MyWackoSpace Blog

Is Myspace sneaking up on you at school? Surely, according to the majority of Myspace users ageing from 13 to 18, Myspace is addicting enough that the answer could be ‘yes’. Think about it, during your free times at school, school work is just too stressing to do. When sitting in front of a computer, would you rather do research for a history paper or browse through your friends’ Myspace profiles? Everyone knows the answer to that. Although Myspace brings entertainment to the individuals, teachers and parents surely do not feel the same.

“There’s a time for everything.” Ever heard that saying? Therefore, many shall argue that the time for Myspace is at home after the kids have finished their homework. Some schools have even gone to the extent of blocking sites such as this one, even e-mail sites such as Hotmail or Gmail. A few even go to the extent of suspending students if they are caught writing blogs during school hours.

A Student says…

“I was never really into computers and browsing through websites. Myspace changed all that. It is now a site that I visit most. It is a great way to stay in touch with friends and to see what’s going on with them. I get to see new pictures which shows me different lifestyles around the world and that entertains me. I usually go on Myspace during school time and after school. It is quite addictive, wherever you look at a computer screen in school you see the Myspace page.”

Annie, 14

A Teacher says…

“Students lose concentration because of Myspace. I have seen them on this site and hear them talk about it during class. I assume it has become an obsession for most teens, and that is worrisome. There should be a limit to everything, and this should access to these sites should not be permitted at school, for obvious reasons.”

Mr. Robert Andrews

A Parent says…

“I’m a mother of two teenage girls, and I believe in giving my children their privacy. I usually don’t look through their computers, because I trust that they know their limits. My girls talk about Myspace and I know what it consists of. I don’t see any harm in that. Everyone just wants to post pictures of themselves and their friends, that’s the fun part about being a teenager. However, I do agree that this should not interfere with school work, because that concern’s the child’s future.”

Mrs. Joanna Frayne

Look around you, at least one person in the crowd has a well-known personal page named ‘Myspace’, and that person can might as well be you! There has been a gradual rise in popularity since the day our friend, Tom, came up with the master plan. At first, you would think that Myspace users only consist of stereotype teenagers who long to get compliments from their photos and/or those who want to find and stay in touch with long lost friends. However, Myspace is so much more than that. Yes, not only teens consider logging into Myspace addictive, but also the elderly, and music artists! What a great way to gain popularity! Since 2003, there is approximately 60 million users of Myspace around the world. Through Myspace, one is able to search for their favorite artists in order to see their photos and listen to their music easily. And plus, you would feel less guilty of spending hours on Myspace, because well, why should you? 50 cent has it too!
An artist’s page on Myspace, like any other Myspace pages, enables fans to add their idols as their friends, leave comments and image comments. Obviously you won’t get commented back, so don’t expect anything! Few questions that probably go on in many people’s minds are “are these pages fake? Are they just crazy fans who create an account pretending to be the award-winning artists?” We cannot really prove or find the answer to these questions, nonetheless it probably won’t make a difference in our minds anyway. Looking at various artists’ pages, comments left come in a variety of form. It varies from praises to pornographic images. What is the point of leaving those images? Is it to make yourself stand out? Or has the level of people’s minds become so shallow that they think by showing the world their interest (or obsession), people would consider them as “cool” or simply funny.
Such comments are not only left on artists’ page, obviously. Look into the pages of your own friends, you will notice that some comments are completely useless.

Yet, we do not take that into account because leaving and getting comments is part of the enjoyable experiences of Myspace. Some comments are left just to get attention, some are left because of the thought that since they received a comment, they are obliged to comment back. Some are even left involuntary, such as people actually telling their friends to “please comment me more!”. Isn’t there a slight amount of absurdity in this?
Myspace is practically all about appearance, wanting people to see the best side of you. Don’t get the wrong idea, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Every single Myspace user will make their page as unique as possible, corresponding to their style. Everyone who has Myspace will want their page to have lots of viewers, and one easy way to do that is by their default photo. Think about it, when your friends change their default photo, aren’t you tempted to click on his/her name out of curiosity? Don’t you want to see the enlarged version of the photo or want to see what other photos they added? Without sounding desperate, telling people to please comment on your page, the trick is to constantly update your page. A recommended site for this is Mywackospace.com.
This article may give a bad impression of Myspace users, but this is the fun part of reality. The irony of it is, there are so many different kinds of people that you are able to meet through this network, and yet everyone longs for the same thing. I don’t mean to sound hypocritical, because in fact, I am also one of the 60 million users. Oops, 80 million users :).

yep, you read right! The damn Editor is out! There are still few things not working and few things missing. I hope you can give me some feedback about the editor. Also, if you can make it bugless by reporting errors in this post that would be great ;)!

Please help us and spread the word about the new editor!

OK dudes and dudesses!

I got some nice screenshots to show you people.

Here we go the editor in production:

Ya ok, it looks ugly now, but click on the image and you’ll see the bigger version of it.

You want more shots of the editor?

Here we go:

So? Like it? The editor just works in Firefox, therefore I suggest you to download Firefox NOW! Nah, just kidding. It’ll work for IE aswell. Anyway, there are some neat features in the editor that you’ll get addicted to it.

It’ll be ready approximately in a day or two or three or duno :). It’ll be ready soon. As you know complications happen all the time. Nothing to worry. You’ll get your myspace editor :).

P.S. for shady webmasters out there :).

This is copyrighted material. I hold a copyright ownership for it, so watch out

Hello all!

I removed the function that you got to be registered to post comments. Now you can post a comment without problems so please do. I would appreciate some feedback from my users, and some input to improve the site. Come on! Let me know!

Yep, you heard right.

You might be wondering why we did not update the site with new features. Well, we are working on the MySpace Editor which is still under heavy beta and construction. So, keep tight! We are going to launch the new editor soon these days.

Morever, after the launch of the editor (which is pain in the ass, hard thing to do) we will flood you with a lot of updates, and cool widgets for you to play with.

We have a damn damn damn long todo list so don’t worry. You’ll never get tired of this site and blog :).

“Patience is a virtue”

As you have already realized our site is running on a new server! In fact, the site is hell fast. I am damn, impressed of what the hosting guys did for my site. We are currently on a Opteron 246 with 4GB Ram and with a 10MBPS connection. Well OKOKOK! I get it! You don’t give a damn of what kind of server this site is running on lol. But I just had to say it. Enjoy the new ride.

Hello you geek boys and girls that read this blog. Did you find some of the articles a bit interesting? Just a little bit? If you think you did or you really hated these article posts then tell me!

Anyway, these days I received few emails from you guys asking for help. Well! I set up these two pages: Help With Graphics and Help With Codes.

Registration is requiered. Sorry! I don’t want SPAM

Being a geek is all about not being a part of the mainstream. A person being a geek and a party animal is as acceptable a description for a person as, running catalyst drivers on an nVidia 6600GT. Like John Katz describes in his article, Geek Life, a geek’s life is not a glamorous one simply because he’s never around happening places, wouldn’t want to be. You won’t find him in proms or high school parties, he is not a teacher’s pet or a champion, hasn’t had many dates, if any and dreams of getting laid some day.

The not being a part of the mainstream is something that a geek accepts in order to pursue his interests in a specific skill-set or imagination and a strong case of neophilia comes naturally to most of them. But, I disagree with Katz to an extent here, personal experience with a couple of friends makes me believe that, geeks want to socialize, they just don’t know where to start. Obviously a geek is not game for insanities but he sure is willing to taste the glamour.

Geeks already have so much computer stuff to do, like tweaking the system, reading RSS feeds and blogs, looking for all sorts of tech updates, emailing, updating blog and website, posting on forums, that socializing and making real life friends comes last in their list, leave alone making girlfriends. Socializing, making friends or girlfriends comes last in a geeks list is primarily because of fear of being humiliated, being unable to make an impression.

Yes, geeks are known to have problems in interacting with people, to feel uncomfortable in public events, so avoids being in one and act funny around a girl he wants to date, no, they are not introverts, just different. They are either brought up in a certain way which infuses this psychological state or they simply choose not to be good at it.

However, like every other human a geek is also a social animal and wants to socialize, that’s where online social networking websites come in, in his life. It’s a fact that, the social life of a modern western geek is more or less limited to a very small and restricted group of real life friends and a large number of friends connected through online social networks, emails and instant messengers.

Social networking websites help geeks in making friends, even finding a girlfriend. Like Mikki Halpin and Victoria Maat mention in their article, A Girl’s Guide to Geek Guys, girls know that geeks make good friends and boyfriends and the best place to look for them is, online in one of the social networking websites. Even geeks find it easier to make friends with a girl on a social networking website like MySpace, who easily accepts a friend request and also comments back if you comment on her profile, in other words being friends with a girl and making conversations, which otherwise is like a dream never to come true offline.

MySpace is the most popular social networking website over the internet offering a host of features such as interactive network of photos, blogs, user profiles, groups, and an internal e-mail and chat system. As of December 2005, MySpace was the world’s fifth most popular English language website and the eighth most popular in the world (according to acknowledged Alexa Internet Ratings). Like I mentioned in my other article, “Is MySpace a Space for geeks?”, MySpace plays an important role in the life of a western geek, when it comes to socializing. As a geek starts spending more time on these sites, he starts making more friends and becomes more addicted to the system. Then one day he joins or is invited to another such site and another circle of networking starts simultaneously, after a while he joins many more social networking sites. The outcome of this process is that, the geeks is more willing than ever to socialize, finds socializing something more acceptable to his geekish personality and once through that stage, he starts attending meets or parties thrown by his close friends and at some stage random parties, he interacts with new people in the parties and after a few meets and parties he suddenly finds that, that mental block on socializing is gone!

Most of the MySpace users would have already answered in a “no”, but let me tell you, there’s more to it, however, I must clarify that, I am not making a statement here, just trying to put forth my views. Social networking sites refer to a category of websites which help friends, business partners, or individuals with similar interests stay connected through a variety of simplified web applications. These websites, given enough exposure, become extremely popular with time because of the number of options they offer to stay connected. These sites also help a geek in making up for the loss he/she faces in real social life. Loss in terms of inability to socialize, make friends and find a date or girl/ boy friend.

What makes a person, a geek?

Dictionaries give different definitions for the term geek which can be surmised as, a person who is known to have chosen concentration rather than conformity, who pursues skill (especially technical skill) and imagination, not mainstream social acceptance. Every human has interest in specific areas of life and pursues it with great zeal but, when a person gets fascinated, perhaps obsessively, with obscure or very specific areas of knowledge and imagination, he becomes a geek, this definition/ explanation is obviously generic and the use of the term “geek” is colloquial and there is no definite official meaning of the word geek.

Geeks and socializing

It’s known that a geek has problems in socializing, when a person is referred to as a geek, it is additionally assumed that he or she is not good at socializing, is someone who would avoid public events, prom, parties and all socializing events except those which are “geeks only”. There can be various reasons for why a geek has problems in socializing, including but not limited to, how and where the person was raised, peer influence or self-perception.

Its not that geeks don’t want to socialize, most of the geeks are just bad at it and whatever their skills might be, they are afraid to experiment when it comes to people, fearing mainly humiliation, so the alternative adopted is, avoidance. After a certain period, geeks, mostly young ones, find themselves incapable of socializing but, most of them wish they could. However, most of the geeks have friends and relationships, how do they do it if they can’t socialize, must be your question. Well, social networking websites is the answer.

Online social networking

As of 2005, there were over 300 high-traffic (over 500,000 page views per day) social networking websites. Many of these also offer blog hosting or offer blogging as an inherent option in the profile, like MySpace. Some top of the line social networking websites are MySpace, Friendster and LiveJournal. MySpace outstripped Friendster and LiveJournal to become the most popular English-language social networking website last year with over 65 million users. Today MySpace is an important part of contemporary teenage culture in the Western world and “the place” for western geeks to fulfill their socializing needs.

MySpace has more reasons for a geek to remain hooked on

Each MySpace profile contains two standard “blurbs”: “About Me” and “Who I’d Like to Meet.” Profiles also contain (optional) sections about standard interests, such as: music, television, books, and movies, as well as specific personal details, such as marital status, physical appearance and income. Profiles also contain a blog. A part of customizing one’s MySpace is uploading images. One of these images can be chosen to be the “default image,” the default image will then appear on the profile and next to the user’s name on comments, messages, etc. There is also a count of the friends the user has, most geeks get conscious by this and try to add as many friends as possible. A total of eight friends, or the “Top 8,” are shown directly on the profile, with a link to a page which lists all of the user’s friends. Below this is the “comments” section, wherein the user’s friends may leave comments about the user for all viewers to read. MySpace profile layouts can change entire look with many different editors available for free.

At MySpace a geek gets a chance to impress people by customizing his/ her profile, meeting and conversing with people online eliminates the element of physical confrontation which is one of the main reasons why geeks find it difficulties to make friends in real life, this helps a geeks, gives him/ her confidence in real life and makes up for inability to socialize in real life. Not only that, people who find geeks difficult to deal with in real life find it a lot easier to be friends with them online. And, girls believe geeks make good friends and boyfriends, that’s true, and the best place to find a geek guy is obviously a social network like MySpace. Like I said, MySpace is a space for geeks.

MyWackoSpace.com