As a parent I investigate websites my children want to join. Myspace started out as just that, one parents attempt to find the truth. So I made an account to check out what all the buzz was about on this mega socializing website. After a few weeks with only Tom on my friends list it was suggested I check out blogs.
Myspace has blogs?
Yep, you got it, and it’s quite an underground group of folks from all over the world. Like Alice in wonderland I fell down a hole into a land never really discussed by media. The first thing I discovered was that famous people blog. I began sending friend invites to the official sites of some of my favorite celebrities. I found Harvey Fierstein to be such a warm and open gentleman. He posts pictures of his daily life on his blog. I actually emailed him a few times and he replied. I realized the opportunity which is mostly unknown about Myspace.
It’s a place which, you are not judged by appearance as much as you are judged by word and deed. So I chose a cartoon for my own profile picture and began to write. After writing for a month I began visiting others blogs. I subscribed to about 20 people, those people after a while subscribed to me. That number increased to over 150 as the year went on.
Further down the rabbit hole I went.
I found that even in Myspace there was a hierarchy of sorts. “Top bloggers” are the elite of Myspace and they come in various styles. Some of them are “flirty blogs” keeping readers with talk of sex and dating. They are very successful no matter what the quality of writing. One blogger wrote a series of blogs titled “virgin diaries”, she added stories daily about her sexual encounters. Often posting seductive pictures of herself. Until, the identity of the author was discovered to be a balding, middle aged man writing the blog for attention and his own perverse desires. Personally, the blog was nothing more than pornographic drivel…but before they found out the truth he had hundreds of lonely men and women commenting to the blogs.
Poets also have a clique on Myspace, although I never wrote enough poetry to be a member.
They take their art very seriously and support each other through a series of bloggers groups. There are political bloggers, legalize marijuana blog groups, over the top religious blogs. It seems that anyone with an agenda has a blog on Myspace. There are the “wise guy” top bloggers who say things similar to a shock DJ. Virtually any topic no matter how horrible or offensive is addressed. They are an extremely aggressive tight knit gang that used to control a lot of the content for most of the top blogs.
I suppose the darkest, most alarming aspect of blogging on Myspace was the rift between “top blogger” factions that even went to the extent of hosting outside venues for their group. Two certain groups intermittently fight it out in random blogs of their supporters. Although I found the situation humorous at times, the redundancy of the arguments became fairly annoying. Eventually the “wise guy” group ended up with several deletions for their offensive writing. It’s more peaceful now because of this. You may think we are talking about people who are in high school after reading this far. Contrary to what people think, all of the bloggers being discussed here are adults. Ages ranged from late 20’s and older. Many of them were 30+. Though, often the sense of returning to a high school popularity contest would overcome me, there were genuine caring writers on Myspace as well. It was worth wading through the bilge to make it to the heart of Myspace.
A series of positive bloggers which spend many hours making blogs with messages of hope and love.
Bloggers who review movies, books and other entertainment sources with more skill than most professional journalists.
Alice finally found a light at the end of the tunnel.
But it wasn’t enough to let my teenagers make profiles unsupervised.
In the end, I had become a semi-serious blogger with 156 readers of my own. It was also very hard to detox from Myspace after such a long time submersed in the culture.
It’s an experience I will remember forever.
