Thoughts about old MySpace days

I know that blogs are third-class features on here, but just so I have a record of my thoughts, this is a comment I made about MySpace on someone’s bulletin asking about our experiences.

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I don’t exactly remember when I joined MySpace, but I know it was sometime during college, so between its founding in 2003 and my graduation in 2006. I do know that I deleted it in 2011 based on my Facebook post saying “MySpace deleted.  Not sure why I didn't do that sooner.” 11 years later to the day, thanks to FB Memories I posted “And now I wish I had just left it gathering dust. I’d love to re-read my old posts.”

I was there when we were able to upgrade from a Top 8 to a Top 12 by friending some account, I believe it was an X-Men movie. Later they expanded it without requiring such a move. We also got to have more pictures in our album, but originally it was limited and pics got deleted all the time to make room for new ones.

Posting on walls was popular and people had conversations via them, publicly, though I usually didn’t read most other’s posts if I didn’t know them. My crush’s sister and one of her friends made fun of me for liking her, and even took to doing it openly, but using a nickname for me (I believe it was Rockstar Supernova, based on a reality show at the time). She later told me and I was hurt, but more because she said she told them they were reading into my posts and we were just friends who had hooked up. I really did like her and had hoped for something more. Anyway.

While the bands were something MySpace came to be known for, they were a nuisance, sending unsolicited friend requests and messages asking people to check them out because “hey you like this band and we have a similar sound”. Similar meaning 2% most of the time. Still, I did find some new music through the site. It was awesome to see one of the bands play live because a friend was a backup singer for them. I didn’t even realize it until I got to the show and saw a flyer.

I appreciated the comedy scene more than the music. Interacting with comedians was easier in those days and I had some nice exchanges with several comedians I’d seen on Comedy Central Presents. Those were the days when Dane Cook was mega popular and he would record himself reading a chunk of wall posts and responding to them verbally. Jim Gaffigan’s Hot Pocket bit was at its height and some band recorded a song using his Hot Pockets jokes as a reference and interspliced some of his bits and I loved it and listened to it regularly until I switched computers and lost the file. 

But Facebook opened up to the public and it was easier to share pictures. It also didn’t fail to load completely, making us refresh pages multiple times and artificially inflate page views. So at some point, as my MySpace friends stopped using the site as much, I finally stopped visiting. When I did, none of my real friends were still posting and my bulletins were just those follow trollies or buses or whatever where you could make an image showing your profile picture and those of everyone else who had participated before you. That wasn’t so bad, but it was always the same lady and her same friends that that did them and I always saw the same 4 faces.

So when I finally deleted my account, it wasn’t difficult. But eventually I got nostalgic as I mentioned above. These days I don’t delete my profiles, just in case I ever want to check them out again.