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The Internet

The MySpace Generation 427

Posted by Zonk from the when-did-they-become-the-@-generation dept.
theodp writes "They live online. They buy online. They play online. Their power is growing. BusinessWeek reports on The MySpace Generation, aka Generation @, for whom being online is a way of life. Preeminent among the virtual hangouts is MySpace.com, who boasts 40 million members and claimed the No. 15 spot on the entire U.S. Internet. And in When murder hits the blogosphere, MSNBC reports on MySpace's sometimes surreal role in popular news stories."
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The MySpace Generation More

The MySpace Generation

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  • I've been trying to write an article about MySpace for about 6 months, with the community changing faster than I can assimilate those changes into the article. MySpace is the ultimate free market in socializing, and it (or a system like it) has potential to being a huge part of every day life.

    All my teen employees in my retail stores are on MySpace. Most of my adult employees are, as well. At first, the dame and I thought it was just a hook up scene (it is, though). We were laughing at how we knew some

    • Re:The Free Market of MySpace (Score:4, Funny)

      by ottothecow ( 600101 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @05:47PM (#14175282) Homepage
      In Summary:

      Myspace is a festering heap.

    • Re:The Free Market of MySpace (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Seumas ( 6865 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @06:04PM (#14175372)
      Funny, I've spent the last six months trying to get any random MySpace page to load without all the photos, videos, animations, sounds, java appletts and other mundane crap along with their retarded interface crashing any random browser I'm using on any random OS.

      MySpace is just the equivalent of AOL chat rooms. Those who aren't self-involved cliquish drama whores and dorks trolling for pussy from average girls with self-image problems over it are busy using Usenet and other more appropriate and useful places.

      My police for MySpace content is the same as LiveJournal. Don't ask me to check out your page on either one - I'm not going to look at it. If you want to tell me something, you can tell me. You are not so precious and my time so worthless that I need to share in a mass-broadcast on what kind of cheese you had on your sandwhich today or how cute you think someone else's hair bow is. I just don't care. If I don't know you at all - I won't care. If I do know you well enough to care about the news, I'd prefer you take the time to have a CONVERSATION with me rather than slip me a URL and tell me to read up on your life like you're Jennifer fucking Anniston.

      And I'm serious about this shit. Girlfriend, relative, coworker, love-interest. I don't care WHO you are. I won't check your page out.

      Also - there's nothing dangerous about MySpace. It's owned by Rupert Murdoch after all and Bill O'Reilly wouldn't stand for anyone putting children at risk, would he?! Hell no - he'd crusade against you until the tide forced you over!

      Seriously - I just don't get the MySpace thing. I think you have to be of a certain social accuity and lower intellectual level to find it worth your time. It has a terrible interface and is filled with crap. You may as well be using geocities for all it matters. Hopefully they'll just splinter off and form their own internet and take the tards with them.

      And there's no point in people replying with "oh and you're so special?!" or "aren't you elite?!" or anything, because I don't care anymore than I care about MySpace. Maybe if I were into hooking up with twelve year old girls, I would be interested.
      • I agree in spirit, but you do sound like an elitist condescending douche. Almost bitter.

      • Re:The Free Market of MySpace (Score:4, Informative)

        by Lemmy Caution ( 8378 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @07:56PM (#14175915) Homepage
        I'm not into the whole MySpace thing because I'm past the age when I need to present myself and my life as a spectacle. It's a developmental stage thing, and I say that without being condescending.

        That said, it should be respected as a form of writing and publishing. If a friend or love-interest of yours has published their writing somewhere and asked you to look at it by sending you a link, then it is simply rude and obnoxious to say, "no, I want you to go back, cut and paste it, and send it to me." I, for one, would tell you to take a running leap.

        • Re:The Free Market of MySpace (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Seumas ( 6865 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @11:12PM (#14176617)
          MySpace is to writing and publishing what a bowel movement is to art. Honestly, I can't even believe you would compare the two.

          If someone said "Hey, I wrote this great story" or "Hey, check out this review of the new movie I saw" - I would be interested. But I'm not going to read your block to find out "OMFG I'm so drink!!@!! I just got back from two partys and a consert! ROCK ON!!!!"
      • I agree with you for the most part, but remember the article said they had something like forty million users! Myspace stinks because it is so goddamn slow and they need to limit the blinking lights and shit people can put on their pages. On the other hand, there are a lot of people who seem to enjoy it. I doubt it will just go away like a fad. I wouldn't be surprised if, like all businesses today, most *individuals* will have their own page on the internet in a few years. When I got my first email address
        • The size of the audience doesn't indicate the quality of the subject. There are plenty of crazy red staters that think Bush should get a third term (I'm serious - one came to my house asking me if I was a registered voter and if I would support their cause). That doesn't make them intelligent or right whatsoever.

          MTV has a huge audience, too. So what?

          MySpace also sucks because it's a bunch of self-involved twats navel-gazing. Someone else commented that "that's what you do when you're young". The hell it is.

    • Re:The Free Market of MySpace (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sp0rk173 ( 609022 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @06:33PM (#14175491)
      Wow. That's the most inaccurate picture of myspace i've ever seen. Myspace is not a beautiful anarchist e-topia. No, fuck that. It's a place where people can artificially inflate their egos, pretend to be things they're not to increase popularity (since the capital on myspace is your friend count, and nothing more), and places extreme emphasis on the superficial. No, it's not an anarchist e-topic. It's just like everyday life in the modern world. Even more, it's a centralized means for Fox to make a shit load in ad revenew. I'm always sure i've got privoxy fired up when i go on myspace.

      It's basically one giant rumor mill. There is no natural judicial system as you describe. The majority of messages i see posted on bulletins (the way to disseminate information to all your friends simply) are chain letters.

      You mention your brother's band and how myspace is a huge non-corporate marketing aparatus. It's definitely the best thing around for indie bands, and it has definitely helped a lot of local bands i see at bars...but if you look at the featured artist on their front page, you'll only see ones that are ones signed to fox-owned labels. So, while it does have extreme potential for small-band marketing, it's also a huge corporate marketing force for shitty, overrated music. Before fox bought myspace, pretty much only independent bands were featured artists.

      No, myspace is not your anarchist utopia. It's just another way to make business as usual hip for us mindless youngins. That said, i've "hooked up" with quite a few attractive ladies from myspace. So, it does have legitimate use.

      • Re:The Free Market of MySpace (Score:5, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03, 2005 @09:31PM (#14176283)
        > That said, i've "hooked up" with quite a few attractive ladies from myspace. So, it does have legitimate use.

        Translation: I have masturbated while looking at the images of attractive girls myspace users have uploaded.

    • Communication Tools versus Social Scenes (Score:4, Interesting)

      by philipkd ( 528838 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @06:43PM (#14175540) Homepage
      Myspace is a club. And just like real world clubs, its popularity will be transient. In 3 years, there will be some other Internet social scene that will dominate. And 3 years from then, another one. The existence of this BusinessWeek article alone makes myspace that much less cooler to be on. Remember Friendster? That was becoming like what myspace was, until myspace became cooler. Now Friendster's going bankrupt.

      Communication tools, on the other hand, stick around. Look at AOL Instant Messenger. Crappy tool, but still the most popular. I even think facebook will survive this social networking service bubble. Facebook is also like a tool in that it functions as your school's better yearbook/directory.

      Quality tools and services are long-term. Clubs and social scenes are ephemeral.

    • Re:The Free Market of MySpace (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      MySpace's greatest potential is beyond just the ability to moderate other people. MySpace offers everyone this amazing ability to be open about themselves, reduce embarassment, and even become more honest as a person. When I was in high school, cheating on your girlfriend was common, but secret. Today it is called hooking up and generally not frowned upon. Is this the direction society needs to head? I don't know, but I don't think this "freeing" of embarassment is a bad thing -- isn't sex always the leader

  • Yeah, what's the deal (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03, 2005 @05:44PM (#14175273)
    With these freaks that post online all day, with their little friends, and their little hobbies that most people don't care about.

    I'm glad I'm a part of a place like Slashdot that doesn't have any of that.

  • Losers (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03, 2005 @05:47PM (#14175277)
    Previous generations got entire words to their name. At least some of us got letters (Generation X is cool). But you kids today have been reduced to punctuation. At least you're better than Generation colon.
  • Hope you like giving away your hard-earned works for free to Fox.

    From the TOS: By posting Content on any public area of MySpace.com, you automatically grant as well as represent and warrant that you have the right to grant to MySpace.com, an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, fully paid, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, and distribute such information and content to MySpace.com and that MySpace.com has the right to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such information and content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

    • Re:I hope our youth likes giving away it's rights (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This is no longer true. Section 5c of the Myspace T&C has changed. It now reads:

      c. By posting any Content to the public areas of the Website, you hereby grant to MySpace.com the non-exclusive, fully paid, worldwide license to use, publicly perform and display such Content on the Website. This license will terminate at the time you remove such Content from the Website. You represent and warrant that: (i) you own the Content posted by you on the Website or otherwise have the right to grant the license s

      • But they reserve the right... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ArghBlarg ( 79067 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @06:18PM (#14175429) Homepage
        ... to change the TOS at any time, unilaterally (from Section 2):

        "Even after membership is terminated, this Agreement will remain in effect, including sections 4, 5, 7 and 9-14. MySpace.com's Terms of Use and/or subscription fees that were provided to you at registration may change from time to time. By using the Service and by becoming a Member, you acknowledge that MySpace.com reserves the right to charge for the Service and has the right to terminate a Member's Membership should Member breach this Agreement or fail to pay for the Service, as required by this Agreement."

        So who says they won't "pull the trigger" and try to claim rights (even retroactively)?

        Hmm... so what's to say they won't suddenly change Section 5 to say "exclusive, in perpetuity rights to all material, even after you leave My Space"? If your novel/mp3/scientific breakthrough is online when they make the change to the TOS, it'll already be too late.

        I'm not saying they'd necessarily do this, but it's possible. Better to keep your stuff off of Fox's servers. :-p
        • that's stupid. it would take about 5 minutes or less for the judge to throw out the claims of exclusive license from the amended terms. also you cannot transfer copyright without a WRITTEN AGREEMENT.

    • Re:I hope our youth likes giving away their rights (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jZnat ( 793348 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @06:51PM (#14175576) Homepage Journal
      Judging by how readily they'll buy the RIAA's latest shit albums for $20 a pop and how they'll click next through their EULAs faster than an AC posting a stupid fad joke on Slashdot, I'd have to say that they definitely are used to giving away their rights. If they gave a damn about their rights, we wouldn't have nearly as much shit we deal with these days...

  • What Myspace shows (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mboverload ( 657893 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @05:48PM (#14175283) Journal
    What scares me most about MySpace is the people on it.

    If you were to surf myspace you would think every teenager on earth is a complete fucking moron. DON'T mod me troll. Look for yourself.

    Backrounds, stupid text colors, backround music, animations, inability to use the english language, and much more. I don't think I can express in words how worried I am at the stupidity of the comming generation.

    • Re:What Myspace shows (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03, 2005 @05:52PM (#14175302)
      "comming" ?

    • Its just more visible (Score:4, Insightful)

      by imsabbel ( 611519 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @05:58PM (#14175329)
      Teenagers ARE fucking morons.
      When i was a teen, i also heard trashy music, also had cheesy jet-fighter posters in my room and wasnt known for my social skills. And the others in my class werent better, either.

      The only thing thats different is that with the internet, occasionally older non-parent people stumble upon this stuff, which just didnt happen before the internet.
      I am sure if you go offline to an event thats REALLY in in the 12-15 age group, you wouldnt find a much different picture. But you wouldnt go there, while online, its just a click away...
      • "When i was a teen, i also heard trashy music, also had cheesy jet-fighter posters in my room and wasnt known for my social skills. And the others in my class werent better, either."

        So, things haven't changed that much, have they? Except that the posters are in your parents basement.
    • Yeah, pretty much. Read my summary of the first post for my blatant feelings about myspace.

      I just dont understand how people can think it looks good to have bright pink text and a purple background overlayed with a floating image while forcing you to listen to music and squint past the animations. As a college student I get to use the Facebook which is similar in the social networking but different (and I applaud them) in the fact that THATS ALL IT IS. There is no ability to make your profile bright an

      • Sorry to reply to myself but I remembered another disparaging trait about myspace that I just noticed a severe case of when I went to look while writing my last post:

        The people who have conversations via posts on each others profiles. It makes like a stream of nonsensical posts since you can only see one side of the conversation and simply seems inefficient. Any number of tools would be more efficient, IM, Email, Phone, even MySpace's own IM system since both people are both obviusly signed into myspace

      • "There's no accounting for taste" is often the best attitude to take.
      • Pffsh there are probably hundreds of thousands of people with "myspace sucks" as their profile title. ;)

    • Re:What Myspace shows (Score:5, Insightful)

      by generic-man ( 33649 ) * on Saturday December 03, 2005 @06:05PM (#14175375) Homepage Journal
      So in other words, the "comming generation" is to MySpace as our generation is to Geocities. The Internet* survived Geocities; it can survive the "blogosphere"; and it can survive MySpace.

      * By which I mean "the group of elitists on the Internet who wish there were literacy and knowledge requirements to use the Internet," also known as "Usenet."
      • Oh...back when geocities had you "move into" your site. You had to pick like what block you wanted to be on and pick a number on that block since seemingly they couldnt figure out how to offer personalized addresses. I'll never forget you www.geocities.com/alien/zarbstreet/9982/ ...or was that xeroave/8892?
        • i think it was more to keep control of users, back then computer resources were much more expensive so making sure everyone's page was on [one of a few strings]/[one of a few strings]/[integer]/ made it easier to filter potentially malicious requests and probably also was realted to which server cluster the site would be stored on.
    • Apparently the mission statement for MySpace is similar to Google's (in a way). That is, the organize and network all the world's idiots.'

      Also, why would anyone go meet myspace people? They spend all their time on the stupid thing. Wouldn't you want to meet and befriend or date people that... I don't know... get away from the computer sometimes?

    • Re:What Myspace shows (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Fnkmaster ( 89084 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @06:29PM (#14175477)
      I just don't get it. Myspace is Friendster, only instead of yuppies, hipsters, and college students, it's populated by complete morons. All my friends from college and high school are on Friendster and/or Facebook.com. MySpace gets the lowest-life, most guido New Jersey and Long Island trash people I've ever seen, the teenagers who are too dumb to know any better, and a couple of pervs I know in their later 20s who just go there to pick up on dumb 17 year old girls.

      I actively choose not to be associated with MySpace. Why? Because it's about as low class as anything I could imagine. Call me an elitist yuppie, but I would never want to be caught with a profile on that site, until they manage to improve their image massively, i.e. get rid of the massive guido overload factor in their userbase.

      Please reference the number of pics of dudes in sleeveless wifebeaters with muscle shots, tatties and gang slogans in their profile for evidence. So terribly classless.

      At least Orkut had geek chic before it was overrun by the Brazilians.
    • Geocities, 1996. 'Nuff said.
    • Yeah, this whole myspace glut quickly reminds me of geocities. And we know what happened to them.
    • I agree completely.

      Unfortunately, I also hold the shame of belonging to that age group, myself being 16. They, on the whole, are a group of not-so-intelligent people, who are completely incapable of coherent thought on the internet.

      In person, they are somewhat better (as speaking badly is more difficult to do than typing - due to being around people who speak, more or less, correctly most of one's life), but not that much, sadly. It does vary more from person-to-person than on the internet, however.

      And I ce

    • Re:What Myspace shows (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bechthros ( 714240 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @09:36PM (#14176308) Homepage Journal
      No, please, somebody mod this guy troll. He deserves it.

      I'm 31. When I moved across the country to an area where I knew NOBODY, MySpace helped me meet people with similar interests. MySpace is the only reason I have any friends at all down here (yes, I'm a piss-poor socializer outside of an ASCII environment). The one venue where I've found to play my music on a regular basis down here, I found out about through MySpace. I've gotten some fans for my (unsigned, independant) music through MySpace, as well as become a fan of other unsigned, independant local musicians. I don't have a huge fan base, but thanks to MySpace, if I ever visit Seattle, Canada, Charlotte, Chicago, Orlando, or Texas, there's people who can help me hook up shows. MySpace is how I find out when good local acts are playing (do YOU really wanna wade through ten pages of 5-point type in the back of your free weekly? Me neither). MySpace is the reason people come to see me when I play. If MySpace ever adds the ability to email multiple people without the use of bulletins, it might just replace email for me. All of my friends here, and all of my friends in Milwaukee, and all of my friends in San Francicso, are on it. I need to check my MySpace messages multiple times a day. I only need to check my actual email once every day or two.

      MySpace isn't completely original - it's basically LiveJournal meets Demostreams. But the idea of a multi-featured user community has come a long way since AOL, and it's a concept that's rapidly gaining traction in the marketplace. Slashdot itself is a user-community, just without certain features (music and pictures) and with others (a more specific and exclusive user base). MySpace, Slashdot, Livejournal, Friendster, etc etc are as successful as they are because the marketplace rewards their ideas. Quit bitching about it, come up with a concept as successful as MySpace, and make your own billion dollars.

      Are there problems with MySpace? Sure. The ads are getting more and more intrusive. But if that's your argument against it, you might as well argue against the internet itself. There is plenty of ugly HTML on MySpace. Last time I checked, though, there was also plenty outside of it as well. The servers are getting slower and buggier. But again, MySpace is not unique in this regard - I can't even log into Friendster anymore, it's so slow. And yes, there are a bunch of little kids running around acting like morons. But if this is your argument against it, then you must also be against all IM as well. And, just like Slashdot, there are plenty of people who are idiots - and plenty who aren't. Bottom line, MySpace is very much worth the ZERO DOLLARS I paid to be there.

      If you don't want to use it, that's fine, but don't insult everybody on it without exception. That's just stupid and ignorant.

  • And they kill themselves online... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by croddy ( 659025 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @05:48PM (#14175287)
    Myspace Suicide [ncmonline.com]

  • Wuh? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03, 2005 @05:49PM (#14175292)
    BusinessWeek reports on The MySpace Generation, aka Generation @

    Since when did the MySpace l4mers get op status?

  • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Whose Generation? (Score:3, Funny)

    by yoey ( 247125 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @05:51PM (#14175298) Journal
    People try to put us d-down (Talkin' 'bout my space)
    Just because we get around (Talkin' 'bout my space)
    Things they do look awful c-c-cold (Talkin' 'bout my space)
    I hope I die before I get old (Talkin' 'bout my space)

    Why don't you all f-fade away (Talkin' 'bout my space)
    And don't try to dig what we all s-s-say (Talkin' 'bout my space)
    I'm not trying to cause a big s-s-sensation (Talkin' 'bout my space)
    I'm just talkin' 'bout my g-g-g-generation (Talkin' 'bout my space)

    This is my space
    This is my space, baby
  • The same thing happened after the Columbine killers were discovered to have had AOL homepages. Sadly, I didn't think to archive their stuff until it was almost too late, but I still saved a lot of it. I wasn't the compulsive archiver then that I am now.

    OT, but the reason that I don't care as much about these two as I did about those two is that this seems to be a pretty standard love crime, whereas that was a school shooting that came within a hair of being an order of magnitude worse. Also, I study fr

    • Do you have that material mirrored in a publicy-accessible location somewhere? I'd like to look at it myself - more out of morbid curiosity than anything else, admittedly, but I never understood the whole "let's remove every trace that these guys ever existed" craze.

  • I never got the fascination with (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rolfwind ( 528248 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @05:53PM (#14175310)
    Generation whatever articles. It seems they always want to neatly compartmentalize people's behavior by their age group though I know 40+ years old totally connected to the net and that my teenage nephews who hardly go on or know anything about it.

    The article seems to be treating all this stuff as new when much of it's been around for a good while. Next, they will be gushing about how people use newfangled email over snailmail. The only message here is that people tend to communicate with the best medium for them which is nothing new.

  • Not just MySpace (Score:5, Insightful)

    by queenb**ch ( 446380 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @05:54PM (#14175312) Homepage Journal
    Other on line communities with less restrictive requirements are springing up and gaining ground on MySpace. Frankly, I find the whole eletronic thing to be a bit frightening. Hear me out before you mod me down! Nothing digital happens without leaving traces. As the public library in Philadelphia who's fighting with the FBI over one of their "Letters of National Security". It becomes all too easy to obtain records of who did what and who said what. Anonymity is a big part of what makes the internet go 'round and if you take that away, all you have left is what we have in real space now. A bunch of folks with ideas but too afraid to voice them.

    2 cents,

    Queen B


    • There has really been very little internet anonymity. If you do illegal stuff, your ISP will be able to hunt you down generally. They have even opened up anonymous remailers. Sure, find an open wireless access point and you may be online, but your MAC gets sent along with whatever you do. Cash access in an internet cafe is about as anonymous as you could get, except for all the closed-circuit cameras in public places.

      Never expect anything online to be private. People don't get that. The internet is a

  • Not My Space (Score:5, Interesting)

    by XBL ( 305578 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @05:55PM (#14175318)
    I use MySpace regularly, mostly to meet chicks in my area (and it doesn't work all that well, but it's free), but I don't trust the site to hold a lot of formal personal information about me; just informal stuff.

    Fox purchased MySpace, and I wish it was someone else like Google. The site is a mess with all sorts of useability and performance problems. It would be nice if someone just setup a good new framework for it, and then "imported" everyone's crap into it. The current MySpace framework is like some student's school project grown out-of-control. Maybe it is.

    So anyways, it's really 'Not My Space' for a lot of people. Just a place to waste time. I wouldn't expect it to become somemore more than that.
    • Oh, I forgot about the insane music band part of the site. Most band profiles are just fans postings and then a link to the band's website. I am always getting spammed by unknown bands want to be my 'friend'. Decline, decline, decline.
    • Invite only... What's an orkut invite worth these days?

      Again... http://tribe.net/ [tribe.net] better.

       
    • I have recently dabbled with MySpace's pages for a script I wrote, and it looks very sloppily written. If you go to the page that displays someone's friends, their name is passed in the URL along with some other useless data, such as both page number and range of results. I don't much care for it.

    • Re:Not My Space (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ZenShadow ( 101870 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @08:14PM (#14175989) Homepage

      The site is a mess with all sorts of useability and performance problems. It would be nice if someone just setup a good new framework for it, and then "imported" everyone's crap into it.


      If you wrote such a system and offered it to myspace, they'd probably pay big bucks for it. But it would have to handle more traffic than even Slashdot does, do it well, and manage tens of terabytes of data without falling over. And that's just for the user profiles... Then you've got the groups, the music, the mail system, ...

      I love listening to people who have never built a massive web site before saying how "someone should just do it right". When you build a system and it explodes 1000x faster than you could possibly predict, it's hard to keep up with. Even when you build it correctly and manage to anticipate your traffic loads, serving that number of complex pages is no laughing matter and causes a lot of people to work a LOT of long hours.

      --S (yes, I've done this before.)

      • Re:Not My Space (Score:3, Insightful)

        by XBL ( 305578 )
        Good post, and I know what you mean. That is why it would probably take someone like Google to pull it off correctly. I sure can't do it :-P Nor can Fox.

  • Old Ideas (Score:2, Informative)

    by SteevR ( 612047 )
    Not that this guy [alexkrupp.com] was the first to postulate that interconnectedness would change culture irrevocably in the near-future timeframe either. But I think the essay linked above cuts a little closer to the core issue; Businessweek just now caught on to what has been a rolling snowball in the internet world for what, 4 years now?

  • Fail. (Score:2, Funny)

    by ImaNihilist ( 889325 )
    MySpace is the worst thing to happen to the internet since it's inception. Think of the bandwidth! OH THE HUMANITY!!

  • Its time to let go... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by adolfojp ( 730818 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @06:00PM (#14175350)
    I am 26. When people my age were kids they had TV. Television is a one way medium where people are told how to look , how to talk, how to think. Think of the MTV generation.

    Today, at last, kids have a better freedom of the press than we did. They can give back to the system instead of just listening silently. And they have so many more channels to chose from, some made by their peers instead of by the big media corporations.

    What they say will be childish, stupid and uninformed. Just like the things we used to say when we were their age. But at least they will have an outlet to do so.

    I drink to the @ generation. And to the generation before, thank you for making this possible.

    Cheers,
    Adolfo

    PS. Remember when using computers was social suicide?
    • "PS. Remember when using computers was social suicide?"

      Hey I resent that! All 0 of my friends locally agree and all my +18 friends online agree.

    • Re:Its time to let go... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Seumas ( 6865 )
      I'm just a little older than you and you are understimating the idiotastic power of compound stupidity. When you and I were kids, the stupidity was compounded by ourselves and a small handful of friends. Now, it's compounded by the hundreds of people on your "myspace" list or whatever they use to interconnect people along with all the random people that stumble along and talk with you. And at least we didn't have middle aged perverts trying to pick up on us via email and our pages trying to take advantage o

  • Studies regarding such sites? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by CyricZ ( 887944 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @06:00PM (#14175352)
    It's widely known that sites such as MySpace and the forums at GameFAQs.com are "infested" with teens who would appear to lack basic textual communication skills.

    Have any researchers who study education performed reviews of such sites? How do such children and teens perform in high school? Is their inability to write sensibly only exhibited online, or does it also creep into their school work?

    • >Is their inability to write sensibly only exhibited online, or does it also creep into their school work?

      I am sad to say, but it has seeped into their school work. I'm thankful that MS Word et al. will at least auto-correct most inherant butcherings of the english language, but I've seen some of the worse piles of shit written on fellow students' papers. I noticed this a year or so ago when we did peer editting; seeing the all too common AOLer speak in persuasive essays and short stories has killed me
  • but I had to go check my MySpace.
  • Try http://tribe.net/ [tribe.net] instead. Far more configurable, doesn't crash every 2 mins and the advertising is less intrusive...

     
  • I really don't care to consider myself part of any generation whose title is that of a fox owned sell-out conglomerate. I think that while there are valid applications of the technology and success stories, myspavce is a hot topic type site. I don't mean to bash people for using it, but it seems, from my experience, that the place is, on the whole, not unlike AOL - Internet for the rest of the world, especially teenagers who don't neccessarily consort with anyone they don't know IRL.

    Of course, I also thi

  • God I hate myspace (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @06:06PM (#14175376) Journal
    The reason I still use it is because my friends there use it more than lj or other communities.

    I try to filter as many friends requests as possible to those who are older 23+. But still I see comments like "OMG ... would u sooo do the person above me.." and other silly bulletins that I could not give a shit at all about.

    I would leave if I could. I guess I need more real life friends closer to home and less online.

  • You know, articles like this and the increasing trend to live our lives virtually makes me wonder if one day society would end up in a Matrix like environment VOLUNTARILY! I'm surprised cyber cafes haven't evolved to the point where they can accomodate several day stays. A cyber-hotel if you will. Ultimate computer setups, comfortable lighting, convenient bathrooms and food near your computer, and as much or as little in person socialization as you want. You may want to be alone, or be with your friends
    • Dude....why the fuck would you even want that to be a reality?! Thats...sick...
    • If we ever manage to invent a matrix-like (or holodeck-like) immersive interface, I really think it will be the end of the species. We will simply stop having children, like Pandas that won't screw to save their species. If a person can just program up a companion or sex partner, or even just participate in anonymous sex using disposable avatars (as people do in Second Life), I really doubt many will do anything else. Obviously it will depend on the quality of the illusion, but many will prefer a reality
    • You obviously haven't been to Japan, then. Cyber cafes (Manga-kisa) over there provide, in exchange for a (usually small) hourly fee, not only access to an internet-connected computer, but access to a large media library (these places evolved from Manga cafes), some type of inexpensive food and beverage, and very commonly, your own little private cubicle, large enough to sleep in!

      Some even have showers and actual beds.

      These places are also nominally open twenty-four hours.

      It's not uncommon for someone who

  • Reminds me of 2ch..... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ShyGuy91284 ( 701108 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @06:09PM (#14175388)
    2ch (2 channel) [wikipedia.org] is a Japanese forum (more similar to slashdot then typical forums) that has over 10 million members from all different walks of life (not mainly teenagers like myspace). There is a US variant (an imitation not related directly or anywhere near as popular) 4ch [4-ch.net] that gives a good idea of the format. It's an interesting concept due to it's broadness in topics and people who use it. Although myspace seems to be pretty popular with people who aren't computer experts.
  • ... and you thought AOL was the worst it could get!
  • Slashdot: Where the socially inept start ripping on the @ generation. Waitasec.. How did you get that +4 karma bonus? Yes, of course by having an active social life :P

    We are nerds. We shouldn't rip on these newcomers to the Internet. 0W|\| 7|-|31r \/\/1N|)0z B*x3S maybe, but not rip on them...

  • Ahem (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Turn-X Alphonse ( 789240 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @06:21PM (#14175439) Journal
    I live my life online and I wouldn't be found dead at my space. The Myspace crowd are the emo attenction whores who make the most notice. The majority who "live online" are average geeks who perfer their own company and enjoy reading wikipedia and slashdot. But these people don't gather in huge numbers in a forum sort of way (Slashdot is close I guess), so theres no way to record them.. but please for the love of God don't lump me in with these guys.
  • Here's an interesting article on why myspace became so popular:
    MySpace: Is 'ghetto' a design choice? [9rules.com]. Has some choice comments from former employees of myspace as well.
  • Why don't they all just f-f-fade away?

  • What about World of Warcraft and the burgeoning .. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by philipkd ( 528838 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @06:31PM (#14175482) Homepage
    What about World of Warcraft and the burgeoning MMORPG space? There are 5.5 million subscribers to WoW, and in total, maybe 20 million people who play these MMORPGs worldwide, from games like Lineage to EverQuest.

    I don't think myspace deserves to be associated with a "generation" because myspace hasn't generated its own unique subculture. And it's not really a "generation" as a large portion of the traffic on myspace is by older men looking for skanks.

    The WoW and gamer culture, on the other hand, has its own languages and inside jokes. Plus guilds are way more cohesive than these loose organizations or "networks."

    I'm creating a social network just for gamers, and WoW players specifically right now: Leetster [leetster.com]. This is a link to my profile: pakhuda [leetster.com]

  • historical myopia (Score:3, Insightful)

    by circletimessquare ( 444983 ) <circletimessquare@@@gmail...com> on Saturday December 03, 2005 @06:31PM (#14175484) Homepage Journal
    i'm kind of bothered about all these comments worrying about the coming generation because of myspace brainfodder

    depending on how old you are, should we judge you on your graffiti from the 1980s or what you carved in your desk in the 1960s?

    are you serious? you have a poor, dim view of history

    you see a frightening loosening of standards over time before you. it is a false perception, relax

    you suffer from historical myopia

    there is nothing new under the sun, only dumb teenagers being dumb teenagers, as they did in 4000 BC, as they will do in 4000 AD
  • My impression of MySpace is basically the same as my impression of Livejournal, except I've never seen a MySpace page that wasn't visually obnoxious.

    I've used LiveJournal for about four years now as a way to keep up with all my non-local friends and occasionally share stuff, and more recently as an RSS/news feed reader. I know it's not the most popular way to handle blogs, but it works for me. I have always had the tasteful default scheme, and I never visit anyone's personal LJ page. I just see their ent

  • Mirror Shots... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03, 2005 @06:33PM (#14175494)
    Myspace, proving that no one can ever figure out the timer mode on their cameras.
  • samy is my hero.
  • The college kids myspace is thefacebook.com is targeted at college kids. It's nice because it allows you to put your phone number and other info online but restrict who can see it. This comes in handy when you are trying to get hold of someone for a class project but you don't have their number. But the two greatest things is that it requires a university email which weeds out the middle schoolers, high schoolers, and parents. And it doesn't allow you to customize yourpage making information easy to find.

  • Myspace (Score:2, Troll)

    by cortana ( 588495 )
    Forty million illiterate assholes who run up my data transfer bills by transcluding the images from my site on their shitty circle jerk home pages.

  • When did all the minds close around here? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Infonaut ( 96956 ) <infonaut@gmail.com> on Saturday December 03, 2005 @08:55PM (#14176160) Homepage Journal
    This is amazing. There are a few positive responses to MySpace, but the vast majority of the responses seem to be along the lines of:

    1) There are so many low-class/stupid/aesthetically-challenged/offensiv e-in-some-other-way people on MySpace and I can't stand that.

    2) MySpace is mostly populated by teenagers, and this particular batch of teenagers is so much worse than teenagers from my generation.

    3) MySpace is ripping off the people who use it, through TOS that allow MySpace to profit from content created by MySpace denizens.

    4) The content on MySpace is total crap. There's nothing of value on MySpace. Ten thousand monkeys could create better content.

    The "I can't stand the people on MySpace" response is similar to the bitching and moaning about blogging, which comes up on Slashdot constantly these days. On the one hand, Slashdotters are happy to carry the torch of freedom, demanding that Big Media should no longer control us, that TV should get hit with a clue stick, and so on. Yet when a community does spring up and people of all kinds, the unwashed digital masses, get on board, it freaks out a lot of Slashdotters. This is so reminiscent of the "if you don't know how to run UNIX, you shouldn't be doing things on the Internet" attitude so prevalent among alpha-geeks in the mid 1990s. The Internet shouldn't just be for geeks, any more than athletics should just be for jocks, or beaches should just be for beautiful people.

    Not everyone on MySpace is a teenager. But people seem hungup on the large number of teens on MySpace. Teenagers are teenagers are teenagers are teenagers. My father's generation was the one that screwed up the Vietnam War and turned the whole nation upside down. When they started causing trouble in the early 60s, they were the scourge of America. They turned out ok. A bit self-righteous, but ok. ;-) My generation was described as a bunch of shiftless slackers when we were teens. We had no soul, no drive, no moral compass, and nothing to contribute to society. Somehow that opinion changed when we hit the workforce in big numbers and contributed to the boom in the Information Economy. The teenagers of today are obsessed with the superficial, spoiled, and unconnected to reality. I'm sure by the time they reach their 20s and 30s, they'll somehow magically be transformed into good citizens. Funny how that works, isn't it?

    The using MySpace are just like any slice of a given population. Some of them have interesting things to say and some of them don't. Some of them are creative and others aren't too imaginative. Maybe the venue attracts one type of person more than another, but generalizing about content on MySpace, even if the generalization is correct, doesn't mean that there's nothing of value on MySpace.

    As for the Terms of Service, MySpace users are making an exchange. They get to tap into a huge network of people and information without cost. In return, MySpace (Fox) can use content from MySpace if it wants to, for commercial gain. 99.9% of the content on MySpace, no matter how good, is not going to be used for commercial purposes by Fox, simply because there's so much of it. The content that is good enough (and that depends on how you define "good") to be used by Fox may in some way be exploited commercially. Do you really think that the creator of such content wouldn't be happy to have their content publicized by Fox?

    Think back to when you were a bit younger, and imagine that something like MySpace existed at the time. You'd probably be pretty excited by it, perhaps because you hadn't yet become jaded to all things Internet, perhaps because you liked the idea of communicating with people outside of the narrow confines of the community you lived in.

    MySpace isn't for me. It obviously isn't for a lot of Slashdot regulars. So what. Get off the high horse. Diversity is good. Peer to peer communication is good. Or should we just go back to the monoculture of NBC, CBS, and ABC?

  • Hunting Deer == Homicidal (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TheoMurpse ( 729043 ) on Sunday December 04, 2005 @01:18AM (#14176950) Homepage
    Since when does hunting deer entail a "capacity for violence" against humans? That's bullshit, and the author ought to know it; he's probably a vegan.

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