MySpace Abstinence

Perhaps you've seen those "MySpace Ruined My Life" t-shirts posted around? Or, alternatively "I'm getting stalked on MySpace" or "I stalk you on MySpace" tees? They all illicit a little giggle from users because addiction is kinda funny, my friends--until someone pokes their eye out.

Now, I'm not really a big MySpace fan. It's an easy way to keep in touch with far-flung friends with volatile email addresses---you know, the kind who tend to drop their cell phones into mudpuddles while travelling by goat-drawn cart from Kerala to Andhra Pradesh. Most of my friends on MySpace spend more time on it than me--they message more, collect more friends, join the MySpace groups, and even blog with daily updates--sharing pictures, videos, music. It's a great pre-packaged venue for creativity. Aside from not really wanting to enrich Mr. Murdoch, I think the interface is mired in late 90s webdesign and find it creates a virtual "new friend making" ambiance equivalent to a dive bar (not even the ironic, good kind).

But, more than any of these pet-peeves, I hate how it wastes my time. When everyone's working and I'm feeling just a tad social, I "end up" there. It's not satisfying. Even if you receive a message or a friend posted a comment on your board, ultimately it's just a bunch of static pages with some music scrolling in the background. The content, page after page, is just tid-bits of actual friends---and most or crucial members of your ring of friends probably aren't there. Yet, I go, again and again.

That my friends and MySpace friends, is called addiction.

The number of MySpace users is about 80 million (Financial Times, 2006) and its monthly pageviews near 7.8 billion (Intermix SEC Filing, via Iseff). Last Sunday I decided to be one less.

I'm on a MySpace abstinence for one week. Now, you might say one week isn't that long. If you use MySpace, you know, it's like crack (or cheetos)---unnourishing, self-perpetuating. I am reclaiming what it's carved out of the down-time in my schedule. Already, I want to open it up and see what's new. I was Googling yesterday, where MySpace content is included among search results, and accidentally almost opened a page---my page no less.

"The Withdrawal"
What I've squeezed from my irredentist temporal struggle: a third through a new book by Kevin Mitnick, I'm apparently posting again (hurrah), my stuff is neater, I cured cancer and eh, I've been more productive. So there, this MySpace abstinence shenanigan is going to pay-off, I swear, or I'll have nothing but a week's worth of missing updates and marginal shifts in backgrounds to show for it---and I can't let that happen.

Without a hint of overdramatization, let us remember...

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just. -- Abraham Lincoln