11:09 a.m. - September 21, 2006
Pardon My French, Buy MySpace Is A Pain In The Ass
A while back I recounted how two raconteurs named Terri and Vicki forced me against my will to create a MySpace page. I would link to them, but sadly, they�ve gone behind the wall.
And I did, and there was much rejoicing.
I was late to the party, as always, but happy that I joined it because a lot of my readers and friends were already on there. I then met some locals via MySpace (which is odd, because it�s not like this town are county are huge, but, you do tend to hermit yourself once in a while) and met some other interesting folks who have the same interests as me.
So, really, it�s all been pretty good. I write blogs there that are just little trifles, covering some topics that I can�t cover here, and I enjoy reading everyone�s little blogs. I sometimes post surveys and little memes that aren�t in my idiom here, but they�re fun to do so I may as well do them.
But for all the good, MySpace, is, pardon my French, a big pain in the ass.
For one, I had to make my profile over there private, because of all of the friend requests I was getting from some unsavory characters. Let�s just say they weren�t real people behind those friend requests, but rather much someone trying to sell you a product and / or service. And they weren�t pushing Pampered Chef, if you get my drift.
So making my profile private took care of that.
Of course, everyone posts pictures on there, and it�s really neat to see what everyone looks like and look at them having fun. Yet, of course, since it�s the �net, you wonder if some of those pics are real, or someone bought them a good set of internet images or something.
Then there are the kids that are in high school, but say they�re 35 years old and set their status to �Swinger�, just to see what happens I suppose. But anyone who clicks on pictures, etc. knows that it�s all a ruse.
The male persuasion on MySpace is quite disappointing. There are a whole bunch of freaks and weirdoes who think nothing of soliciting my friends for some hot lovin� action right out of the box. They post some rather unflattering pictures, and have a friends list that is nothing but skanky women in states of undress. And THAT�S supposed to be attractive to a single female?
Gentlemen, please. Typing �U R Hot. Let�s meet and have some fun. Bring supplies� will not get a beautiful, intelligent woman to come knocking at your door saying, �Take me big boy! I�m yours.� It takes a little more than that! Gack. Men. And I�m one of them.
Some people are nothing but friend collectors. I have a lot of friends on there, but I try to keep in touch with a lot of them, and some are my readers and some are bands that I�ve discovered and been turned on to.
But my biggest complaint about MySpace is the way the site actually operates. Sometimes I think it�s held together by duct tape and silly string.
They claim to have over 100 million users. So it�s a huge site. But really, how many of those are active? How many are duplicate or triplicate pages from people? I know there�s a whole mess of people that set a page up, and never returned to it. They don�t even have pictures, and they have no friends.
People also set up pages for other people as either jokes, or to get back at them for something. And some bands have multiple pages set up by fans. That 100 million is a bit spurious, of course.
So if the people at MySpace would do some diligent cleanup, I think that would alleviate the mass of users and make it a bit more manageable, because it�s buggy. It�s probably the buggiest web site I�ve encountered.
When something goes off the rail, you get a message stating that �an unexpected error has occurred.� Really now. Unexpected? Oh, I think when I typed in this bulletin and wanted to post it, that I EXPECTED it to be lost in cyberspace.
Things go off the rail quite a bit.
A lot of the times, some feature or another is down for maintenance. Of course, it�s the feature that you want to use at that exact moment. The one that�s really bad is when they take some mailboxes down for maintenance, and they ask you to just leave a �nifty comment� for the person. Well, what if the question is somewhat sensitive, or personal? You don�t want to leave that as a comment, now, do you?
On the blog page, you can select something that you are listening to, or watching, or reading. Now, I always have music on so I always try to select songs, but half the time the search doesn�t work and it just hangs there.
You can add music to your page, but half the times the songs don�t load and sometimes the songs just disappear without warning. I tried to add a song by the Pink Spiders, but the next day I saw that it was �null� which was very odd in my eyes.
You can always tell when MySpace is being buggy because it just will hang there for a while before drifting off into apology land. And that is the most frustrating thing of all, because you feel that you�ve just composed something that is the pantheon of your existence, only to see it go POOF.
I hate it when that happens.
So, that�s why I�m often times angry with MySpace, but yet, I can�t let it go. It�s the crystal meth of the internet, the bacon of the cyber world. It sucks you in, and you can�t escape, even if you want to. I think I need to join a 12-step program for MySpace abusers.
And I will, right after I finish this survey I�m working on�
