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February 15, 2006

MyNewSpace

I’ve been researching this MySpace phenomenon for quite some time. It’s not like scientific research. It’s just a poll I’ve been taking with people who do it. You see, I can’t just write a whole big thing about it without first trying to understand it. I mean, if you talk shit about someone or something, you should have some concrete experience and deep understanding before you go off. Or you just shouldn’t talk shit which is the highest and best road to take, but fuck, who are you? Some kind of good person?

My latest experience with MySpace was a relapse. Remember some time ago when I started my Obagi skincare regimen and I couldn’t leave the house so I said I started a MySpace specifically about skin care? I just logged on to the shit with a flower as my picture and Tom as my only friend so that I could waste three hours before Jeopardy started. In those three hours, I looked at an insane amount of pictures and left the computer feeling really gross about myself for some reason. I forgot the password on that account anyway so I can’t even get in anymore. But before this bullshit encounter, I had a real 72-hour MySpace experience and parts of this entry were written as I was going through that.

So…

Everyone does MySpace. Everyone talks about MySpace.

One day, my friend who is a total MySpace girl came over to watch the America’s Next Top Model marathon. When she got to the door, we did the obligatory hug, the you-look-great, the fixing of the tall alcoholic beverage ceremony, the showing of the latest shoe that’s been added to the collection. Then, she asked if she could use my computer to check her email “real quick” and I said of course. A half hour passed and I was like, dude, completely bewildered that anyone would find email more enthralling than hours and hours of hungry competitive “models” arguing over stolen crystals and accusing each other of eating disorders. I say “models” because if they were really supposed to be models, wouldn’t they just be models? I mean Gisele had to model. It was her destiny to because she’s fucking unnaturally and cruelly hot. But what do I know? I’m fucking 4’11” with nary a chance to step on to a runway ever in the whole creation of the world so I can shut my little hater mouth.

I sauntered on back to the bedroom where the computer was (this was when I was still in LA) and she was a little zombie staring at the screen. Gasping. Staring. Typing. Torn between kicking it with a mighty great beverage and an amazing TV show and doing whatever it was she was doing on the computer. I mean, she could have been reading PinkIsTheNewBlog and I’d understand because I can look at that shit all day. But she was doing MySpace. And I used this opportunity to launch into a million questions.

Is it for fucking?

Do you spy on ex-boyfriends?

Don’t you get in trouble at work?

Do you bump into these people and feel like you already know them?

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Well, in my opinion, having sex with someone you met over the computer an hour ago is fucking insane but maybe I’m a prude. Wait, have you ever been on craigslist and looked at men for men? Don’t. I closed my little browser right away! Right away! I discovered some things that I should have never known about. All kinds of butts and nuts – and just don’t go in there. If I discuss this thing that I call The Nastification of the World, we’d be here all day. But you know what I’m talking about. Just turn on the MTV Date My Mom where mothers say things like, “Dustin’s sausage was so spicy it exploded in my mouth”. And that’s not even the nastiest thing I’ve seen on the after-school programming on MTV. Have you seen Next? Where the little girls get in their bikinis and get chocolate poured onto them and they suck the finger of some total stranger they are competing to date even though he’s totally gay with those waxed brows. But that’s another thing! Are all young people these days entirely over-manicured with all kinds of mystic tans and overplucking – dudes included? Okay, this topic needs its whole own entry so remind me.

Now, being so attracted to someone’s delicately posed picture featuring his new sparrow tattoos on his shoulders that you MUST. FUCK. TONIGHT. is like crazy talk. Computer love? Computer lust? No thanks, but to each his own. I know a dude that goes on the computer and meets fools and boom, it’s sexy time within a couple hours. And he’s a regular person, studies real estate and everything. They have a time and place established and everything. And that shit is legal so damn. I mean, nothing should be shocking. Oprah said that 6th graders were performing oral sex on each other with different colored lipsticks. She went to commercial talking about, “If your child said she got her salad tossed, would you know what she was talking about? Up next…” I remember watching that episode and immediately speed dialing anyone that would listen so the world is on some different shit. We just live in the oblivion if we want to.

Now, I couldn’t spy on any of my exes because they’re either living off the land in the woods, total workaholics that couldn’t be bothered with no MySpace or they just plain don’t know how to use computers. And that’s my word.

And I don’t really have a regular job where I’d get in trouble and even if I did, I don’t get in trouble at work. I don’t like to fuck with my money like that.

I have no real reason to make friends or socialize via the Internet. I mean, I have a hard time keeping up with all the open IM boxes. I’m trying to send Coral links to cute kittens that I’ll never be allowed to have because J claims he’s allergic while I’m trying to maintain a conversation about Project Runway with this one and at the same time small talking that one. It’s hard to juggle the IM, get some kind of writing done, Google the Tara Subkoff for Easy Spirit collection, check emails and watch Oprah at the same time. So I couldn’t imagine getting deep into the MySpace like my little zombie friend was.

Besides, I have way too much anxiety for that. If I’m supposed to know you all on the real friendship tip like to the point where I’m confident you’ll say yes if I ask you to take me to the airport, we’ll cross paths without any level of voyeurism on my part or yours. That freaks me out. Honestly.

Still, by nature I’m nosy as hell so I had to get a MySpace. Okaaaaaaay!

I had a MySpace for exactly 72 hours and then I quit. Cancel account, bitch.

In those three days, I could barely move from the computer. I was in a fucking trance, clicking away to get all up in people’s business. I ate a bag of salted pumpkin seeds and sat in the corner of my room cracking up for days! This was before I discovered the beautiful bubble where all the Blacktino vampires kick it on MySpace.

I posted a picture of a post-op Brasilian tranny instead of putting a picture of me up because that would be stupid for a million reasons with Real World being the main one. If you’ve been reading my stuff for long enough, you’d know why that’d be awkward. I mean, I guess some Real World people do it and I don’t judge that or I say I don’t judge that and I actually do. It’s fucking weird so whatever. And I know for a fact that Coral does not have a MySpace page. To finally answer that question, Coral from the Real World does not have a MySpace page. I saw it though and it was hilarious. The imposter said she loved Mary J. Blige and if you knew about the encounter Coral had with a one Mary J Blige, you’d think that was hysterical.

Besides, why would I put a picture of me on blast on the front page? Boring. The tranny was smoking hot. She was topless, with a high right low left boob job, a cigarette in her mouth, sweat dripping from her face, flawless eyeliner and she was wearing gorgeous chandelier earrings. In Brasil!

I get it now. MySpace is a social phenomenon and it’s interesting to find people you used to know. Some of them are out now. Good for them. Some of them are bi and that answers so many questions for me. Some are trying way too hard to be clever which is why I quit MySpace. Everything you put up has to be the sickest thing you’ve ever said. I’m just being honest. Some people are just not that fucking clever.

Now, my boyfriend knew some people who were clever and I invited them to be my friends. They were tripped out a little by the tranny, so it took a minute to accept my invitation. I finally had to put “IT’S JUST J’S GIRLFRIEND” as the subject so that I could really get it cracking on the MySpace tip. The “research” didn’t mean anything until I used the program as it to be used. Looking around without interaction is weird, don’t you think? But I heard they have a new thing now where you will be stone cold busted if you’re lurking. Now, that changes everything. I stay away! I don’t want to get caught lurking!

But it’s the picture thing that is really uncomfortable for me. It’s so strangely narcissistic, and it’s hard to say that out loud and not be ridiculed as someone who was fucking actually on a reality TV show and someone who actually keeps an online journal thing so I acknowledge all of these points. But the picture thing is so crazy. People are all posed up, looking sexy, taking pictures of themselves with their butts in the air and their boobs smushed together. I’ve taken pictures of myself with my camera phone repeatedly so I know that weird feeling of absolute over-the-top self-involvement. Take. Delete. Take. Oooh. Send. I know all about it. But this shit is the WORLD WIDE WEB. Mother fuckers are looking at that all day stealing company time!

With writing, it’s like, this is what I’d like to present to the world about me as a real person and you can read it and if you like it, shit, let’s rock, let’s rock today. If you don’t, fuck it and fuck you, it is what it is. But pictures? I look at Hollywood Rag and I wince when I see a dumb ass pair of sunglasses or bad porcelain veneers or too many necklaces and baubles and shit. So it’s even worse to look at a picture of me and deal with it. I hate picture day. I hate picture hour. I hate picture minute. I don’t really want to be in the picture but okay. It’s a weird hypocrisy I have with myself in terms of what I do for a living and how I feel as a breathing person but it’s my life and yeah, whatever.

So I also casually “interviewed” guy friends about MySpace. You know, it might be different for dudes. I have a gay friend that does it. I have a straight friend that does it.

Both of them said it’s totally for fucking, but that wasn’t their primary use for it. They truly use it for networking and finding friends that are into what they’re into. I get that. But doesn’t that take away from having friends that are nothing like you? I am down with eclectic shit. I have the tattooed friends. I have the friend in jail. I have the business owner friend. I have the school teacher friend. I have the friend that can play the organ like no one’s business. I have the comic book collector friend – he’s a little off but still cool. I have the alcoholic friend. I have the teetotaler friend. I have The Gays. I might even have a Republican friend but I don’t really talk about that out loud.

One said he does it because it’s the effortless way to keep in touch with people he likes without having to call anyone. Like, he can post an irreverent message about a dog shitting in his fireplace to a MySpace friend and they comment back and forth for a day, and laugh with each other and then two months down the road, when he’s in Philadelphia and needs a place to crash, he can call on his MySpace friend that laughed about the dog shit. It doesn’t even matter that it’s a miniscule amount of conversation. He says MySpace is just this thing that makes him feel strangely closer to people he doesn’t even really know that well.

But can you really know them if your perception of them is only what they feed you? You, you reading this right now, don’t know much about me. Only what I tell you and I obviously wouldn’t tell you that I kinda like it when it’s a tad bit painful when I get my pedicure. That would make me weird. I know I just told you, but I’m just trying to emphasize that there’s lots of shit you just don’t tell people. I pray for an ingrown toenail because I like the pain of it. See? Weird. So, again, I ask can you really a know person by his or her MySpace page?

Only the flattering pictures, only the witty banter, only listing the cool bands they like trying to play like they aren’t feeling The Ying Yang Twins, mentioning all the Jack Kerourac books when you know that fool didn’t finish reading that shit. Collecting only friends that fit the description of how you want the world to see you. That’s natural to migrate toward your own. I understand all of that. As the tranny, I made a few tranny friends and it was really interesting but still.

I like to know a real person for his real self. My own pumpkin, my precious and brilliant baby, has never ever even read a whole book. Not because he’s not a cultured person but because his eyeballs meet in the middle and make him have astigmatism headaches. So when books on tape came out he was like hells yeah. But I would have never known that about him by clicking around on the computer. He might have lied about reading The Tipping Point so that he could make me swoon. Well, he’d never have a MySpace because he doesn’t have the time or the patience and he doesn’t believe in it. He’s not into the computer.

And you know what, I might not be that into the computer anymore either. I don’t want to stop using electricity or anything, but there’s something unnatural about how much I like Google for shit besides restaurant reviews and shopping. I’m talking about nosy shit I should not be doing. There’s something off about my 72-hour trance with the MySpace. I fucking really lost myself in that shit. And figuring out how to be clever at every turn was draining. Should I say that I like Anita Baker and Sick Of It All? I mean, I do like both but what if that’s confusing? It’s like, why do I have to justify that I like a bunch of weird shit? Why does my page have to be all matchy matchy. Shit, I like the Game Show Network and at the same time, I hate getting through Lingo just to get to Jeopardy. Can I say that? Is that not hot?

So yeah. I get it. It’s a big deal. I know. The question “Do you go on MySpace?” upon meeting someone is normal. I understand. But I don’t.

I’m totally judgmental, I know.

Posted by melissah at February 15, 2006 03:32 PM