Myspace > Facebook
I logged onto Myspace a few nights ago, trying to figure out the last name of a friend with whom I’d lost touch, and found myself surprisingly appreciative for all the ways it is different from Facebook. I wasn’t inundated with feeds, for example, from every last one of the three hundred odd people I have at least vaguely known at some point in my life. Myspace was never like this. I would just log into my own page, look at the few comments people I hang out with in real life left for me, and then, maybe, go to a friend’s page and look at the few comments people left for them. It felt so quiet. The amount of spam was always annoying, but at least it was from companies and so didn’t feel personal. You didn’t have to look at all those pictures of babies and beach vacations and achievements and the same political opinions over and over and “lightning snow!” and have to feel not only annoyed but actually like a bad person, because these people are supposed to be your friends, and here you are hating them and progressively blocking more and more of them from your feed.
It’s true that these days Myspace has that sort of sad “party that no one has come to” feeling, but Facebook has that horrible “bathwater that I’m sitting in with every last person I’ve ever known that is lukewarm and gross and I want to get out but can’t because I’m still vaguely enticed by finding out whether that kid I knew in college ever shaved that goatee (yes) or whether that acid freak I knew in high school is still really into acid (also yes).” But I think that maybe if we banned together, even just a few of us, we could bring it back and it could be sort of secret and fun and awesome. Maybe?
But really this is all just to say that a few nights ago, while trying to explain this to Matt, I said something to the effect of, “You know, on Myspace you weren’t always getting bombarded with all of this information, a lot of which you aren’t that interested in. It was actually my space, you know? Whereas on Facebook…”
And then Matt got a funny look on his face and pointed out that describing Myspace by saying it was “my space” (which I had done without realizing what I was doing AT ALL) was probably not the best way to get someone to believe I had a reasonable point to make.
