The MySpace phenomenon

By Angelita Caudillo
The Collegian

The growing trend of MySpace.com has become the social event of an entire generation.

Upon logging on, you notice five friends from work; three from school and two from high school have requested to be your friend.

If you are questioning yourself and asking, “what is MySpace?” The real question is “where have you been?”

MySpace is a big networking system where you can create your own community of friends. It enables users to post bulletins, create journals, post pictures, post comments and do many more things. You can meet anyone from co-workers, long lost friends and some even meet their next love interests.

The sudden spurt in how many users have accounts on MySpace is mind bending. It makes you ponder the thought; how many friends does Tom, the former owner, have? Well, he has 28,225,867 friends, but I’m sure that will number will have changed by the time this is printed.

For those of you who are a part of the MySpace world; how many people do you actually know that are on your friend list? Or are you just trying to beat out that person you’ve hated since high school to prove you have more friends than him or her. Now let’s all remember, when accepting friends on MySpace, it’s not a popularity contest.

Some Fresno State students’ said they are considering deleting their own accounts because, “too many people have MySpace now.”

Other students think it is a great way to keep in contact with people and is cheaper than calling.

“I think MySpace is another great way to stay in touch with my friends,” said senior business major Diana Chavez.

It does make it easier to talk to friends who live in other cities without running a high phone bill.

Another bad trend in the network are the continuous chain letters. It feels like a repeat of elementary school when you come online and see that another chain letter has been posted on your comments.

“Quick, you need to send it to 15 people in the next two minutes or you’re going to have bad luck for the next 25 years.” Seeing the repeated chain letter circulating on your message board is bad luck enough in itself.

When you first enter MySpace it looks like any other Web site, like Friendster or Hi5. The only difference between those Web sites and MySpace, is that it can often become an addiction. Some people have their profiles setup with glittered words, music videos and colorful backgrounds. How much time do these people have on their hands to do this stuff? You know some of these effects take awhile to post up, so when do they have time for real things like school and work?

Don’t get me wrong, MySpace.com is a good source of networking but sometimes it just gets abused.You know this is a never-ending epidemic, connecting a number of people, when your manager at work is gives you his MySpace URL.