Goodbye, Myspace

Wow. I can't believe that I'm actually going to delete my Myspace account. I know it seems so silly to get worked up over... really, all I have to do is choose "deactivate" and "okay" and my little blip in the Myspace community will be erased. It's so simple.

But to me, it's bigger than that. Before I arrived at Meredith College, I didn't have my own e-mail address, much less my own web space. Setting up my Myspace account was like moving into my dorm room or going out to a club for the first time - it was something really cool that was my own. It allowed me to express myself in a new way, online, and in a way that Facebook couldn't. Then, Facebook would only let you connect to other people who had college or university e-mail addresses (remember that?). But Myspace... oh Myspace. Myspace would let you connect with anyone. And I could browse people's pictures, send messages to strangers, and reconnect with people I hadn't seen since elementary school. On top of all of that, I could personalize my page with music, videos, graphics, backgrounds, sparkly cursors, and anything else under the sun that I wanted.

It didn't hit me until recently, but something has happened over at Myspace. It has become lame. People I know have deleted their accounts or barely use them and favor Facebook - heck, I favor Facebook. Actually, I despise logging onto Myspace now. All of the suggestions they offer me are for people I do not know or have no desire to meet, or who are 5 years my junior or 20 years my senior, or who are of questionable character (which, I suppose could also fall under my "have no desire to meet" category). The people Facebook suggest to me are people I knew in high school or college that I would actually like to get in touch with again. I can also connect Facebook to my phone a lot easier than I can Myspace, and that's just good business.

However, what bugs me the most is the lack of privacy on Myspace. I know that there has been a big hoop-la recently about Facebook changing their privacy policy so that everybody can see everything, but that's simply not true. I have my privacy settings set on Facebook so that people who are not friends with me cannot find me in a Google search and can only find minimal information about me in a Facebook search. With Myspace, even though I have all of my information set to the strictest settings, a Google search renders matches on any of my friends' pages where I've left a comment if their pages aren't set to private. I know, I've searched myself and I've seen it with my own eyes. I even saw a glitter comment I left on a friend's page in 2006 that said "Ganja Queen." I would never, never, ever, under God's yellow sun do that now. And unless I go to all of these pages and delete these comments, I'll keep popping up in Google searches. I guess I could send polite messages to all of my friends with public pages:

"Dear ******, Because of your lack of concern about your future and your security, my future and security have been compromised. I mean, how many of my future employers and students could potentially Google me?!?! Quit being such a prick and change your profile settings to "private." Thanks, Kandice. PS: I hope you're doing well since we haven't talked in a few years! Love ya!"

There are a few things that bug me about just up and deleting my Myspace account. First, there are a few people I am friends with on Myspace that I am not friends with on Facebook. However, most of these people also have a Facebook. The thing about it is... I don't like to send friend requests. I'm over the moon excited when I get one, but I'm so afraid of the rejection I'll feel if I don't get accepted that I don't like to send them. I guess I'll have to suck it up if I want to make sure I stay connected to the people that I want to stay connected to. Secondly, I have a lot of blogs on Myspace that I would lose. Fortunately, my sweet, sweet mother printed off all of my blogs from when I was in Northern Ireland and bound them in a notebook for me, so I don't have to worry about losing them. But the rest of them... hmmm. Then again, maybe it's good to let go of the past. Finally, and most importantly (to me) are love notes between Sean and me. I suppose it would be wisest to just copy these into a Word file and save them - no harm done. Maybe I should print them out and bind them so no crash would ever erase our exchanges of desire and admiration for each other. Well, wait a minute. There are things our posterity should not read. These notes should go in a safe :-)

Anyway, I'm going to suck up my fear of rejection and send some friend requests this week. So far, I'm 3 for 3 today, so that's good. Hopefully I'll have everyone I want to keep in contact with who is not my friend already on Facebook added (or at least requested) within a week so I can get rid of the Myspace.