As a dual user of both Myspace and Facebook, I would like to address a few things. I have been using both sites since 2005 for networking, and early on had no real preference. As a spoken word artist, I relied on both sites to help me put together a month long tour. Myspace had an edge for awhile because of its ability to present my audio and video for potential venues to check out. Eventually, I began to use Myspace less and less. There are numerous reasons for this shift in usage, and an explanation will follow. First there is something that absolutely has to be cleared up.
Choosing Facebook over Myspace does NOT make you a racist or anything close. In a recent speech at New York’s Democracy forum at the Lincoln Center, Danah Boyd made the claim that the switch for many people from Myspace to Facebook is the same thing as a ‘white exodus’ and proves the racial disparity of our country. This is one of the most outlandish and nonsensical things I have ever heard. Now I can understand why this view could be held for a second or two, but that’s it. The only reason being that originally you needed a school email address in order to sign up on Facebook, making it difficult to create a fake identity, and limiting its user base. So it was for students only, particularly college students at first.
This however leads into one of the many reasons that people have been dumping Myspace quicker than Kellogg’s dropped a red-eyed Michael Phelps; fake profiles and identities. I was getting sick of friend requests from half-naked women telling me they like beer and parties, when they were really only spam. People do not like getting pummeled with friend requests from promoters, garage bands, and not to mention porn sites.
Myspace was fully customizable which Facebook wasn’t. This turned into another reason that Myspace now resembles my aunt’s living room, with a blood red shag carpet, unicorn knick-knacks scattered about, and a velvet Elvis re-print hanging on the mustard yellow floral patterned wall paper. It’s tacky. You can’t even read text on a lot of people’s pages because their colors clash. Not to mention the loading time is slower because you have to wait for someone’s 200 glittery stars and flashing bumper stickers to pop up just so you can see a list of adjectives that they think relate to them (they don’t most of the time). To top it all off, when all this gets loaded, and you start squinting trying to read their page, some sort of German industrial techno or teeny bubblegum pop comes blasting out at you. It makes for more of a headache than for networking.
With all of these reasons for Myspace’s demise, I wonder why Danah presents an argument that is solely race based. So let’s look at how Myspace uses going to Facebook is NOT like ‘white flight’ from neighborhoods that see an influx of minorities. First and foremost, the phenomenon of white exodus is a result of whites feeling uncomfortable with a race ratio that is not heavily in their favor. It’s not like they wake up, see the paper has an article saying their neighborhood is now 26% Hispanic and flee. It is because they see and interact with them every day that the feeling of discomfort arises. On Myspace, you aren’t forced to interact with anyone. For all I know, half the people on Myspace are from Africa, I would have no idea. I can choose to not interact with or even witness the Slovenian swingers groups that might be on Myspace, meaning I really wouldn’t even be aware of their existence (I of course do keep up with them though).
Secondly, both networking sites are FREE. Anyone can just go and spend 45 seconds making an account at Facebook at you’re in, that’s it. There is no financial ceiling or other invisible wall preventing certain people from switching communities. Also, one of the glaring deficiencies here is that many people (myself included) use both sites. Each has its perks. Myspace for video and audio, Facebook for simple easy interaction, and some might say the apps, which is personally one of my issues with Facebook.
Lastly, this was Danah’s avenue of academic research and her dissertation. As a grad student myself I have seen numerous times a problem within graduate work: mainly that someone can take a very interesting issue, and reduce the myriad complexity of cause and effect into a single root cause and then ignore everything else. It is overly simplistic and flawed. However, it turns heads and gets recognized, either as very good and insightful, or shoddy work.
As a final note, I also noticed that Danah was on Twitter. If switching to Facebook is racist, wouldn’t that make her an Aryan supremacist? Just. saying. Also, her website about her life and research contains a page for Ani Difranco lyrics. For the record, I have no issues with Ms. Difranco, but really? Save that for your Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter pages Danah, your personal website should be above the rank and file of social networking. After all, you don’t put either Myspace or Facebook on resumes. I guess because nobody wants to seem ‘ghetto’, or ‘racist’. Besides, calling someone ‘ghetto’ or ‘racist’ based on their preference of social networking sites is a more flagrant way of stereotyping than the issue you wish to expose ever could be.
