From The Ooze:

MySpace has a sort of power in it… not an earth-changing or revolutionary power, but a compelling allure for people to participate. And for those of you thinking “power” might be a bit strong, let me throw a couple numbers at you that beg to differ: Total registered usership: approximately 70 million. New users EACH DAY: 220,000. 220,000?!? Are you kidding me?

So what is it about MySpace that has caused 70 million ostensibly intelligent, social people to learn the ins and outs of a relatively limited, sit-at-home, somewhat counter-intuitive system and spawned countless other communities dedicated to nothing other than making your MySpace look good?

Is it that MySpace is simply a superior product, a well-designed, effective system that fits a need people didn’t know they had? That could explain some of this. Oddly, however, this is not the case, with quite the opposite probably closer to true. For all it’s towering popularity, it’s actually a maddening system to use, and extremely inefficient. A recent New York Times article focused on the overwhelming volume of page views on MySpace as an indicator of efficiency. It found that a reasonably designed alternative would easily reduce the number of pages an average user views on MySpace by at least three-quarters. It is a limited indicator to be sure, but it gets the point across. Add to that the fact that while MySpace encourages customization, all of the best and most intuitive tools for customizing aren’t even part of the application at all and must be sought out independently by the user. It seems to fly in the face of all conventional wisdom saying that ease of use and efficiency are directly linked to popularity. And yet people flock to it by the hundreds of thousands.

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For anyone who believes people are made who they are for a reason, this might be uncomfortable territory. I would go so far as to say if you are someone who values being real as a crucial part of human interaction, this SHOULD be uncomfortable territory. Unfortunately, it gets worse. There are two other major ingredients in the mix that make this cocktail not just uncomfortable, but nothing less than a threat to the health of our soul.

Ingredient 1: We are an increasingly voyeuristic society.
Ingredient 2: We stubbornly continue to believe a great lie: Somebody cares.

MySpace panders to both of these things, giving us a venue that promises us affirmation and easy popularity with only a couple clicks. Could it be that our growing voyeurism comes as a direct result of our insatiable desire for affirmation? Witness the story of hotornot.com: People sign up by the thousands to anonymously post photos of themselves for total strangers to rate. The site grows so rapidly in popularity that some brainiac decides to make a tv show out of it. And then, in the inevitable flop of the tv show and popular backlash, it loses it’s coolness. When it loses it’s coolness, any validation from it loses it’s value. And the site trends downward (www.big-boards.com). People weren’t there for hotornot.com, they were there for the affirmation. And when it was no longer available, they began to migrate elsewhere. MySpace would be a great place to have a little fun, have a laugh at your own, or somebody else’s, expense. Yet a quick look through MySpace profiles reveals the damning truth: Most profiles are truthfully, embarassingly earnestly, about us. We are falling all over ourselves to offer up our online persona for consumption. I couldn’t bring myself to even have a picture of my girlfriend that I’m mad about on my profile because it didn’t FIT MY COLOR SCHEME, much less post a picture or write a blurb that shows me at anything less than maximum coolness. Look at me! Read what people say about me! Read what I say about myself! Look at all my friends! Again, affirmation. This is what MySpace is all about, and I bought in.

And then the second ingredient: We’re convinced that somebody cares. This is where the hint to our most true motives are revealed. What’s the point of all of this, of blogs and online profiles, if we don’t think anyone will pay attention? Yet despite overwhelming evidence that nobody is watching, we churn out pages and pages of personal info that will be seen by next to no one. Chew on this info from a recent study of blogs: Of the 4.12 million registered blogs, 2.72 million are abandoned, meaning they haven’t been updated in at least two months (Perseus). That’s 66%! Think about the story of hotornot.com… is it such a stretch to imagine that countless many of these blogs were abandoned once the writers realized that no one was reading? Again, when affirmation is no longer available, people migrate elsewhere.

Read the rest here: http://www.theooze.com/articles/article.cfm?id=1488

This is a good piece to help us understand the soul of our culture.