Yes. i have a Myspace. Yes, I’m ashamed of it sometimes. If fact, I make it a goal of mine, that if I go out at night, I do everything possible to make sure I don’t even hear the word Myspace. I counted 27 one night. It made me sick.

I had a conversation with a good friend of mine recently, and |name withheld| and I agreed that as a result of easy and non confrontational forms of communication such as text messaging, Myspace, and instant message clients, that the youth of today are much more social, and long-term relationships are becoming rarer and shorter. *breathes*. A perfect example of this is when two friends of mine were out to eat. They had good conversation with their waiter, and thought he was ‘cute’. They left him a nice little “Hey thanks for the service, call us sometime” note and left their phone number. 20 Minutes later, they received a text from him. Now, most likely, 5 years ago, it would be assumed that was a home number that was left, and it might never have been called. Through the magic of non-confrontational text-messaging, they have a new friend.

Consider these truths:

• It’s a hell of a lot easier to be secretive when texting, its tough to talk to someone that you have a ‘crush’ on when sitting next to your significant other… texting all but removes that barrier.
• Nervous tones of voice are non-existent via text and instant messaging
• Rejection is much easier to handle when you aren’t staring the person in the face, or even talking on the phone
• Digital cameras and web cams are cheap enough that most people aged 16-25 have them
• Photo sharing is ridiculously easy, and photo sharing sites are used by most people under the age of 25… photobucket alone has over 40 million members
• Photobucket completely bans 5-10 albums a day, and deletes thousands of pictures daily for inappropriate content. Many of those are girls and young women who have taken pictures of themselves to share over the internet

What prompted me to write this was a book that I saw being reviewed on the Myspace Home page. “Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both”. On Myspace, this is one of the sentences the reviewer chose: “According to Stepp, the hook-up culture is a big problem for the MySpace generation, even if its ‘confident girls’ don’t realize it yet.”

She continues:

A reporter for the Washington Post, Stepp based Unhooked on interviews with nine high school and college girls over the course of a year. She visited their schools, met their families, and listened to them talk about their sexual activities and romantic aspirations. She was surprised by the crudeness with which they discussed “hitting it,” “filler boys,” and the “yucks” monogamy gave them, and she came to believe that instead of getting the sense of empowerment they expected from taking control of their sex lives, they felt empty, used, lonely, and violated.

The only comfort I have, is in my Firefox built in spellchecker. It doesn’t recognize the word “Myspace”, and doesn’t recognize the word “text” as a verb. I’m sure that will be changing in the near future however…

Tags: rant