I remember way back in 2004 to 2007-ish, there was this thing called “MySpace.” Everyone had a MySpace. Not a “MySpace Account,” that would have apparently been too lame to say. Just a straight up MySpace. Maybe a “MySpace page,” if you were lucky. Everyone could see the value of MySpace, which allowed users to post personal information about themselves with absolutely zero security. Everyone had to have one of those photos they took of themselves, so their arm wandered awkwardly off-camera, like they needed a hand from the person behind you.
Seriously, did no one have friends smart enough to work a camera?
People could talk to each other on their MySpaces via the process of a shitty little comment board that looked ugly as hell. And if you were someone who get their head around basic HTML code, you could bedazzle your MySpace so that it put Jennifer Love Hewitt’s “va-jay-jay” to shame. Plus, porn-bots up the wazzoo (not as cool as it sounds).
And then in 2008, Facebook overtook MySpace in the Alexa rankings and things have never been quite as rosy for MySpace. Somehow (I think it was the HTML-bedazzling bullshit) MySpace became known as the social network of registered sex offenders (in 2007, they deleted 29,000 profiles belonging to registered sex offenders) who were looking for their next victims. And I think that, collectively, society generally agreed that the horrors of a site that could make a person like Tila Tequila famous outweighed the positives of a site that could make a person like Lily Allen famous.
Look what you did, you fucking monsters!
And then they were purchased by Rupert Murdoch. Needless to say, their day in the sun was over. Luckily, everyone with a working brain had skipped town for Facebook a year or so earlier.
But as of last year, there were still nearly 100 million unique people who looked at a MySpace page. Well, those days are gone, folks. According to TechCrunch, from January to February of this year, MySpace’s unique visitors declined 14.4%, dropping from 73 million to 63 million.
I, for one, am overjoyed to hear this news. I never really “got” MySpace to begin with, in particular because of the above features. And while I half-loathe Facebook (after all, it isn’t cool to hate it), at least it provides a worthwhile service in that it connects me to people whom I barely knew in high school, while also allowing me to (for the most part) avoid anyone trying to sell photos of themselves boning. Take a knee, MySpace: that’s how you do it.
