Just need to say for starters - this is so weird and it'll take me a lot of time to get used to this. Heck, I'm still not even used to Twitter the bird app and I've been there already for a good while. It's odd too because I vaguely remember MySpace when I was a kid. To a lot of people's surprise, I remember a LOT starting from around 2004 (when I was around 3 years old) and as a result, remember MySpace and how cool it was to have one. I didn't have a computer at the time, and I was too young to have one, but I distinctly remember having classmates with older siblings that had a MySpace, and even remember attending some weird seminar about how dangerous it is for young people to be on the site with it being on the rise..? Which BOY I wish was more common with parents now because there are SOME kids (mainly under 13) that shouldn't be on the internet by themselves just yet, but the seminar's still kind of a funny thing I remember from MySpace.

The good old days.

 It has been 20 years since I've been alive and the internet's been on the rise and blah blah blah I don't gotta explain this considering anyone who's found this site is most likely very well versed with the space and its history by now. Finding this off Twitter Trends is CRAZY though! Especially during a time where we value our privacy more than ever and have been frustrated with how specific internet companies (Twitter, Google/YouTube, etc.) have been handling things to the chagrin of their communities. It's easy to find alternatives and other stuff for software; for example, I ditched the entire Adobe Creative Suite and switched to Davinci Resolve for video editing (which also can be used as an alternative for After Effects and Audition), Affinity Photo and Clip Studio Paint for photoshop and illustration, and of course Audacity for audio. Though I suppose pirating is also considered an alternative.

 ((Honorable mention to Veadtoube, which could be seen as a simpler alternative to doing full 3D Models or Live2D for V-Tubers. They have a "mini" version that people sometimes refer to as "PNGtubers" and a fully fledged 2D app for better puppet models - which is currently in development and recently released their first test build WHICH YOU SHOULD CHECK OUT BECAUSE THIS IS SO PROMISING-))

Look at them go!

 Even websites have been seeing their fair share of alternatives. Again, I personally have been trying out Glimesh for Twitch (I do multi-stream to both though, shameless plug here), Revolt is in development as a FOSS alternative to Discord, and for YouTube there's a few options out there - but I've been trying to learn more about Odysee. However, for social media, there hasn't really been anything "new" that could even be seen as a viable alternative, or just a different site that aren't the big ones or full of right-wing conspiracy nuts. So it's CRAZY that I didn't find about this place sooner than I did. 

 Granted, from what I've looked into, SpaceHey has only been in the works since around last year or so, and it being based on a very niche and old social media platform from the golden era of the internet, it's understandable as to why I missed out during that time. BUT it seems as if the website's been growing and has even been getting a considerable boom thanks to the Twitter Trending tab. Don't know how it ended up trending, but you don't see me complaining! An's servers might be, however. Oof.

An's servers in real-time.

 I do think that the flood of new users on the site (including yours truly) is a big testament to not only how strong nostalgia continues to be within our brains even if we never lived with said nostalgic thing ourselves, but to how people have been CRAVING for a different internet experience. Between algorithms screwing timelines up, the need for random followers, continuous lack of space customizability -- it's been tough seeing mainstream sites becoming more and more bland and frustrating. But they still exist because it's all VERY ADDICTING and hard to drop once you're in it. You don't want to leave what you've already poured a lot of time into and have friends/followers. MySpace - well, SpaceHey - isn't exactly an alternative, but it's something I'm definitely interested in using more!

 Like, I've only spent entire night customizing my profile (which I'll mention again later yes I'm still very tired), and when I finished, 2 people already sought me out and sent a Friend Request! Shout-out to y'all two!

 I hope I continue to use the site and really delve into what MySpace was about now that SpaceHey exists. It was sad to have missed out on it before due to my age at the time (and the site becoming something else), so this is almost like my second chance and a breath fresh of air from the cesspool of Twitter! From my impressions so far, the community here is awesome. SpaceHey seems to be very focus on individual expression and interests compared to everywhere else (Tumblr is close, but that fills a different niche) thanks in part of the highly customizable profiles with HTML/CSS and blurbs for multiple interests and a "Who I'd Like to Meet" section within the About Me. Everything's all in one place. And because of this and how "Friends" work compared to regular followers (which the former is a mutual process), it can be very simple to seek out people you're really interested in and would like to add.

 I realized I'm explaining things people already probably know, again - but I'm really emphasizing this for those who haven't gotten into the nitty-gritty of the site yet because this place and community IS REALLY DIFFERENT. On Twitter, it's tough to find new people. You go to their profile and there's not much to judge. Here, it's a completely different story. The community is smaller too (and no algorithm), so that also contributes to finding new people. I'm amazed to see people are ACTIVELY looking for others to interact with and add as potential friends. It sounds really sad when I type that out but you just don't get that with Twitter and most other social media platforms. It's been making ME want to seek out other people to potentially add instead of chilling out in my own corner waiting for people to send something my way. It'll be tough because I have a lot of anxiety when it comes to approaching people I've never met, but I'm inspired by everybody here!

 

Me, teetering between wanting to seek out SpaceHey friends and getting too anxious to hit a simple "Add Friend" button.

  Oh right, the profile! Man I don't even know where to begin with that. I spent the entirety of last night trying to make everything as pretty as possible to my liking - messing with all my blurbs, selecting a song to auto-play, looking at different Layouts that I could tweak, other code INCLUDING trying to create a Call-To-Action button because SpaceHey only allows specific website links so I tried to make one for my Glimesh and spent like four hours only to half-ass it and ughghghghghghghgh
 It's okay, I'm fine. Still got plenty of rest despite sleeping at 8AM to 12PM. But MAN am I jealous of people who really know what they're doing in terms of HTML and CSS. A couple of my friends would probably be able to make something super cool if they make their own accounts.

I can't even decide what haha funny image to use here help

 

 So what will I do from here? Well first, I switched the main links on my Twitter and Discord bio to my SpaceHey, since it's a pretty perfect landing page for me and all my links. ...When the servers are up. Yeahhhhhh, because of the traffic and large amount of people, things haven't been very stable. It's to be expected because everything's currently ran by one person, but remember donating to the site is always something you can do! Buy a sticker and help this place out if you can! 

 Anyways, I'll try to continue using SpaceHey as much as possible? Consider reaching out to other users, doing more blog posts and bulletins, browsing forums, sharing with people I know on other platforms, and of course look into further customizing my profile. Currently, I'm pretty okay with it and how semi-jokey it is, but I'd like to add more so people visiting can get more of a better feel for my interests and what I like. I even have a couple ideas for more music? Maybe a semi-regular vote on what to play on whatever days for the week based on what I put in a poll, I have no clue. It's still super exciting to even think about!

 One thing that has me on pause though, IS the amount of people here. Part of me wants to hope this'll continue to be a niche site to interact with, because usually the bigger amount of people means the harder it is to discover and be discovered. But a part of me also doesn't wanna prevent people from knowing SpaceHey exists, because I can't express enough how cool and different it is. I don't know how many more users it'll be getting, or what the retention will be, or even how long the site might stay like this OR even exist, but I'm happy to be aboard and try it out!

 I've been writing this same blog post for about THREE HOURS now (oops) so this is probably the best place to end it? There's still a good amount of time left in the day for me to finish what I should be trying to finish before deadlines and actually doing what I've been thinking about doing both in this post AND outside of it, so I should probably be getting to that..? 

(PS;) I tried copy and pasting my profile layout to this blog post, and no matter WHAT I tried the text continued to be black. When I removed the header, that stayed white, but anything after the first photo was still black. And the photos got removed. Thank goodness I copy-pasted this entire post to show a friend because that would've sucked! For now, no fancy blog post look :(