i was sitting here for reasons completely unfathomable to me, flipping through myspace pages. i don’t have a myspace page. even saying myspace makes me feel silly. i don’t get it.

first of all, there’s the name. myspace. it’s too awkward. when you ask someone if they have one you have to say, “do you have a myspace?” which sounds stupid. “do you have a yourspace?” but if you say, “do you have a space?” they’re not going to know what you’re saying and they’re just going to look at you funny. the name is wrong. but i have no better suggestions because i don’t know what the hell.

as i was browsing through them i thought about how weird it was. i mean, yeah, i thought the same thing about blogs when they first started and i also hated that name. and i still do. hate the name, i mean. blog. blaaahhg. isn’t there anything better? i call it my journal sometimes, but i feel so damn pretentious when i do. so i jumped on the bandwagon anyway because it evolved into something more and it grew up a little bit. plus, i need to practice my writing and when you’re paying for a place to do it, you’re more likely to do it. at least i am.

myspace though. i don’t know about that place. it’s been around the block a couple times and it’s still refusing to take off the training wheels. it’s got a serious peter pan complex. not that this is a bad thing. i don’t necessarily think everything should grow up. just because the web exists and i’m an adult doesn’t mean everything about the web has to be for me exclusively. i’m all for a place for the rest of the world.

look, according to wikipedia, which we know is never wrong, myspace hit 106 million accounts in september of ’06. that’s a lot of people walking around with spaces. mine or otherwise. and the thing is, even if you take out duplicates, that’s still a lot of accounts. so if you think about who those millions upon millions of people are and what they’re doing with all those spaces, it’s a little bit baffling. i get the fact that the target demographic is ostensibly the teen and college market. that’s what you do when you’re in high school. you socialize. you network. myspace is a great big yearbook. it’s one gigantic, international popularity contest. what a novel idea! let’s go global!

you know, everybody in the world thinks bill gates is so smart. the guy who created google. ebay. amazon. ipod. all these guys who created and dreamed up all these things did it because they were being manipulated by a bunch of Heathers. you look at some of their wives and you’ll know. she’s blonde. she’s pouty. she says to him, “biiiiill. i want to be able to shop without leaving the house!” and BOOM! we’ve got us a computer with unlimited, in-home shopping potential. “i wanna be able to workout to music but my walkman is soooooooo heavy!” BOOM! we got us an ipod. “honeeey, i miss high school! make it like i used to be in high school!” BOOM! we got myspace!

it’s the woman behind the man.

or man behind the man if you swing that way.

or it could just be the man. he might like to shop. or work out. so it would be totally selfish invention. but on that last one though, i’m pretty sure a bunch of Heathers manipulated him into it.

The registration process for a new MySpace account includes a visual CAPTCHA test, with no alternative method for the visually impaired. As a result, people with blindness or visual impairment are prevented from fully participating.[21]

Because most MySpace pages are designed by individuals with little HTML experience, a very large proportion of pages do not satisfy the criteria for valid HTML or CSS laid down by the W3C. Poorly formatted code can cause accessibility problems for those using software such as screen readers.[22] Indeed, the MySpace home page, as of 29th March 2007, fails HTML validation with 289 errors, using the W3C’s validator.

Furthermore, MySpace is set up so that anyone can customise the layout and colors of their profile page with virtually no restrictions, provided that the advertisements aren’t covered up by CSS or using other means. As MySpace users are usually not skilled web developers, this can cause further problems. Poorly constructed MySpace profiles could potentially freeze up web browsers due to malformed CSS coding, or as a result of users placing many high bandwidth objects such as videos, graphics, and Flash in their profiles (sometimes multiple videos and soundfiles are automatically played at the same time when a profile loads). PC World magazine cited this as its main reason for naming MySpace as #1 in its list of twenty-five worst web sites ever.[23]

In addition, new features have been gradually added. This, and the increasing number of MySpace members, leads to an increase in bandwidth used. This increase in usage often slows down the servers and may result in a “Server Too Busy” error message for some users who are on at peak hours, “Sorry! an unexpected error has occurred. This error has been forwarded to MySpace’s technical group.”, or a variety of any other error messages throughout the day[citation needed].

The Chicago Tribune’s RedEye printed an article concerning MySpace and an individual’s search for employment. It was argued that young college graduates compromise their chances of starting careers because of the content they post onto their profiles. For instance, a visitor does not need an account to browse for users using information that is readily available on resumes and applications, such as a postal code and age. A potential employer can utilise information provided by the applicant on MySpace’s search engine. Thus, the employer may not hire a highly qualified candidate because he or she maintains an account suggesting rambunctious behaviour. Moreover, employees were said to be putting their careers at risk because they maintain blogs that criticise their respective companies and organisations

if that doesn’t sound like high school, what does? you’ve got your cripples being singled out and left out and pushed around, you’ve got to look at everybody else’s annoying style that just doesn’t work, whether you want to or not, you’ve got to listen to their crappy choice in music — and in this case you also have to watch the accompanying video. not only that, but it’s going to slow everything down to a grinding halt so you’re never going to get anywhere and you’re always going to be late for everything. nice friends you got there, pal. it’s awkward and confusing and nobody knows what the hell they’re doing. everybody is trying to be original, but everybody looks just like everybody else. also! forget about college, schmucko! you’re throwing your life away. everything you do there has repercussions for the rest of your life. grow up and stop being such a loser or you’re never going to go anywhere in life.

and then there’s this!

In October 2005, a flaw in the MySpace’s site design was exploited by a user only known as “Samy” to create the world’s first self-propagating cross-site scripting (XSS) worm. MSNBC has also reported that MySpace is a “hotbed” for spyware, and that infection rates are rising because of MySpace.[24] In addition to this, the customisation of user pages currently allows the injection of certain HTML which can be crafted to form a phishing user profile.[25] More recently, there has been spam on bulletins that has been the result of phishing. Users find their MySpace homepage with bulletins they didn’t post, realising later they had been phished. The bulletin consists of an advertisement that provides a link to a fake login screen, tricking people into typing in their MySpace e-mail and password.

Other security fears regarding profile content itself are also present. For example, the embedding of videos inherently allows all of the format’s abilities and functions to be used on a page. A prime example of this surfaced in December 2006, when embedded QuickTime videos were shown to contain hyperlinks to JavaScript files, which would be run simply by a user visiting an ‘infected’ profile page, or even in some cases by simply viewing a user’s ‘about me’ elsewhere on the site. Users who entered their login information into a fake login bar that appeared would then become ‘infected’, and their account would be used to spam other members, thus spreading the infection.

mmmm! spreading the infection! what? is that you trina culver in the tenth grade? oh, sorry. for a minute there i thought i was back in high school. that’s how much that takes me back. “hotbed” “phishing” “self-propagating cross-site scripting worm” oooooer! it’s all so steamy! there’s always those rebels in every school who have to go fight the system. they run through the proverbial walls with spray paint and tee pee. just to prove they can. just to say they did. once. a long time ago. in their wild and crazy days.

so i get it. i see why it appeals to that demographic, i was in high school once too. but as i was flipping, i didn’t see that many teens. in fact, i hardly saw any. i saw several college age people, sure, but hardly any teens. then i realized that the wikipedia article said that 14-15 year olds have to do somethingsomething to get an account and then they’re set to private so no one else can view them. which, i’m sure a) is not a lot of fun for them and they’re not as likely to set up a space. and b) yeah right, they’re all going to lie anyway. regardless, i didn’t see any 16 year olds either. or 17. not even any 18 year olds. saw lots of 28 year olds though. and even a few 48 year olds. among other things. things i never want to see or hear again.

it is what it’s like, you know? if you’ve never been, i’ll tell you. save you the trip. you see somebody’s homepage and it’s a picture of them, or an avatar of whatever cute little disturbing little angry little funny little thing they’ve decided to characterize them this week. then, you might get blasted with music if they’ve embedded some in their page. god only knows what it could be. the wallpaper on the site could be anything from a solid color (pray for it) or 15 different shades of god, kill me now, all flashing and spinning and doing a dance on your eyelids. then it’ll tell you whose page you’re on. let’s call her “Sarah” okay? then it will tell you some vital stats about her; her age, her location, that she’s single. that she’s a she. then there’s lots of frivolous stuff on the page. it looks like a page out of a yearbook like i said. there’s pictures of all of Sarah’s friends. which, quite helpfully, link to all of their spaces. and there’s a place for you to go read all of Sarah’s most intimate thoughts. and there’s what’s playing on her iPod right now. and there’s a little bulletin board where all of her friends are giving her “shout outs” right now. and there’s the count of all the friends she has. and there’s the link to the application to be her friend.

it’s so overwhelming. so come on. what the heck?

am i the only person who hated high school? seriously? am i the only one? did everybody else on the planet love it so much that they’ve waited and secretly hoped all this time that just such a thing would come along, allowing them to step back through the lonely, dissatisfying halls of history to rejoin the heady days of youth? or is it simply that all these people think they have all the answers now? have they lived this long in a cocoon of regret only to feel that now, finally, they can go back through the magical doors of myspace and relive it all over again, this time doing it right?

i demand satisfaction!