The First Time I Heard About Myspace, Facebook, And Twitter
By Thoughtis
Myspace
I first heard about Myspace in 2004, the summer before my senior year of high school. My friend showed me his profile in the computer room at my mom’s house and prefaced it with “This site can be really addicting.” As I scanned his pouty scene photos and hilarious “About Me”, I remember telling him that Myspace seemed like an embarrassing joke. “I would never get one. It’s for scene kids and baby prostitutes!” At the time, I was committed to my Livejournal after having taken a brief sojourn to Friendster, and had no intentions of deviating ever again. Whenever I first hear of some new social media craze, I’m always adverse to it. This is mostly because I like to be a contrary brat but it also comes from a place of not wanting to fit anything else on my virtual plate. 60% of the time I cave in though and that’s what I did with Myspace. It got to the point where if you didn’t have one, you were missing out on practically everything. All the fun drama went down on there so if you didn’t join, you would permanently be awash in a sea of virtual confusion and risk becoming a social pariah!
I heard about Facebook the summer before I entered college. At the time it was only open to universities so joining it felt like being a part of some exclusive club. At this point, Myspace had been overrun by 14-year-old girls with profile pages that would give you seizures and About Me’s that would say something like, “bEst FrIendS MeAns PuLlIng The TrIgGer <3". I guess Facebook seemed like the more logical mature direction to take when you entered college. "I need a fresh start! Time to join another vanity social media website to express my human development!" I didn't want to join Facebook initially but since I was moving six hours away from home with no friends to speak of, I figured I didn't have a choice. During my first month at college, I met like four people a day from Facebook. 89% of them turned out to be total normies with a deceptively good internet personality but at least it kept me from crying alone in my room and calling my parents. After the novelty of college wore off, I stopped using Facebook and came crawling back to Myspace like a guilty junkie. It took two and a half years for me to finally come to my senses and go back to Facebook. Once I did though, Myspace was D E A D to me. I pulled the ~~~trigger~~~.
I first heard about Twitter maybe two years ago and thought the whole thing sounded absolutely ridiculous. I would go on and look at people’s tweets that read, “Nothing like brunch with the girls, followed by a KILLER Bar Method class and snuggling up to your man :).” I mean, just kill me. Who wants to read that? For the first few months, I would just use it to read Lindsay Lohan’s coked out ramblings. I never even made an account. Then in April of 2010, friends of mine had started White Girl Problems and I was like, “Oh, okay. I can use Twitter to be funny. It can just be a collection of jokes!” So then I started my own satirical Twitter, Being Gay Is Gay, and quickly became a straight-up junkie. Being Gay Is Gay was my life, which wasn’t that hard considering I had just graduated college with no job prospects. I would actually apply to jobs and put in my resume, “Um, I have 6,000 followers on Twitter?!” It seemed unprofessional but it actually was the reason why I got two “coveted” internships. So there. Take that, luddites! I eventually caved and got my own personal Twitter last year but I promise to never tweet about salads or sunshine. Now I have two Twitter accounts, which means that I’m sucking that website’s D 24/7 basically. Whatever. I don’t mind. Twitter is the best in bed anyway.
BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME. When did you guys first hear about Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter? Were any of you like “K Bye” when you first heard about them?