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| Wayne David Fiemster |
| Main » Opinion » How to Win in MySpace |
by Wayne David Fiemster; revised 2006-03-15
TO START THE ESSAY on a completely irrelevant note, I laughed the instant I learned the creator of MySpace had the same name of a fictional character from The Matrix, Thomas Anderson (Neo is the character in reference). For the first few days of my using MySpace, I just called him Tom and didn't really care what the rest of his name was (nor does anyone else who isn't actively hunting him down to kill him).
On to more important matters, the concept of MySpace is changing us even if we don't use MySpace; social interaction is no longer the same since the creation of the Internet. Email, instant messaging, social bookmarking (as outlined by Web 2.0) and file-sharing make up communication of the 21st century.
From a superficial standpoint, I was told by everyone to whom I pitched the idea of MySpace being a contest that the method of winning was to have the most friends. Now, I've been watching the tactics of the individuals on my "friends list", and somewhat came to more of a sociological idea of "winning" MySpace.
There's something that keeps people going to MySpace, while they simultaneously loathe it. It's a simple idea, and boils down to social manipulation of your friends. Don't believe me? I'm a genius, I know what I'm talking about.
People like looking at something pretty. More specifically, (second time using the word) superficially attractive things. For those of you who then wonder why women always go for the guys in the hot-rods rather than the guys in the beat up 1995 Honda Civics (that everyone and their mother seem to be driving nowadays), who actually have more money (I'm not saying she's a Gold-digger..).
If you were to design a somehow (yet not likely) unique MySpace layout for your page, the trap is set. The first person from your "friends list" to notice you changed your layout automatically has a reason to continue being your friend. Partly bragging rights for being friends with "the guy with the cool layout". Then you're doing them a favor. User-to-user favors make MySpace go round.
"Leave me a comment and I'll give you one"
It's a simple trade-off system that accounts for 50% of the things I read from people on my friends-list. The problem I had with that, it's almost expected that you do what you're told. By your own peers. (No, I don't have issues with pride, there's just something inherently wrong with that.)
The thing about people, when you discover Joe from your friends list is also on the friends list of fourteen people you've never heard of, you're probably thinking you somehow know these other people. You don't. Trust me, you don't and you never will. MySpace etiquette demands you ask these people to add you to their friends list, in order for you to do the same. For some reason, no one takes the initiative to just add the person. Or perhaps someone has new pictures. Demands come out of the woodwork that you comment say something nice (that you probably don't really mean) about the picture, and they will return the favor. Somewhat manipulative, isn't it?
Regardless of ethics, the commonwealth scheme of MySpace sets up an economic tier of users. At the bottom of this tier are the users who want to be added. Commonwealth kicks in when these users ask you to add them, and they will add you. The trade-off has initiated. This system of trading is never completed, the next step of MySpace sociology takes place.
More remarkably on MySpace than anywhere else (actually, the only place you'll ever see such activity), Bulletins posted by users show themselves to be the only feature of MySpace in which users show a unique/diverse spirit. During any part of the week, I noticed and continue to see bulletins with the same titles, and the same content on a repeated basis. You'll never see this at the post office, three average joes posting Xeroxed copies of the same concert flyer. You'll never see that, ever. What's even more remarkable, is how bulletins on MySpace now follow the same format (almost similar to horoscopes which makes repetative bulletins more creepy than annoying):
Emotional Title: This is something you can relate to. Everyone on MySpace (or at least the people (friends) you know and probably don't actually care about as much as you exhibit) feels the same way about it. The call to action usually appears at this point in the entry, and is always a plea to repost the bulletin with the same title. If you don't, something bad will happen, if you do, something you've always wanted to happen, will happen.
Undoubtedly, this was something that pissed me off. Lack of originality1, unique thinking and doing what your friends told you to invariably resulted in a ridiculous amount of bulletins with the same title because friends (basically) do what their friends tell them.
Even more confounding is the idea that copying and pasting the same bulletins as your friends somewhat defeats both the purpose of posting a bulletin, and having even the desire to repost what was already posted by someone else. Imagine going to a city pub that has music groups performing, and having someone repeating everything announced by the DJ, or whoever announces the next performing group. Bulletins benefit everyone on the friends list in that they get the same message, simultaneously even; echoing bulletins, is erroneous.
Reviewing the three (well, really, two) factors of MySpace, aesthetics (appeal, charm), commonwealth (sharing goods, favors, deeds) and public agenda (mass publication of what you want), the key to MySpace is simple: CONTROL.
In order to win the contest of MySpace, one doesn't have to have the most friends, the most comments or the best pictures. How one controls their friends is how you "win" MySpace. Make them reload your userpage over and over because you have the coolest, most colorful (or colorless) layout. Make them do your bidding by pretending to have an interest in them and commenting on their pictures (only because they said to) so you'll recieve more comments from them (by default for having more pictures than they do), get your word across and make people do what you want with bullitens. MySpace is a game of users controlling users.
Writing this article, extemporaneously even, I learned something. Even though controlling your friends will help you to win MySpace, the cliche does kick in "everybody's a winner". It is a true fact, you are being controlled by your friends, whilst at the same time you are controlling them, and the friends they have. Everyone is on an equal playing field controlling one another, while the direct methods of doing so, they are not. Everyone wins MySpace in a contest to which there is no prize, nor an end.
MySpace set into stage a series of social tactics that will be echoed even after it's end. TagWorld, a new social interaction website, boasts its user queue to be made up of ex-MySpace users and better features. However, the tactics of MySpace will replicate themselves within the TagWorld enviroment and user infrastructure. TagWorld could degenerate into a second MySpace with different functions, yet same forms of social manipulation between the users. If that's the case, what's the point? If the website's primary marketing pitch is the celebration of "ex-MySpace" users, nothing is being accomplished by inviting a "flawed" number of people who were exposed to an unethical technique of controlling their friends.
Maybe that's why I simultaneously hate it, yet cannot complete my routine of scouring the Internet for updates until I see what my "friends" have done on MySpace in the past eight hours. Who knows. As far as I can tell, it's annoying, yet irresistable. I'm awful.