MySpace Rant

Okay, first confession: I really abhor the use of Internet sites for ranting. I hate that whole mentality that blogs and other online tools are the perfect opportunity to say to yourself ooh, here's my chance to say every mean thing I ever wanted to say but didn't because of societal taboos.. Well, politeness and proper grammar are two things I am always in favor of. And I like it when people use their "library voice" (which is not the same as a whispery church voice) online and everywhere.

So you will realize how badly MySpace has annoyed me that now I want to come to my friendly neighborhood blogger blog and rant about it.

You will recall that my sister invited me to be her friend on MySpace. So, big sister and generous soul that I am, I accepted and have made a very real attempt to make, if not a home, at least a quasi-comfy box there. I even went back and re-learned some basic HTML code so that my profile info would not look like word salad.

Did you catch that? MySpace, the reigning king/queen of Internet socializing sites, forces you to use HTML or CSS if you want to add any kind of formatting -- including line breaks (!!!) to your profile. That is so ridiculous!

Just for sheer entertainment value, I googled "Why MySpace Sucks" and found a DIGG article by that title, as well as some others. I don't agree with that rant -- it's really just a chance to bash the people who use MySpace. That's not my beef. I don't care if someone wants to write on their profile that they don't have much to talk about. That's fine by me.

What really annoys me about MySpace is not the people who join it, but the people who have made it, and have infused it with a proprietary nature that prohibits javascript and widgets and all the fun stuff that's out there to use to make your blog/site really interesting. After all, I thought one of the great fundamental values of Web 2.0 was interconnectivity: collaboration, sharing, communicating, creating. MySpace is set up to prohibit much of that -- or at least make it difficult enough that users might be tempted to purchase (for anywhere from $12 to $25) books that have been written about how to personalize your profile.

Also, I don't like how everything about MySpace seems to be about steering the user toward ads for music, movies and television shows. For me, clicking into MySpace music or videos is instantaneous information overload. I feel bombarded by ads, flashing icons and pictures of pretty, preening people. I get a headache just thinking about it. (Ooh, how old does this make me?)

So, without a doubt, I dislike MySpace.

But...

And you knew there was a "but" coming...

My sister wrote a short blog entry about the great day she had with my nephews. She doesn't often write letters or call - she's a busy mother of two young sons - but she'll blog. And I'm in heaven because I get a glimpse of her and my nephews. She wrote about holding 2 year old Tommy to watch jets fly low over the Northern Nevada plains, so close that she could almost see the pilot grinning back at her. It was sweet and honest and almost made me cry from missing them so much.

So, thank goodness for MySpace.