I enjoy looking at The Guardian now and again, even though, to find the stuff I like, I have to plunge into an alien universe that is mostly about how — according to The Guardian — stupid, violent, warmongering, racist, oppressive, gun-crazy and all-around evil America is.
But as I say, there are good bits (a lot of them having to do with pop culture), and I enjoy them (even though I get confused when, in those pop culture pieces, they refer to an “actor” and I wonder who’s this guy they’re talking about?, and it’s not a guy — they mean an actress).
Today, the good bit was headlined: “Meet the people who still use Myspace: ‘It’s given me so much joy‘.” An excerpt:
Almost every day, Kenneth Scalir takes a trip to the library or a cafe near his home in Sherman Oaks, California, to spend about an hour on his favourite site: Myspace.
Scalir, 48, is one of a dwindling group of people still committed to what was once the most popular social networking platform in the world, with more than 100 million users at its peak. While most people have long abandoned Myspace in favour of Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat, Scalir roams the digital graveyard searching for signs of life.
“Myspace is such a huge part of my life. I’ve met new people I otherwise wouldn’t have met and learned about new fashions and bands,” said Scalir, who goes by KROQ Ken online because of his love for the alternative rock station.
“It has given me so much joy,” he said. “When I didn’t have a girlfriend or lovers, at least I had Myspace.”…
This takes me back to my initial impression of MySpace. I thought of it as something my kids did, and that an adult who used it was kind of sad. I gave Andre Bauer a lot of grief for it in a post headlined, “Hey, Dudes, check out my site…”
Hey, it was March 2006. “Social media” was not a term in use. That’s the month Twitter was created, but it wasn’t publicly released until four months later. (And when it was, they explained it as “microblogging.”) And Facebook was this thing my daughter had signed up for when she started at College of Charleston — it still hadn’t broken out of the higher-ed milieu. (It would do so in September of that year.)
Later, social media would be an essential part of any electoral or marketing campaign. But that was not yet the case. At that time, it was still a curiosity. Which made Andre being on it a curiosity.
Still, I was later embarrassed for having made fun of Andre being on the cutting edge. Later, I was relieved that once again it was fashionable to make fun of MySpace. That was in 2011.
And now, I learn that it still exists, and there are still people using it?
Speaking of which… Andre’s page is still up. Here it is…
Related Posts
Up until recently–maybe a couple of years ago–when I was checking out local bands, they would have a MySpace site. Now it seems that most are on BandCamp or SoundCloud or both.
As we’re finding out, social media is for suckers.
Is that a Trump reference? Or maybe a Roseanne Barr reference, since she destroyed herself with a Tweet?
Or perhaps a reference to my friend Tim Kelly, who ruined himself with a tweet just as Roseanne did?
I’ve always thought that about social media. Those who want to know what I’m doing… I’ll let them know personally, not broadcast it for everyone to see. I never understood the thinking of, I’ll put everything about me, my family, my friends, etc… up online for everyone to see. After the Facebook fiasco I’m surprised that people are still dumb enough to continue using it. But from what I’m told by kids is that Facebook these days is for grandma to keep up with pictures of her grandchildren.
You’re sounding like an old fogey there, Claus.
Actually, kids were already saying that about Facebook 10 years ago. That’s about when they started fleeing to other platforms to escape the gaze of their parents.
Personally, I’m not a fan of Facebook, or any social medium except Twitter. But to me, Twitter may be the second-best communications innovation of my lifetime after the cellphone.
People who think it’s about telling other people what they’re doing (“I’m at Starbucks!”) don’t understand what Twitter is for…