Myspace:Ur Community

As you recall, our blog assignment for Unit 3 was to create a Myspace or Facebook page if we didn't already have one. If you read my blog, "Me, Myspace, and I," you are already aware of my cyber communication deficiencies and unending, justifiable yet ridiculous, fears. Aside from checking my son's Myspace page on a regular basis to make sure he's not communicating inappropriately, I really have no experience in any so-called "cyber community." Sure, like the majority of western civilization I too use search engines...often, in fact. If I have a question, I typically ask my good friend Google before I ask anyone. To be quite frank, I more often get an accurate, unbiased response from Google than I do from my family and friends! In any case, what all of this excessive babble is leading up to is the fact that I am not familiar with the whole cyber communication realm. Therefore, when asked to join a cyber community, I thought, what better way to be a part of the cyber community than to actually move forward with my Myspace bust from Unit 3?


According to Webster's New World Dictionary, published 1995 by Simon & Schuster, Inc, the word "community" means any group living in the same area or having interests, work, etc... in common. Although I choose to term the word "community" before the "or," I guess the cyber community would come into play following the "or." My idea of "community" has historically been any area in which you live your life...not work, not function, but where you live and breath and enjoy being yourself with those you care about most. That being said, taking into consideration the feelings of many teenagers and adults who spend the majority of their free time online chatting with friends, blogging, seeking out new friends on Myspace and Facebook and the like, and doing whatever else they choose to do on the Internet, I guess my idea of "community" falls in line with those living and breathing in the cyber community.



The first thing I did upon making the decision to use Myspace as Mycommunity, was to change the information contained within the section, "Who I'd like to meet." For Unit 3, I had only worked up enough courage to write a tiny bit about myself. In response to the information I presented, I received four friend requests the first day. That in and of itself overwhelmed me, especially since three of the four photos attached to those friend requests appeared fake. Just a little background - I'm originally from NJ, and therefore, I am not real warm and fuzzy at the onset, at least, not until I get to know someone deeply. Your typical northeasterner doesn't typically make eye contract or socialize with people they don't know just for the sake of being "friendly." "Friendly" is something that transpires over time once you get to know someone and both parties decide they "have each other's back." Since I came to Florida, I've been subjected to a whole new way of thinking...the warm-and-fuzzy-right-away way of thinking. Unfortunately, that way has been a facade in most cases and led to many of the knife wounds which still scar my back. Hence, I decided many years ago to maintain my "joisey" outlook. Shoot, it worked for me the first half of my life, why not the rest? Anyway, back to the subject at hand - at that point, I changed my profile to indicate that I had no interest in meeting new people, but rather, wanted only to strengthen the relationships I already had. I was very successful and received not one more friend request. So, in preparing for the instant blog, I altered my profile yet again to indicate my need to strengthen those relationships already started, but also a desire to meet people with interests such as my own. Since I chose to step further in this unchartered direction, I was honest about myself in my profile and even included one of my more peronal blogs from this class on my page. I dove into the Myspace fishbowl.

I received friend requests on a daily basis, anywhere from two to eight per day. During this ten day window of bombarding requests, with each passing day I felt a little more at ease at the possibility of letting someone from the outside into my private fishbowl. Ultimately, I only developed one "myspace friend." I let three requests through; the others all appeared to be fake photos with real pages which prompted a flashing red light. Of those three, two seemed to just want to add a so-called "friend" or should I say "hash mark" to their endless list of "friends." The one I kept on my list seems ok, but I'm still skeptical.

Maybe I didn't allow enough time to really dealve into the assignment as intended. With each day I truly feel slightly more at ease about the whole cyber world; however, the thought still lingers in the back of my mind that these one dimensional images seen on my computer monitor may not be the person I think they are. Maybe this whole assignment is too much for me to really grasp whole-heartedly, but I know had I not taken this class, I never would have taken this path; for that, I am grateful for this class and the experience I would have missed. All in all, I think I'll stick with my three dimensional community and leave the cyber community to the rest of you cyber-savvy people.