So I’m playing around with some of the social networking sites and I need a few more friends. So, if you use any of the following and you’re looking for a few more people to add, please feel free to add me. In particular I’m trying to get a better feel for FaceBook so I need a few more there so I can see how people are really using it…

Forget that it lets you create awful looking pages and that it’s ultra slow (partially due to the large quantities of photos and slideshows). We’re just talking about normal software problems that would probably save them bandwidth if they fixed/tweaked things (and make our MySpace lives easier and faster). Let’s get everyone to stop wasting clicks and using it better (which will stop wasting bandwidth!). I might even spend more time there if it wasn’t for all the wasted time…
So here we go (I hope Tom is listening):

So it’s a weird web world in MySpace. I’ve been playing around a bit these past few days (and created an account for me) for a few reasons. The original reason was because a few local bands and bars have “space” but not much else in the way of a presence on-line. Then (of course) I found some people I know and linked to them as friends and so on and it consumes a bit of time pretty quickly.

One of the reasons it consumes time is that most of the pages are awful: they don’t load properly, millions of photos and flash slideshows all on one page and the MySpace servers just don’t seem to keep up. Part of this is a million sites with bad layouts that fall off the side of the page, sparkle too much or have transparent text/body and conflict with the background. But like the psychedelic LSD trip that some of these pages resemble, I keep coming back for more. Maybe that’s the appealing part? I’m not really sure. Maybe it should be called MyLSD…

It’s just amazing how awful so many of the pages are. They don’t even render properly in IE on a Windows machine. It’s very bizarre. Please let me clarify, the original layouts load fine, it’s layouts people change (and comments people add). And while you can disable HTML comments, it still shows the HTML code instead of just ignoring it (you can’t edit other’s comments).

But as I’ve said I’ve managed to get sucked in a few times. Adding more people and bands to my friends list (blogroll) and getting exciting when I see another person has added me (you can’t add someone without their permission and vice-versa). Is it worth the time to add myself to the friend roll of some non-local band like the Indigo Girls or Anna Nalick?

All these people have blogs, but most of them don’t blog (or if they tried it gave up ages ago) so it’s just a weird commenting system. A few neat features: Friend’s can blast out a message to everyone who has them as a friend and it shows up in a window at the bottom of your home page (where you can go to edit your pages and be bombarded with advertisements of bands, TV shows and the hot women advertising true.com) where you can choose to read it or not (it’s kinda like a junk mail box from friends but if the title is inviting you may read it). So for example my local bar sent out a message that said something like “Come up tonight because Daniella, Pam and Jane are working tonight” which is interesting since if I was considering going (or actually hadn’t just come home) and knew three of my favorite staff were working I might have gone up.

Some downsides from a Microsoft technical standpoint: The servers appear to get overloaded often, you can’t always login (“technical difficulties”), they seem to force you to have a blog, whether you post or not, the block HTML but still show the code thing I mentioned earlier, can’t edit comments. Every page has just a generic comment place at the bottom of your page (profile comments) but you can’t comment since you are not a friend of yourself nor can you add yourself (just a little odd).

So I set up a profile at MySpace. I wanted to see what it’s like. So far it’s messy. But I set up a profile and now I don’t have any friends :(

So if any of the readers here are from MySpace (or have set up an account to “see what it’s like”) please pop on by and add me as a friend! This weird Tom guy is the only one I know! I’m at http://www.myspace.com/garyjlapointe

Anyone know how to disable the blogging part, since I’m here I don’t really need to be there too.

So it appears these days you can be sexual predator and no one cares. But if you use MySpace to do it you can make the 11 o’clock “news”.

All this MySpace crap junk on TV makes it sound as if as long as you can keep your kids away from MySpace they’re a-okay. That’s like saying if you keep your kids away from the one hoodlum that you know about they won’t get into trouble (and you’re so busy watching for that you’re missing the rest). Teach them some common sense and keep an eye on them. I’m not saying it’ll fix everything, but it’s a lot more sense than this MySpace sewage that’s on the air all the time.

Look at these pre-MySpace Rochester U and RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) Sexual Assault Statistics.

Every two and a half minutes, somewhere in America, someone is sexually assaulted.

One in six American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape, and 10% of sexual assault victims are men.

About 44% of rape victims are under age 18, and 80% are under age 30.

And the really amazing part is that “Since 1993, rape/sexual assault has fallen by over 64%”, imagine how high the numbers were previously. (These stats are from the RAINN site)

I’m sorry I’ve gone on a rant here. I just started with being annoyed at the news covering MySpace from a new angle every day. But once I started looking things up I got on a roll (or maybe it’s a soapbox).

The problem is not the Internet. The problem is people. And according to the Rochester statistics rape appears to be more prevalent in the US, 13 time higher than England (4 times that in Germany and 20 times that of Japan). Of course people are using the Internet for this, they’re using it for everything (good and evil) these days.

All these numbers vary slightly from report to report but even if you decreased the numbers by a factor of ten (or even 100) it’s still obscene what happens in the US or the world. And no matter what the news tells you it’s not the fault of the Internet or even MySpace.

Contrary to the belief that rapists are hiding in the bushes or in the shadows of the parking garage, almost two-thirds of all rapes were committed by someone who is known to the victim. 67% of sexual assaults were perpetrated by a non-stranger – 47% of perpetrators were a friend or acquaintance of the victim, 17% were an intimate and 3% were another relative.
National Crime Victimization Survey, 2004

In the above mentioned 12 page “2004 National Crime Victimization Survey” from the Bureau of Justice Statistics I was curious to how much they attributed to the Internet. I was pretty surprised that they don’t mention the ‘net even once. Going to Bureau of Justice Statistics web site I was surprised how much they also didn’t mention the Internet.