myspace culture
originally this was supposed to be just for me so I could get it at school and print it out. i forgot to select the private entry option so people read it... sooo i'll just leave it up. i don't see why you'd really want to read my long-winded paper for class, but most of you have myspace so i guess it applies to you!
Alcerro, Zack
Eng 110 Huk
Thursday 6pm
Sep 14th 2005
Marketing Acceptance
Throughout my day, I toil in a seemingly endless muck of strenuous activities. With aspirations of learning, I wake up at an ungodly hour just to take a bus to school. For the most part, I concentrate heavily and participate in a variety of heated debates on subjects like philosophy and poetry. Most of these subjects are thought provoking, or at the very least, energy consuming. Five o clock rolls around, and I'm on the bus back home only to walk nearly a mile to my little downtown house. I have no desire at this point to go to the gym, ride my bike to the beach, or think about academia and esoteric reading I may be doing on the side. The exhaustion I feel after a long day of school is insurmountable: “higher” forms of entertainment like reading, writing, or painting seem completely absurd because my brain is mush.
Most people come home, kick off their shoes, and turn on the TV. For me, cable is too expensive and I don't particularly feel like showering or getting dressed up to go out with my friends. For these reasons, I succumb to a new form of relaxation (free from the burden of real people): I browse the internet. Myspace.com is my outlet for escape. I can sit on this web site for hours browsing my friend's pages, and friend's of friend's pages, listen to music, search classified ads, etc. The network is virtually infinite. After realizing I spend hours of my day on this web site, I began questioning my motives for this recreation.
The advent of Myspace is the new face of popular culture. It is wrapped up in a clean package that fulfills all of our modern desires and interests. The web site encompasses connectedness, voyeurism, entertainment, escapism, and above all acceptance. However, within this expedient fake-world, consisting of hundreds of millions of people, a whole gamut of flaws can be identified. These primarily include superficial attitudes, a need for acceptance, misrepresentation, antisocial behavior in real life, obsession and laziness, and possibly the most daunting; the relinquishment of personal information to further corporate objectives and the capitalization of the advertising industry.
Myspace is a provider of voyeurism of titanic proportions. Let me briefly explain the system. It is a web site where you sign up and receive a web site URL for free. After this, the utility of the site is endless. First you upload up to ten images of yourself (ideally), then you write an in-depth description of your life. It includes your age and birthday, a personal quote, location, general interests, sexual orientation, music you like, books and authors you enjoy, favorite movies, who you're interested in meeting, what your intentions are on the site (Networking, Dating, Serious Relationships, Friendship), information about schools you've attended, as well as your annual income. Most people go beyond the standard text format of description and acquire html code to post images of their interests. Codes for music can also be attained. After your page is filled with bells and whistles, one can derive everything, on a superficial level, about your personality and life. In a sense your entire life is summed up on a single page on the internet, for anyone to stumble upon at random, or with intent.
After this initiation you solicit friends, whether you know them in reality is of no significance to the experience. The person being solicited then has the power of either approving or rejecting your friend request. If they approve you have viewer ship of all of the friends on their page. Thus an endless number of people become a part of your network. For example, I have 470 “Myspace friends” which puts 29, 217,430 in my network, and an infinite number of pages or personas/lives at my fingertips at any given moment. Out of these 470 friends I would estimate that I have met maybe 250; the rest are people who have either solicited me or vice versa. The mutual approval of strangers was based on like interests or aesthetic judgments based on the images they have provided. They are not strangers anymore; we are friends on the internet right? It may be superficial but it is true, and would the person requesting my friendship know any different? Some men and women market themselves via hyper sexualized pictures to be accepted by males and have pages consisting of thousands of friends, connected to an endless number of people in a network. One can deduce psychological reasons for this desire to be popular via the web, with no accountability.
Following the acquisition of friends as personal property belonging to your “friends page”, communication is enabled. Through the use of tools like e-mail (through the web site in a neat inbox), their very own Myspace instant messenger, and finally a favorites button one can access anyone else on the web site. Your favorites page is like your deck of covetable trading cards of the coolest people on your friends page. These people aren't celebrities, they are just like us, maybe better looking and popular but you have ownership of them. They belong to your “group of friends,” rendering them accessible in your eyes. You are in control. Remember that popular girl in high school that you would never dream of talking to in person? Well, here she appears magically after a brief search. It is much easier and impersonal to solicit someone's friendship via the internet. Our generation is one of a laziness unmatched in history, in the most extreme sense that we can't even go up to a person in real life and spark up a conversation. A comment system is also set up, creating a psychological need for acceptance. When people write on my page, I usually feel good. There is even a comment approval setting within your preferences where you can approve or deny comments based on their content. If someone has something negative to say, I'll probably deny the comment. Myspace creates the ideal friendship dynamic: good-looking, superficial, always benevolent friends. Myspace is also a popular forum for “friends” of the opposite sex to come together for sexual motives. I can list friends who have had sex as a result of meeting
someone on Myspace, some after an initial encounter.
The most blatantly superficial aspect of the web site is its “Ranking Score” feature. Here you can submit your own picture, or any picture for that matter, to be subjected to rating scale of 1-10. Based on your picture alone, thousands of people rate your appearance and you are ranked accordingly. After viewing the page and seeing the top 25 women (mostly scantily clad blondes, showing excessive amounts of cleavage), or the top 25 men (frat bro's with creatine pecs), I wondered why millions of people participate in this rating system. These superficial judgments satiate people who strive to be accepted.
Myspace.com is also a forum for the entertainment industry. Here you can preview the latest music from bands who exclusively release new material to Myspace or watch new blockbuster movie trailers. The web site is littered with countless ads from Jose Cuervo to various trade schools and universities. A perk of the web site is its allocation of an extensive blog program. This feature offers a link to an entirely new page where you can voice your opinions on anything as well as post additional pictures and receive even more comments from your internet elite peers.
The main function of the web site seems to be access to millions of people. In my network alone you might find visually pleasing or interesting people based on their page. This is the main point of the web site, accessibility. What happens when accessibility of hundreds of millions of people falls into the wrong hands? Recently, Myspace.com was bought by Rupert Murdoch and Fox for $558 million. Judging by the price of the acquisition, Myspace is clearly a valuable business. Its commodity is people's lives. We are spoon feeding the advertising industry our most personal information. Since the sale more high profile advertising clients have appeared on the site. This may be a notable conquest for them, but a definite loss for people within that system. Aren't we giving them an unfair advantage?
In a superficial world where we are constantly plugged in to ipods, television sets, and the internet, when does our culture have time to reflect? Introspection is impossible when we are constantly trying to escape from ourselves. Myspace is the new opiate for our tech culture of connectedness and distraction. Self-worth is measured by the number of friends you have acquired on the site. Internet friends are the new personal property. These friends are based mainly on superficial pleasing appearances, or more importantly sexiness. You never have to be alone again thanks to Myspace.com. Its utility is as boundless as the information it provides to Fox, a major transmitter for the advertising industry. Think about the amount of information Fox has from the information you voluntarily provide on the site. It ranges from the trivial like the movies you like, to the pertinent, your picture and annual income. Fox has ownership of your internet persona and everything included. How meaningful can your life be if it can be summed up on a single page? How can we escape this acquisition of people as private property? Unplug and reflect, the silence may be daunting.
Alcerro, Zack
Eng 110 Huk
Thursday 6pm
Sep 14th 2005
Marketing Acceptance
Throughout my day, I toil in a seemingly endless muck of strenuous activities. With aspirations of learning, I wake up at an ungodly hour just to take a bus to school. For the most part, I concentrate heavily and participate in a variety of heated debates on subjects like philosophy and poetry. Most of these subjects are thought provoking, or at the very least, energy consuming. Five o clock rolls around, and I'm on the bus back home only to walk nearly a mile to my little downtown house. I have no desire at this point to go to the gym, ride my bike to the beach, or think about academia and esoteric reading I may be doing on the side. The exhaustion I feel after a long day of school is insurmountable: “higher” forms of entertainment like reading, writing, or painting seem completely absurd because my brain is mush.
Most people come home, kick off their shoes, and turn on the TV. For me, cable is too expensive and I don't particularly feel like showering or getting dressed up to go out with my friends. For these reasons, I succumb to a new form of relaxation (free from the burden of real people): I browse the internet. Myspace.com is my outlet for escape. I can sit on this web site for hours browsing my friend's pages, and friend's of friend's pages, listen to music, search classified ads, etc. The network is virtually infinite. After realizing I spend hours of my day on this web site, I began questioning my motives for this recreation.
The advent of Myspace is the new face of popular culture. It is wrapped up in a clean package that fulfills all of our modern desires and interests. The web site encompasses connectedness, voyeurism, entertainment, escapism, and above all acceptance. However, within this expedient fake-world, consisting of hundreds of millions of people, a whole gamut of flaws can be identified. These primarily include superficial attitudes, a need for acceptance, misrepresentation, antisocial behavior in real life, obsession and laziness, and possibly the most daunting; the relinquishment of personal information to further corporate objectives and the capitalization of the advertising industry.
Myspace is a provider of voyeurism of titanic proportions. Let me briefly explain the system. It is a web site where you sign up and receive a web site URL for free. After this, the utility of the site is endless. First you upload up to ten images of yourself (ideally), then you write an in-depth description of your life. It includes your age and birthday, a personal quote, location, general interests, sexual orientation, music you like, books and authors you enjoy, favorite movies, who you're interested in meeting, what your intentions are on the site (Networking, Dating, Serious Relationships, Friendship), information about schools you've attended, as well as your annual income. Most people go beyond the standard text format of description and acquire html code to post images of their interests. Codes for music can also be attained. After your page is filled with bells and whistles, one can derive everything, on a superficial level, about your personality and life. In a sense your entire life is summed up on a single page on the internet, for anyone to stumble upon at random, or with intent.
After this initiation you solicit friends, whether you know them in reality is of no significance to the experience. The person being solicited then has the power of either approving or rejecting your friend request. If they approve you have viewer ship of all of the friends on their page. Thus an endless number of people become a part of your network. For example, I have 470 “Myspace friends” which puts 29, 217,430 in my network, and an infinite number of pages or personas/lives at my fingertips at any given moment. Out of these 470 friends I would estimate that I have met maybe 250; the rest are people who have either solicited me or vice versa. The mutual approval of strangers was based on like interests or aesthetic judgments based on the images they have provided. They are not strangers anymore; we are friends on the internet right? It may be superficial but it is true, and would the person requesting my friendship know any different? Some men and women market themselves via hyper sexualized pictures to be accepted by males and have pages consisting of thousands of friends, connected to an endless number of people in a network. One can deduce psychological reasons for this desire to be popular via the web, with no accountability.
Following the acquisition of friends as personal property belonging to your “friends page”, communication is enabled. Through the use of tools like e-mail (through the web site in a neat inbox), their very own Myspace instant messenger, and finally a favorites button one can access anyone else on the web site. Your favorites page is like your deck of covetable trading cards of the coolest people on your friends page. These people aren't celebrities, they are just like us, maybe better looking and popular but you have ownership of them. They belong to your “group of friends,” rendering them accessible in your eyes. You are in control. Remember that popular girl in high school that you would never dream of talking to in person? Well, here she appears magically after a brief search. It is much easier and impersonal to solicit someone's friendship via the internet. Our generation is one of a laziness unmatched in history, in the most extreme sense that we can't even go up to a person in real life and spark up a conversation. A comment system is also set up, creating a psychological need for acceptance. When people write on my page, I usually feel good. There is even a comment approval setting within your preferences where you can approve or deny comments based on their content. If someone has something negative to say, I'll probably deny the comment. Myspace creates the ideal friendship dynamic: good-looking, superficial, always benevolent friends. Myspace is also a popular forum for “friends” of the opposite sex to come together for sexual motives. I can list friends who have had sex as a result of meeting
someone on Myspace, some after an initial encounter.
The most blatantly superficial aspect of the web site is its “Ranking Score” feature. Here you can submit your own picture, or any picture for that matter, to be subjected to rating scale of 1-10. Based on your picture alone, thousands of people rate your appearance and you are ranked accordingly. After viewing the page and seeing the top 25 women (mostly scantily clad blondes, showing excessive amounts of cleavage), or the top 25 men (frat bro's with creatine pecs), I wondered why millions of people participate in this rating system. These superficial judgments satiate people who strive to be accepted.
Myspace.com is also a forum for the entertainment industry. Here you can preview the latest music from bands who exclusively release new material to Myspace or watch new blockbuster movie trailers. The web site is littered with countless ads from Jose Cuervo to various trade schools and universities. A perk of the web site is its allocation of an extensive blog program. This feature offers a link to an entirely new page where you can voice your opinions on anything as well as post additional pictures and receive even more comments from your internet elite peers.
The main function of the web site seems to be access to millions of people. In my network alone you might find visually pleasing or interesting people based on their page. This is the main point of the web site, accessibility. What happens when accessibility of hundreds of millions of people falls into the wrong hands? Recently, Myspace.com was bought by Rupert Murdoch and Fox for $558 million. Judging by the price of the acquisition, Myspace is clearly a valuable business. Its commodity is people's lives. We are spoon feeding the advertising industry our most personal information. Since the sale more high profile advertising clients have appeared on the site. This may be a notable conquest for them, but a definite loss for people within that system. Aren't we giving them an unfair advantage?
In a superficial world where we are constantly plugged in to ipods, television sets, and the internet, when does our culture have time to reflect? Introspection is impossible when we are constantly trying to escape from ourselves. Myspace is the new opiate for our tech culture of connectedness and distraction. Self-worth is measured by the number of friends you have acquired on the site. Internet friends are the new personal property. These friends are based mainly on superficial pleasing appearances, or more importantly sexiness. You never have to be alone again thanks to Myspace.com. Its utility is as boundless as the information it provides to Fox, a major transmitter for the advertising industry. Think about the amount of information Fox has from the information you voluntarily provide on the site. It ranges from the trivial like the movies you like, to the pertinent, your picture and annual income. Fox has ownership of your internet persona and everything included. How meaningful can your life be if it can be summed up on a single page? How can we escape this acquisition of people as private property? Unplug and reflect, the silence may be daunting.