My_____

Many of us 90's kids remember those days, the MySpace days. It was the cyber life of high school that defined who you were since 2003. It was the first social network to hit the web with instant popularity and was only a matter of time until everyone and their moms were on MySpace as well. Facebook may be the most used social network to date, but from 2006 to 2008, MySpace was the number one site.

For some unknown reason, MySpace was such a big deal. It defined your cool status and it was critical to have comments on every uploaded photo and hundreds of friends. To not make it to someone's Top 8 meant you weren't a good enough friend, and if you couldn't fill yours , you were a loser. If you filled your Top 8 with Tom or Tila Tequila or your favorite bands, you obviously had no friends. To delete someone from your Friends list meant the end of friendship, and only when you changed your status to "In a relationship" were you officially dating someone. Everyone knew that you were a "Swinger" only because you were too heartbroken to admit that you are "Single".

Looking back at it now, it was such a silly site. No one will be able to convince any of us in our 20's why it mattered so much to have the perfect Top 8 Friends or the coolest layouts. I remember spending countless hours on perfecting my MySpace page, down to the line breaks and column widths. I remember being excited over having taken the perfect default picture and editing it to give it just the right MySpace touch. I would spend another good hour to come up with the most clever caption scripted in bold and wait impatiently until the next day to find comments from all my friends.

What did that do? What did I get out of spending all that time on a silly website? I... guess I did become a handy html editor? Had it not been for MySpace, I would not have learned how to modify fonts or insert a linked image until college. But I didn't myspace in high school to develop my web-designing skills. I must have believed it to mean something, much more than what it should have.

When I finally signed up for Facebook at the end of my Senior year, I, along with millions of other users, drifted away from MySpace. It is rather unfortunate because it had so much potential to become what Facebook has become. But I sure am glad to retain it in my past and keep it buried along with all of those MySpace photos I took.