Tuesday, March 8, 2011

MySpace Mania


When I think of MySpace, I immediately think of my high school years. At the time when MySpace came out, it seemed like the coolest thing to have…having pictures, getting comments, and writing on your friends walls. Being able to decorate your page with different photos and backgrounds kept everyone occupied, especially with the feature of music. Changing my song every now and then seemed to be a very important thing back then… which is pretty embarrassing. Music pages and links were everywhere and new music was free to your disposal.

Another term that comes to mind when thinking about MySpace is your “Top 8.” These were eight spots that you designated to be your top friends...because that’s normal. Would your first spot be your boyfriend or your best friend? I remember actual fights occurring because of this whole concept. Things got even crazier when you could create a “Top 20!” The possibilities were endless.

While we thought MySpace was very fun at the time, my high school principal did not think so. I remember the day where basically every girl in my Catholic private high school was called down to the principal’s office to be met with print outs of our MySpace pages. She was not pleased with the way some girls were portraying themselves online or comments made about certain faculty members. They were concerned about our image but most of us thought this was an invasion of our privacy. In the end, there were no terrible consequences but the whole ordeal caused a lot of commotion in my small school. Clearly, Tom did not know what he was starting when he created this social network.

2 comments:

  1. Similar cases occurred in my middle school. Only a few kids ever got called into the principal's office, but Myspace definitely grabbed the attention of the faculty. That's really what created the concern for people our age about Internet privacy. We started hearing stories about people putting up pictures and saying things they wish they didn't and then everyone had access to it. Being careful of what we put online was drilled into our heads so much that today its second nature.

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  2. Clearly, there was some cause for concern, what with the cyberbullying incident. Love reading these nostalgic posts, though.

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