A Myspace Memoir

When it comes to the whole social networking thing, I consider myself a late bloomer: I didn’t get a myspace until sophomore of high school and a facebook until a month before graduation. In fact I was quite behind when it came to anything technological: I did research papers without the internet until second semester sophomore year when I was forced. It’s not that I had anything against technology, it’s just that culturally I was raised using technology as it was needed and as it was needed only. Eventually I caved and decided that seven plus page research papers was a valid reason for using the internet, but I had a hard time adapting to the idea of “social networks”. As a kid, I played outside and when a new kid moved into the neighborhood, if they didn’t seem weird, I introduced myself. Something about doing this online just seemed foreign, not to mention, how could I tell whether they were weird? The only reason I finally caved on the idea of social networks was due to severe peer pressure. I grew tired of waiting for invites to come through the mail only to be disappointed when I found out that they went out via some online network that I didn’t have or not being updated on happenings on friends lives because the announcements had also happened online.
Part of my reluctance to join social networks is probably based on the fact that I only had dial up and a partially working computer until college, but mainly on the fact that I didn’t place much value on this. When I did succumb to peer pressure, myspace was the in network. On my snail speed connection, I filled out all of the necessary fields and after about two hours, I was able to upload a photo. Now what, I asked myself. Luckily for me myspace had a search option so I looked for friends and was able to add them. To speed up the process I told friends that I now had a myspace and before I knew it my friends list was huge, only problem was I had no clue who most of those people were. That didn’t really bother me because I never had many pictures online nor did I actually talk to friends online, I just had a profile for the same reason I had pokemon cards when I was younger: everyone else did, legit, everyone. I was content just having a profile, but then I started to receive complaints about how boring my profile was. MY best friend at the time suggested that I add a custom layout. For some strange reason I listened to this and with my dial-up connection I set out to trick out my myspace page. After waiting an hour for my custom layout to get uploaded, I was happy to see that my profile had some life. But soon after accessorizing my page, I forgot it existed.
I pretty much let my page just run its course until one day in junior year when I got an email telling me that my profile had been “fished”. Allegedly someone had hacked into my profile and caused some sort of mayhem that finally made myspace suspicious that it may not be me. I followed the protocol set up by myspace which allowed me to change my password and send an alert to all of my friends letting them know what happened. Despite this mishap, I decided to keep my profile until that summer when I returned to my job as a middle school teacher’s assistant. One day, as student awkwardly asked me if I had a myspace. Hoping that they wouldn’t search for it, I said no. Naturally, being a middle schooler, the kid looked me up and before I knew it their friends had done the same. This presented a lapse in professionalism for me because at the time I was sixteen, barely two years older than the oldest student their, but in a position of authority. When my my space search results revealed a picture of me bighting my libe with the quote “wanna pet my tiger,” I knew that it was time for me to get rid of my page. The quote on my page was an inside joke between me and my friends from middle school, but I saw how this could’ve easily made me unemployed. That night I, “applied to delete,” my myspace account and took a sigh of relief for avoiding a very awkward moment. While I had been warned of the dangers of putting certain things online, feeling young and invincible, I always thought that it wouldn’t happen to me. That day at work humbled me and forced me to realize that I was just a vulnerable as anyone else with a myspace account.
My incident with myspace had made me reluctant to join any online social networks, but as senior year ended, I cracked once again and decided to get a facebook account. I had been hearing about facebook for my entire high school career but I had no clue what it was. Prior to leaving for my internship, I got a text message telling me to check my facebook for the details for the end o the semester party. This presented a problem because I didn’t have a facebook! The person that sent me the text message finally explained to me what it was after several lol’s and get serious(s), she made it sound so much more secure and grown up than myspace that I had to get one! I had wireless internet at this point so setting up my facebook account wasn’t anywhere near as time consuming as setting up my myspace. I soon learnt how to upload pictures manage privacy settings, find friends, and all of the other things that make facebook wonderful. I suddenly became a much more social person as I reconnected with friends and got the mass invites to events that replaced the quasi-personal text messages.
My transition into college was also made much simpler due to my use of facebook. Prior to arriving in August, I was able to meet people from my year, my future roommate and even people who just shared common interest. One day during the summer while I was sick I managed to fried almost the entire class of 2012. During orientation I learned about student groups and through them I was introduced to facebook groups. These groups proved to be very helpful as it made the social transition into college much easier because I could easily find people who shared similar interests. No t to mention there’s pretty much a group for everything on facebook: I even found a group of people who share my name. I also found that the majority of my peer preferred this form of communication over e-mail because it’s quicker due to the frequency which most check it but not as invasive as a text message when discussing homework.
In a matter of months, using facebook became second nature. In fact, I cant really imagine life without it. Since getting a facebook I’ve experimented with other social networks like linkedin, which proved to be irrelevant for me because people tend to not look for student employees there, and a few other facebook knockoffs. Facebook has become universal: it seems as though in a few years it’ll be almost as essiential as an e-mail address itself and maybe eventually as important as an id. No matter which country you’re in or what language you speak, facebook is the choice of communication. Now that I’ve developed a comfort with facebook, I see myself blogging in the future to appease the part of myself that’s always wanted to be a journalist. No matter what, I don’t see myself jumping on board with the twitter phenomena: it just seems to self absorbed. My dependence on faebook does raise an internal struggle for me: What will happen to all those kids who know nothing about life before facebook. In a world of IMs, wall posts, tweets, and blogs, I’m afraid of what will happen to the generations to come. Will they know how to interact with each other without an electronic middleman?