MySpace, or yours?
Jemima Sissons on where you can meet 55 million friends online Parents’ mortifying behaviour has long been an unfortunate but inevitable part of adolescence. Recently, however, kids have been getting their own back. Last month Washington DC, not unused to scandal, was presented with a problem of a more insidious kind. Rebellious young sons and daughters started posting their own risqué blogs on MySpace, causing some very red faces among senior Republicans.
It is one thing to prevent your daughters going to the prom or watching The OC; it is another thing stopping them create virtual havoc. Marie Osmond’s Mormon sensibilities were rocked when her daughter’s claims that she was bisexual and idolised Adolf Hitler were broadcast around the cyber stratosphere. MySpace, which began so innocently, had got right to the heart of the powerhouse.
What began three years ago as a way of uniting the online ‘tribes’ of the world has become what mobile phones were to the 1990s. MySpace is not so much a website as an identity. Anyone can create a profile, and five minutes later you have reached cyber fame — and have 55 million potential new friends to make. Names are merely what’s on your school tag — what really matters is your MySpace profile. Where once a theatre group or pub were fertile meeting grounds, now it is MySpace — no more stepping on toes in the local disco, or leaving stuttery messages on the communal answerphone. Now, teenagers are masters of their own world.
With MySpace there are no face-to-face faux pas or gaffes — it allows you to hide behind a screen and completely reinvent yourself. You can post whatever photos you like, and Benny from Arkansas will never know any differently. One look at some of the names — hotlegs, prettyandsmart, lovelylips — suggests there is more than an element of fantasy here. One young buck told me it had effectively become a dating site for him and his friends. ‘The point is, it’s photo led. You put in your profile complete with totally unrepresentative photos. You then see who’s in their group, and see who you fancy out of them. Of course, it’s also good for those who share an interest in Hornby trains, but mostly, it’s for lustful teenagers.’ Probably not what parents want to hear, although MySpace insists that it monitors its users for any dodgy goings on.
Set up in 2003 by Chris deWolfe, and sold this year for a staggering £332.85 million to Rupert Murdoch, MySpace originally became famous for catapulting bands to stardom, or so its marketing department would have us believe. Sandi Thom, the sultry songstress who broadcast her haunting melodies to the MySpace site each night from her basement, may have been helped a little by Sony distributing fliers, although the company is quick to deny it was a publicity stunt. The Arctic Monkeys were well and truly discovered before their fame spread on MySpace, and as for Lily Allen, she had been signed twice already. However, it turns out that now this is the principal way new bands are signed. Sarah Bowden, who runs the music division at Avalon, told me, ‘I have my own page, and people post their music on so I can listen. Since MySpace has boomed I haven’t received one CD or tape through the post. And if I want to go and listen to a new band, I will only do so after I’ve heard them on MySpace.’ Earlier this month, passers by in Covent Garden were amazed to see £5 notes raining down on them. It turned out it was part of a ‘cash-mob’ organised through MySpace to promote a new TV programme (on Fox, also part of the Murdoch stable), where the winner of a competition was given £1,000 to throw into the air and then catch as much as possible. The ‘event’ was to then be shown exclusively on MySpace.
Others are cashing in too: Toby Staveley, who owns Chargebox — lockers in easyInternet cafes, and other places, where you can charge your phone or computer for £1 an hour — has put his product on as a MySpace ‘person’, and encouraged his friends to put it on their ‘friends’ list.
Selling out, some may say, or just another way of using this online paradise for fame wannabees, love-struck teenagers, a capella granny groups or just lonely souls who want someone to talk to.
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