It's been about three years since my friend sent me an embarrassed invitation to join Friendster, saying something along the lines of "this is the most gross, uncomfortable, addicting and useful thing I've found on the net all year." It was indeed, and though people now take the concept of social networking for granted or completely spurn it (or even worse, embrace it fully, engaging in an orgy of what my editor at the Metro Santa Cruz characterizes as "self-branding,") I think at their core these sites offer a very useful tool. As a expatriate of Santa Cruz, CA, now living in Chicago, there's any number of services that social networking and blogging sites have offered to keep in touch with friends and family who avoid both the phone and any complicated interaction with their computers, whenever possible. I have a few people who engage in real mail correspondence, which is great, but not so practical for a quick note, dick joke or mass update on what’s been going on.
Of course, most people know the story of how Friendster was eclipsed by Myspace, turning the first site into a virtual ghost town as the ugly-as-dirt Myspace allowed its users to post three concurrently-playing Against Me videos and abuse the blink tag as much as their hearts desired. And like most people with a lick of sense in their heads, I migrated over there with shame and trepidation, embarrassed by the social icki-ness of the whole shambles yet also driven by the shared adoption of friends and associates. The techie elite sniped at the atrocious design and it’s Geocities-2.0 adoption by relative luddites, while the more sensibly-minded folks objected to the inherent social retardation of the concept and refused to join. But oh, in time, most of those people came around, from my most tech-phobic friends to the Zizek-spouting professorial types. Everybody else was on board, and people were using the site not only to--granted--be socially weird and gross, but for actual practical reasons as well.
And then old Rupert Murdoch came along with his billions in News Corp assets and scooped up Myspace, and there was a resounding…quiet…on the Myspace front. A few people posted bulletins or blogs in alarm, a handful of stalwart activists decided to use the site as their bully pulpit to extol the evils of News Corp, and others vowed to cancel their accounts. But within a couple of weeks, most of those folks had taken down the anti-Fox news screeds and returned to posting animated gif’s of kittens pouncing chickens. I found it incredibly dispiriting. If people can’t be coaxed into cancelling their fucking social networking profiles, I thought, what does it say about the future of activism in arenas that have actual real significance? But I was as guilty as anyone else--many friends had stopped regularly using communication avenues such as phone or email, and I watched as the hits to my band’s website steadily decline as hits to its’ Myspace page exponentially grew. What was going on here was a monopolization of webspace, a one-stop shop for online communication needs as well as for music, and it was all generating ad revenue for Mr. Murdoch. In sort of defiance, I wrote a couple of articles for the Metro, asking punk and indie musicians and artists how they reconciled their anti-corporate ethos with using Myspace as a promotional tool, and all that people responded with was overwhelming pragmatism. It’s true--it can be a useful tool, and one that a good majority of potential listeners online are using to some degree--but that is how monopolies are born. The articles ran, and there was no response. One letter to the editor, but other than that, nothing. A few annoyed emails suggesting that I was questioning the punk cred of these bands, when all I really trying to do was suggest that perhaps it was a subject demanding some critical thought and discussion. Well, fuck that, apparently critical discussion is soooo ‘90s--(to very, very roughly paraphrase a conversation around the PP offices recently.) How many interviews with bands have you read in the past year in which signing to a major label is considered "savvy" as opposed to suspect?
As much as Myspace bothers and troubles me for any number of reasons, it's been effective for some of the very reasons that it annoys the techies over at Metafilter and Digg so much--friends and good acquaintances, who I never would talk on the phone with (as I try to avoid talking on the phone as much as possible) who are so tech-phobic that they can't figure out their web-based email, can keep in touch with one another online. For all the shitty design and bad code weighing down the site, there's something to be said for that sort of ease-of-use, and it's nice to be able to drop a line to friends and see pictures of them with their kids in one place, especially with the people I know whose (gasp!) eyes glaze over if you show them how to add an attachment or send out a mass email. Only the techie-liberatarain IT guys who make up those online communities would snipe at those people being able to use technology to communicate and have their own online communities. I know, I know, Flickr, Blogger, etc…but not everyone has the time or interest to redundantly post their personal details online (and Yahoo! and Google are a whole other post…)
The thing is, I feel a sea change is coming. Everybody's found the ex they fell out touch with and caught up with long-lost friends. The novelty has worn off, and Myspace is crumbling under the weight of two-week-old dude-core bands and PR company spam. This is a good thing--let the sketchy dudes and the 16-year-olds have it. Let the IT guys over at Digg circle-jerk about the PS3 and offer trenchant political commentary like “Hugo Chavez’ speech at teh uN is teh ghey.” We can have our own community of people with shared interests communicating and sharing and yes, showing off their wares, without lining the pockets of Rupert Murdoch or those idealistic young bucks at Google who are more concerned with demonstrating to their shareholders that they can compete in China than they are about the company's vaunted "core values." It’s in this spirit that I am impressed with and excited by Dan’s Herculean effort of adding all these new features to the Punk Planet site, to foster an online community of people who care about critically engaging these issues. Good work here, Dan, and I look forward to using all the features in earnest.
And yes, for anyone who’s made it this far, I am always this long-winded and tangential! My apologies.
Paul--
This is a really good summation of the last few years of Internet developments. I really feel like we're getting to an apex point with MySpace--a point where it just becomes too bloated, too unwieldy, too ad-filled--and people will begin, once again to look elsewhere for online community.