Finding Tomspace

Wow...I never thought that signing up for a Myspace account and trying to befriend Tom Anderson would be so embarrassing.

Needless to say, after I deleted my old Myspace account that my friend created for me (password and all) over four years ago, I felt so lost trying to navigate through the website pages. This website has gone through so many visual changes, that I was actually struggling to figure out how to not only upload a profile picture but to “friend” Tom Anderson. Luckily, I eventually distinguished the “real” Tom after weeding out the imposters.

Then I tried adding a comment to his wall and discovered that you need to be friends with someone before being able to comment. So after friend requesting, I became one of his 273 million+ friends and posted a question on his wall. I asked, “What is your favorite feature about Myspace? It could be anything from its purpose/function to a technological aspect.” I hope he gets the question and responds, because I posted the comment and refreshed the site to see if mine would show up. Strangely, it didn’t.

I tried to avoid asking an extremely personal question since I did not want to appear creepy. And it was a good thing I did. The site sent a notice that first warned viewers about posting inappropriate comments and even made me enter in a code to verify that I am indeed human instead of a computer.

I must admit that I felt really immature for trying to contact him, especially after reading some of the ridiculous comments already on his feed. The comments ranged from thanking him for creating Myspace to random girls wanting to be as popular as he is. On one of his disclaimer texts, he said that we must check his FAQ to see if any of the questions have already been answered. To me, it sounds as if Tom doesn’t exist and the people monitoring his personal profile are actually programmers with automated responses.

It’s also interesting that Tom’s picture has not changed over the last few years…or ever if that. I guess it’s a smart strategy, because people will be able to easily identify him. In another interesting occurrence, I checked my Myspace “notifications” and saw that a random guy named “John Overmyer” requested to be my friend. I do not know him at all and do not think we ever had any run-ins. I accepted it just to figure out how to interact with someone else aside from Tom.

Although I had my account created years ago, surfing this “new” Myspace is definitely bringing back memories. And though I’m biased, I still look at the features and compare them to Facebook. Overall, I think that Myspace is surviving solely due to its ability to freely market artists’ musical product and talent. But who knows what will happen in the next five years…