I wanted to be more disgruntled with society I could always watch TMZ, EXTRA, and the E! network, but so far this site gives me my daily quota of irrelevant mind-numbing penguin shit in a can. Thanks MySpace peeps. Oh, sorry. "Peepz".

I also "get" to see a list of friend updates, or in my case, barely acquaintance updates displaying their current mood (which I don't care about) and a quick sentence about what they doing (which I don't care about). I can't really think of many scenarios where I would genuinely be interested in someone's ongoing day to day mood and event statuses, and that includes family, my dead cat, and the unlikely event of a girlfriend. If I do care, take a guess at what I'm going to do to find out. Is it wait online until they log on to display their new update and mood? Well, though that does seem efficient and a giant diaper of joy, I'd just call them using Mr. Graham-Bell's intermittently wonderful invention.

I think this site was more fun and exciting when I was younger, and really, so was anything where being social and the internet were combined. The novelty of "chatting" lost its luster years ago, and most of the kids on there seem more interested in decorating their page within an inch of its life, and taking quizes, as opposed to trying to create some worthwhile social connections.

I can tell you freely, that logging on is thoroughly depressing. As much as I love being reminded of friends I don't have, relationships I don't have, and things I'm not doing, there are a few, very seldom moments (meaning always) where, once signed in to the great soul sucking site, I just sit and stare blankly at the screen, my inbox pilling up to the brim with emptiness and resignation, my self image doing the same. Every time I sign in to MySpace lately I ask myself out loud why I just did so. Apparently I am a glutton for pain.

Almost any "friend" that updates anything on that site, is a reminder of people I used to hang out with in a previous life, which for me, is like crack cocaine for the chronic "dweller of the past". Some connections are from many years ago, some from a bit more recently. All carrying on with their existence (as people seem to do), in a way that does not involve me. This serves the purpose of keeping me in a "remember when" mode, sometimes nostalgically, many times regrettably, feeling ever more strongly how time progresses, changes your perspectives, changes your situations, and erodes that which is no longer useful or beneficial, in this case friends. Although this is mostly for the best, I still can't help being placed into a gummy, melted emotional state by seeing the frequent information and updates by handfuls of people I used to interact with, even when the majority of those people I'm happy to stay away from. It's still the principal of the thing.

Worse still, is seeing mood updates, new photos, and general information on anyone who I've ever been romantically connected to or interested in during my life. There is no faster way to destroy any decent mood I may have had going, by simply seeing a new photo of an ex girlfriend or ex something-or-other with someone else, being generally content and happy. Dear God that kills me. Luckily I can turn off updates from those select few, otherwise I'd be downing the special Kool-Aid by now.

By the way, did you notice a conflict yet? Remember all that jazz earlier about me not caring about friends online, and then suddenly lamenting my lack of genuine and meaningful social interaction? You don't? Seriously? 'Cause I just said it. Well, I changed a few of the words but I assure you they are fairly interchangeable (see a thesaurus). Yes, thus is the dichotomy of it all. Craving that valuable and profound social interaction, while simultaneously not caring about any of it.

Several of my real life friends have put up messages about deleting their MySpace profiles, no doubt for similar reasons. It's crap with a fresh parsley garnish. Maybe I might have to go the way of those pissed off trailblazers, and do away with the source of my online strife, depression and mental turmoil.

But then, what kind of self-hating emotional masochist would I be?

Enjoy reading this blog? Please favorite, rate or bookmark this page, and most of all comment with your personal stories, observations, or violent objections.

Tags: myspace online friends social networking sarcasm

My Target Demographic (apparently)

I found this kind of funny. As you know I have ads on my page, some from coming from Google. What Google is supposed to do is search through the content on my page and pull up relevant ads to fit the potential demographic. For instance, if I wrote about cars, it might see that key word and put up ads for an auto parts store, or car magazine, or if I wrote about feces, it would most likely display ads for Taco bell and Focus On The Family. You get the deal.


For the most part thus far, I tend to write about social observations, philosophy and relationships (and other sillier things). So when I was updating my page and came across this ad, I was a bit confused:







Either Google Ads hasn't really parsed my content, or they know something about the people coming to this site that I don't.

I would never think that the majority of people reading my page are svelte size zeros, nor does it matter, but I doubt you will be clicking on this really attractive, appetizing ad for cellulite reduction.

Maybe I just don't know who I'm catering to.

The Internet Comes To You (Sexually)

In the course of working on this new blog page, which you see here, (I’ll wait while you look at it. . . . . . . .) I've been doing quite a bit of research on internet technologies and promotion.

Why do you care about that?

Because I’ve learned some nice tricks that will help ease your inter-nard browsing experience, while simultaneously benefiting lil' ol' me.


I should say that if you are already proficient in, and understand RSS and Feed Readers, then this blog may be of no interest to you (except for the comments in parenthesis). If what I just said was the same as saying “&*@^&)__#†¥ø∑øµπ∑µ” then this Bud’s for you.

If you’re like me (I envy you), then you have multiple websites you visit daily. Be it local and world news sites, the latest reviews and updates on new products and technology, blogs from friends (*ahem*) and other sites dealing with your hobbies and interests. The annoying part is that you have to manually check each site individually to see if there are any new updates, and with 20 plus sites, each with many articles, that gets retard-oid (Not retard OLD. "OID". Not to be confused with OYD, which is like a jewish robot). Am I right people? Can I get one of those witnesses that people seem to ask for all the time?

Well, what if instead of going out to look for information and entertainment, the internet came to you?

(I feel like I’m on an infomercial now)

That’s what the whole RSS dealy-bob is all about. I’m sure you’ve seen the little orange square that has radio waves emanating out, yes? That’s the RSS feed (which stands for Really Simple Syndication, or Rhetorical Salivating Sandals, both are widely accepted). It allows you to read the contents of that feed in a Feed Reader (makes sense so far) or in the browser itself (which usually looks like an ugly blue and white screen, so don’t do it that way).

Check out the video below for a quick explanation of RSS:



Not too shabby eh?

Now we move onto the Feed Reader part. This is the hub where you receive all of the updates from all of those ridiculous sites you like to go to (by the way, I highly disapprove of your interests and so does the Lord).

Some readers are separate applications you install on your computer and some are online based, meaning you can bookmark your reader page, and it stores all the sites you subscribe to (remember those stupid ones) and brings you continual updates for everything right when it happens.

Below is a two part tutorial on using the reader I’ve been using from Google. Can you guess what the program is called? It’s from Google. . . . and it’s a reader. What is it? That’s right, “Plmunteenarionchlink”.

I recommend watching both videos as Ed (the guy) explains some really great tips to make the experience easier and faster (and easier) (too).





If you decided to actually make it through those, you may see how convenient and organized it can make things for you.

Obviously you can always click the little right facing arrow in a circle (or the blue title or the article) to go directly to the web page version to view the entire article (if they only include part, as some do), to see media and images, and of course, (and this one involves my site so pay attention please) to leave comments on blogs.  ---------------- *stares intensely*

WARNING: Although this saves me time in searching for information online, it’s actually pretty addicting to find new sites with RSS feeds and add them to your reader, thereby giving you too many things to read all day long. But the eventual upside is that by reading so much new information so rapidly, your brain will freakishly increase in size, and you will attain an understanding of everything that ever was, is, and will be. Give it about two weeks.

Hopefully you enjoyed this look at technology and it’s wondrous benefits. I’ll keep you posted with anything else that may be of interest to me, that helps you help me. To check out Google Reader go here: http://www.google.com/reader

Enjoy reading this blog? Please favorite, rate or bookmark this page, and most of all comment with your personal stories, observations, or violent objections.

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