IF you paid any attention to the article "why are you here?", I started to go off about myspace.com.  I didn't want to hijack my own article so here is the rest of it...

I have taken up a little of the vast universe known as myspace.  You can see my little blurb here. It is potentially a very useful site.  I created an account because a number of friends from sportbikes.ws have an account, and you have to have an account in order to see anything more than the front page of an account.  Myspace is now proliferated with people selling themselves as something that they are not.  Whether this is in the form of teens saying they are older than they are, or men and women so desparate for attention that they will post anything and everything to get it.

At first it was fun to post a picture, find some friends, and add them to your profile.  I even took a few quizzes and posted the results.  I did NOT however join myspace to rub my profile up against every other profile out there.  It was useful for finding a few people that I had lost touch with, and it was amusing to see some profiles of people that I know and have it confirmed that I want absolutely nothing to do with them.  You can tell that there are some people horribly addicted to myspace, it is the equivalent of an internet soap opera.  It has become a popularity contest to see how many meaningless friends can I add to my friends list.  Thankfully I am not shallow enough to measure my worth based on my buddies list.

Here is a side rant about myspace as a user...  WTF is up with all the backgrounds and the ability to add CSS and HTML to your profile?  It wouldn't be such a big deal if people understood how to use CSS and how to use HTML.  It seems that every other profile that I have visted has so much clutter and junk programmed into their site that you aren't even sure that you landed at the right page when you get there. I don't care what your survey said about your kissing ability, or sexual prowess. You probably don't care what my survey said about my personality type. On top of that they have added the ability to insert video and music that automatically starts playing EVERYWHERE.  Not just on their page, but in the comments that other users can leave on your page. I have been to pages where all the sudden strange noises, and music, and hip hop all start playing at the same time!!  Trying to turn all of this off so I can actually see the person's page is so frustrating that I usually just give up and go somewhere else. I promise if you put a media file on my page I will delete it!

So what is my overall opinion of myspace? If you are just there to be in a community with my friends, I don't really see much wrong with it.  It is interesting to see the degrees of separation between you and other people.  My wife went to one of her friends list, and then to another, and then saw a person that she knows in that list.  Its a little strange, that person seemed to be a completely different person online than she is in person.  That leads to my next point, it would seem from my limited experience that there are many people there that are trying to be something other than what they really are.  Talk about leading up to dissapointments.  Be yourself, imagine if you do find the person of your dreams at myspace, and then you meet them and you are crushed because they are nothing like what they were online.  I know that my lofty goals at being real online are just that, but I can try anyway.

Myspace has definitely given ANYONE with an internet connection to have a presence on the internet.  And that I think is part of the problem with myspace, they let it be so open, and add so many things, that it has become cluttered and only slightly useful.  Load times can be slow and even trying to login some evenings is futile.  I will still look around on myspace from time to time, but you wont find the myspace needle stuck in my arm any time soon.