my, space

I'm not much of a web community commuter. I have log-ins and access to a few of the larger sites to keep up with the peoples in my life/times, but I don't really nourish my little plot of identityland at MySpace (or any related web-neighborhoods) because I have this here cryptic bad boy to maintain, and I also shepherd a college-age classroom of learners who scavenger hunt for my old (bad, bad) movie reviews and comic book credits. Cyber ghostdom = my Dickensian fate.

ADDENDUM: OK, so I made my own MS, and then it became a Why?Space...and then a few students from past/pres got a little too "up in it to win it" + my boss forced all faculty to private-up our islands. It's mostly fine, that place, but sometimes it's a very real draaaaag. I bet you I'll axe it soon. (RE-ADDENDUM: I did) Now, back to the (old) lecture no longer at hand!

Being a phantasm is phun, though, because I get to slip around and see and wonder, to revel without revealing. An overarching observation is that MySpace et al. are just the 'burbs of the Web -- flimsily gated to suggest exclusivity/filled with samey parcels of self-space that are fertilized in repeating patterns to similar degrees of connectivity "success." Careful, single-sentence descriptor person usually maintains a small-to-medium pool of friends that are likely known well in real (the permutations of that word alone...) life. Vampy Hello Kitty girls with kittenish webcam shots and a million favorite favorites = larger pool of "Hey cutie, whatz up?!" comments in the log. And so on.

I can safely report that the 18-28 set is big on self-portraits and not so big on categorizing anyone as a "Hero." Religious preference, too, is largely undefined or heavy on the Atheist/Agnostic tip: the homerooms of young adult spirituality. No one has a problem listing their favorite bands, however. Somehow, at some un-pinpointable time, the distance from Nina Simone to the Jesus and Mary Chain to Xiu Xiu collapsed. Do we have a select roster of scenesters, commercials, and/or films to thank? Should MySpace thank itself?

I have the most to say about this "self" section because everyone else does, too. On average, these "Music" area laundry lists are tightly packed and read like someone running down 2 aisles of a record emporium while excitedly shouting off the band names on the dividers (remember music stores?). They're dense enough to be living, human tissue. They're also pumping with evidence of passionate listening; a near-manic attention to related bands and sounds and styles. And weirdly, a disproportionate number of L.A. teens namecheck the Velvet Underground and the Kinks, which could suggest heavy/early access to all of Wes Anderson's movies, a Los Angeleno love for Old Cool initiated by parents, older bros and sissses, a general distaste for the pop topiary of this day and age. Chances are you may have noticed the above yourself.

This is all just the visible part of the e-iceberg...the bigger, subsurface questions connect to a very natural impulse to see and be seen, and also to hide. How many profiles are crafted and maintained with new friendships in mind, and how many are simply personal projects, a way to get a version of yourself in front of your own face? Are we just trying to meet ourselves? And do these sites only attract certain/specific pieces of the people pie -- free enough to have leisure computer time and a desire to meet people who like Garden State/couldn't possibly love Garden State the special way only they do? Old enough to foot a DSL bill, or young enough to not have to pay?

To boot, many Interests lists and certainly "entries" read like explanations of incidents and behaviors that were never called into question by another. Is what's ultimately satisfying about profiledom the fact that we can draft answers to the ?s only we know to ask ourselves? Is this what it looks like to wish someone simply would ask? Do we exert control here/there in ways we can't as easily in our 4-walled whatevers? Lastly, will those "Hero" sections ever balloon into fevered laundry lists, and what might the world of that time, the one beyond the screens, possibly look like to our squinting eyes?

fell on 2005-04-28 at 9:42 a.m.

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