And then I had to get all MySpace on 'em
With my new music project picking up speed, I've been trying to cover all the bases and find ways to get the word out and share this with as many people as possible. I've known for a while now that one of the best places to get a little exposure is the vast wasteland known as MySpace.
I considered creating an account there a while back, before it was really in the mainstream. You know, back when it was still a semi-unknown thing. But then when Dateline and every other news show started doing exposés on the kid touchers housed there, I had second thoughts. And by that, I mean that I knew it wasn't for me.
Now that's it's become ubiquitous to the point of me hearing waitresses in restaurants mentioning it and TV shows using it to blur the lines of reality, I said to my self, "What the hell...there might actually be something to gain from it." Obviously something's happening to draw so many people to it, and maybe I was just missing out. Suddenly, I felt the allure of it...I admit it. Damn!
I discovered that MySpace, both above and below the surface, was a wonderful, seizure-inducing mess
Up until that point, I had only visited the site on occasion, and I never once liked what I saw. It was butt-ugly, and not just in the visual sense. Sure, MySpace gives everyone the freedom to totally butcher their profile page with horrendous images and automatically-playing video and music until I find myself in sensory overload and simply resort to closing the browser window. Okay, fine..to each his own. But as I looked at the code, first out of curiosity, then out of sheer shock-and-awe, I discovered that MySpace, both above and below the surface, was a wonderful, seizure-inducing mess.
And then, reading through Mike Davidson's blog, I found this post about "how to hack a more tasteful MySpace". I saw that he had a lot of the same concerns and resistance to MySpace that I did, but found a way to at least keep his corner of it nice and tidy. His post was both insightful and inspiring and made me realize that I too could make peace with it. With that in mind, I decided that there was hope and life was good again...and I created a MySpace account.
I won't go into all the particulars, but suffice to say that I didn't find the whole account creation process all that well thought-out or executed, but that's reaching into nerd territory... So, I signed up, uploaded a picture and set out to find some friends. Not make friends, but find friends, as in people I knew offline and from other places around the web. I figured making friends would come later, as one becomes more familiar with other MySpacers and takes part in the community.
No. Not really.
It's a little strange that people can just add you to their friends on a whim, even if they don't know you. I mean, it's not really new to me, having been doing that for a couple of years now on Xbox Live. I'll almost always accept and always look forward to meeting new people, but it's basically like someone "requesting" to be your friend. And when I think about it too much, it starts to seem a little strange that people usually "add" you before even initiating any sort of conversation. And yet, I've done it myself. Hmm..
Maybe that's part of the appeal of MySpace—making as many friends as you can and seeing how many you can keep, sort of like spinning plates—I don't know. Either way, if you have a MySpace account and want to see what I've been babbling about, you can check out the Polymer Zero page here: http://myspace.com/polymerzero
let me on myspace rightt nowwww!!!!!!
PLEASEEEEE