MySpace or Yours?

    There is something about the Internet that brings out the best and the worst in people. When the Internet was new, people used it for  information, for fun, for exchanging ideas and opinions via e-mail, bulletin or message boards and chatrooms. It was all pretty harmless. 

    But the Internet’s age of innocence is long over. In the new web environment-Web2 or the “living web” in geek-speak-bolder, riskier gambles fuel the passion for virtual entertainment as audiences become active participants and readers turn into content makers.

    This is when the danger lies for gullible teenagers with only a teeny weeny notion of impulse control. It has been long established that people cannot be that upfront if they are face to face with a real person. But with the cloak of a nonymity that the Internet affords, there is no room for subtlety and everybody is fair game. It is easier , too, to get lost in the deep voids of the net.

    The newest online sensation, MySpace.com, a competitor of Friendster, which is more popular here in the Philipines, provides more than just an avenue for chatting with strangers.

    With MySpace, the medium of personal exchange has shifted from real-time person-to-person conversations to a virtual world of online colaborations like displaying and sharing photos, videos, blogs, personal homepages and a whole lot of things you want to showcase about yourself.

    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 in 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 stick, 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.