It is my policy to always be honest with you, my readers, unless
I say something totally wacky. You will notice the importance of
this fact as we discuss Internet blogging in general and the recent
sale of MySpace.com to NewsCorp.
For those of you who have lives outside of the Internet,
MySpace.com is a hybrid of a social-networking Web site and a
blog.
This enables people to have their own Web sites, or
“spaces,” in the fascinating vortex of information
technology and nudity we call the World Wide Web.
There are lots of other Web sites similar to MySpace, like the
Facebook, Friendster and Xanga. However, all of them serve the same
purpose: Internet surfers read these personal “spaces”
and leave insightful and encouraging comments ranging from
“you RAWK!!!” to “you SUCK!!!”
They then add this person to their list of friends, even though
they don’t know this person and will never even meet this
person, who could be a maniacal serial killer with severed heads
arranged in a feng shui pattern around his computer. This is called
“networking.”
The truth is that I don’t really have a ton of respect for
these social networking Web sites because it seems to me they
provide a substitute reality for insecure people whose self-worth
is measured by the number of friends/strangers/stalkers/serial
killers they have in their friend count.
I’m also not really sold on the idea of a blog because I
can only think of a few people who have said intelligent or
meaningful things worth reading on a semi-daily basis during their
lives, and they are: the Dalai Lama, Mark Twain, Sir Isaac Newton
and Hobbes (both the author of “The Leviathan” and
Calvin’s tiger).
But just you try telling this to a blogger, who invariably falls
into one of two categories:
1. Bitter, unattractive pseudo-intellectual college students
lacking real-world experience and blaming everything on the
“mainstream.” These are the people who think they are
really smart but never say anything remotely new or noteworthy, and
who celebrate their individuality by being indistinguishable from
other members of their group.
2. The physically attractive who might not be qualified to go to
college, but their parents find a way in for them anyway.
These are the people who type like they are text messaging (the
appeal of which never ceases to amaze me) ““ “2day i 8 a
@ & c u l8r :=()>.”
Apparently there is a strict set of rules for these bloggers,
the most important of which says: “I swear that as long as I
blog there will be an untold number of spelling, punctuation and
other grammatical errors in my blog, so help me God. If anyone
attempts to point these out to me, I will attempt to make that
person look like either an unintelligent fool or a patronizing
jerk, when it is in fact I in need of third-grade grammar rules.
But that’s OK, because I have a blog and am therefore outside
the rules of proper conduct, LOL.”
It seems that those who blog and participate in MySpace are
happy with what they’re doing, so far be it for me to
discourage them. And I don’t have a personal Web page or a
blog, so I’m essentially basing my opinions on ignorance (but
hey, the president can do it).
I would also like to remind all of you that MySpace has in fact
been sold to none other than NewsCorp, which is owned by Rupert
Murdoch. He has added MySpace to his impressive list of
acquisitions, which include Fox News, the New York Post, the Daily
Mirror, Luxembourg and the Atlantic Ocean.
Some have found this controversial because Intermix Media, the
company that used to own MySpace, was accused of infecting
users’ computers with spyware.
For those who don’t know what spyware is, it’s like
the gonorrhea of computer viruses. It installs stuff on your
computer that makes you look at porn, or gamble, or use weird
German search pages. Your computer also gets really slow, as if its
CPU is being routed through Pakistan.
I know this because I got attacked by spyware last year,
twice.
So I’m pretty much on the anti-spyware bandwagon now. I
ended up having to spend my hard-earned Cal Grant money on a Mac
like all the other Mac users out there, for whom a red-blooded
American establishment PC is simply not good enough.
And it works great ““ no crashes or anything. So I wanted
to warn you all to be careful.
I have a confession to make (remember, honesty): I have been
using spyware in my column. Yes, if you string together the first
letter of the second word of every third sentence, you’ll see
that it spells “wocftuaswgaamkxebee),” which your brain
translates as “send me money.”
So for that I apologize, and I recommend using caution with the
new MySpace ““ unless you’re using a Mac, of course.
If you use MySpace or have your own blog and you want to
complain about something Kaney wrote about it, that’s fine,
but send a copy to him at akaney@media.ucla.edu.