Cailley trolls MySpace

Well, since I couldn’t figure out how to get Chatroulette to access my camera on my Mac, I decided to peruse MySpace.

Not really knowing where to start, I just did a general search of men and women within 20 miles of Madison. From there, I just picked the first 15 I saw.

My findings:

• Like Klay said, people are very invested in the look of their page. But it's pretty much an inverse relationship: the more time you spend on your MySpace page, the worse it looks. A lot of them are reminiscent of the Angelfire websites we all remember fondly in that they had super distracting backgrounds, terrible clipart and occasional gif animations. If you really want a laugh, check out this profile:

http://www.myspace.com/505364809

• Commenting on profiles largely consists of spam. While this is pretty noticeable on profiles for celebrities, I was surprised to see how it filters down to personal profiles - it really drowns out any "real" connections between people. The major culprits are smaller bands, who constantly advertise themselves on other people's profiles.
• Way back when I had a MySpace page, people would use their real name, like the majority of people do on Facebook. Now, people glorify themselves with names like “The Original F.M.L.,” “*~SEXY~*” and “$It's me time bitches$.”
• Like Facebook's Farmville, people are getting in on games through MySpace. "Mobsters" was one I saw on multiple profiles.
• And although it's obvious, it must be discussed - the profile pictures. It's a classic move to turn the camera toward yourself, position it at a high angle pointing down, and shoot, but many don't even try to hide the fact that they're photographing themselves. Instead, they'll do their best pose in a bathroom mirror and, like Klay said, follow it with comments about how sexy/badass/awesome they are.

Basically, it's a classy place. However, it should be said that MySpace isn't all bad - music pages for bands and artists are especially helpful sources for checking up on a tour or listening to a new track. Compared to their Facebook counterparts, MySpace music pages are a little easier to navigate and, because they push fan comments to the bottom, offer more readily available information.