My Space... or yours?
By Eden E. Estopace
The Philippine Starweek
The Sunday Magazine Of The Philippine Star
July 16, 2006
Once you sign up for a MySpace account, you can be connected to a universe of other online souls whose online identities may be totally different from their real selves, or you could begin to see someone you know in real life in a different light by viewing his or her MySpace profile.
By adding people into your network of friends, you could have access to their online lives, know what they are thinking (or at least what they want people to think they're thinking), who they're with, where they've been over the weekend, what they're reading, watching or listening to, who's dating who, where is the newest gig, what makes them tick, and who their other friends are in a kind of voyeuristic exercise which is also in a way fueled by a healthy dose of youthful exhibitionism.
"Find and be found" might as well be the mantra of MySpace culture. Find people, events, products, things, discussion groups, music, podcasts. In turn, people will also find you, see through you, collaborate with you, have fun with you. And since you can change your display name and profile as often as you like, you could be many different persons and attract a different crowd everytime you switch personalities.
The site is actually a complete aggregation of people-to-people communication media previously offered in many websites separately.
In this veritable beehive of manufactured identities, it is impossible to ascertain if your new friend is really the emerging rock superstar in another campus or the elusive Osama bin Laden in disguise. People who play on the safe side add only the friends or friends of friends they know in real life and us the medium to keep up to date on each other's life without having to meet physically.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment