A Week Without MySpace

Illustration by Barry Langer / VOX Staff

By Yasmin Miller / VOX Staff
 
Like more than 16 million teens around the world, I am addicted to the Internet. Or rather, the things you can do on the Internet — from instant messaging to looking up stuff on Google, God’s gift to researchers. I long ago left the stage of denial about my problem. I am fully aware of my addiction, and to some degree I am proud of it. The Internet is fun; why should I be ashamed?
 
So when my computer crashed on a recent Sunday afternoon, I was more than a little grieved. However, I also had two projects that I’d waited until the last minute to finish due the next day, so I was not fully able to realize the gravity of the situation until the week that followed — a week of terror and realization.
 
Day One
With my computer being out, I started off thinking that my day was going to suck, only to be pleasantly surprised. I woke up when I was supposed to, remembered my lunch money, and even wore socks that (almost!) matched. It was not until lunch time that I realized something was horribly wrong. I sat down at my lunch table a little later than usual due to a long line and found all of my friends laughing.
 
 “What’s so funny?” I asked innocently.
“Have you seen that Power Rangers parody on MySpace?”
 I blinked and dropped my fork, altogether startled, realizing something that had not occurred to me before.
 
“N-no,” I managed, “my computer isn’t working.”
 A silence settled over my friends, and they all pinned me with looks of pity, each being lucky enough to have a functioning computer at home.
 
“That sucks,” one of them said pressing a comforting hand to my shoulder.
“It’s only until Sunday,” I said lightly, and they all sort of nodded and returned to their meals. I knew they were thinking the same thing I was: “How am I going to live a whole week without MySpace?”
 
Day Two
“What did people do before MySpace?” I asked Kristie as we walked to class.
“Nothing,” she replied.
I shook my head, “No, they had to do something, but what?”
 
Kristie snapped her fingers, “instant messaging!” I was hard pressed not to cry or choke her for mentioning yet another commodity of the World Wide Web.
“Before the Internet,” I said, forcing myself not to grit my teeth.
 
Kristie was silent. She probably, like me, couldn’t imagine a world without the Internet. I’ve heard of rumors of recreational communication via beepers (those small, foreign-looking devices from the ’90s attached to doctors’ hips — and then, later on, teens’) but as I did not know where to get one, much less operate it, I immediately dismissed that idea.
 
“You could just text more,” she offered helpfully.
I shook my head sadly. Due to the discovery of a new, rather cute boy in my chem class I’d gone over my allotted texting as of a week ago.
 
“What did we do before that?”
“We called each other.”
“Oh yeah,” I said nodding. I still do this from time to time — call people — in instances where directions are needed, grandparents are involved or romance is pursued. I’d just forgotten that people could call each other without purposes greater than these.
 
What were they called again? Oh, yes, social calls. I smiled gratefully at her and resolved to do this phone calling.
 
Day Three
I went in alphabetical order through my cell’s phone book.
The first six people I called are either busy or did not answer. However, the seventh, Carrie*, a girl with a little too much pep whom I’ve never been fond of, answered.
 
After the formalities have been acted out, she asked me how my week had been going so far. I told her about the Internet thing, and she made a small clicking noise of pity.
 
 The same noise that almost everyone makes when they find out. A noise, I realized, I was beginning to hate.
“I should try that, though,” she said thoughtfully. “I spend way too much time on that site.”
 
My ears perked up a little. “Really?”
“Well, yeah, I mean, you must be getting a lot done without MySpace to distract you.”
Crazily enough, she was right. I usually spent about an hour to an hour and a half on the site each day. Without MySpace, I actually had been getting my homework done at home.
 
My room was cleaner, I’d been sleeping more and my socks matched two days in a row — a record high.

“We should start a campaign,” I said suddenly, feeling empowered. It had not occurred to me before this moment that I could make this MySpace thing a choice.
 
“I’m in,” Carrie said, and I felt a pleasant rush of warmth for this girl. I was struck with the urge to call her “sister.”
We talked for nearly two hours, and though Carrie giggled too often and she really did annoy me, I no longer held this against her. She was, after all, my sister and co-founder in the MySpace Resistance.
 
I smiled to myself, rather liking this name, when I heard Carrie giggle. This was odd, considering I had said nothing that could be considered amusing. I remained silent and heard Carrie giggle again. This time it was accompanied by another sound, a light clacking sound. A very familiar, light clacking.
 
“What are you doing?” I asked. Maybe I sounded a little too accusing, but I didn’t care.
“Oh, um, s-spacing,” Carrie replied carefully.
 
“Spacing?” I echoed, scorn obvious in my voice, because that is how I was feeling: scornful and betrayed.
 
“MySpacing,” she provided guiltily, as though I’d forced the answer out of her. Good, I thought spitefully, she should feel guilty.
 
“But Carrie,” I said, and I know I sounded crazy but I said it anyway, “the Resistance!”
“I know,” she answered, “but there’s this Power Rangers parody bulletin that David IM-ed me about...”
I couldn’t help myself. I sneered and hung up the phone.
 
Day Four
I realized I was experiencing MySpace withdrawal. I lay in bed wondering what messages had been left for me that I had not checked, what friend requests I was missing. I created an elaborate scenario in which the boy in my chem class sent me a friend request, and because I did not reply he now thought I didn’t like him and decided to take up with this other girl also in my chem class — who has blue rubber bands on her braces and a working Internet connection.
 
 It was horrible to think that a Web site so wonderful could aide in such horrible fantasies. I wondered if I managed to find someway to communicate to Tom, the guy who founded MySpace in July 2003, if he would block them from each other. I smiled thinking of him. Tom, that lovable grinning, sandy-haired man who’s everyone’s first friend. Sometimes I thought that I loved Tom. Or maybe I was just confusing deep admiration, coupled with an unhealthy addiction to his site, with infatuation.
 
“Oh Tom,” I thought forlornly, as I slid into a fitful sleep riddled with un-checked new picture comments and chain-letter bulletins, “do you know you own my soul?”
 
Day Five
“I don’t see what the big deal is,” Shan said, shutting her locker, “about MySpace or whatever it’s called. You’re acting like somebody died. I mean, I don’t have one, and I’m fine.”
 
MySpace.com is one of the most popular Web sites in the world. More than 55.8 million unique visitors use MySpace, and almost 7 million of them are teens, according to an August 2006 study by comScore Networks, a Internet research firm.
 
Shan and I have been best friends since the 9th grade. So, I pressed my lips together and tried not to think her uncivilized.
 
Day Six
I really did hate MySpace. I always thought the site was stupid before I joined. The only reason I even joined was because so many of my friends had, and it seemed to be the only way to get in touch with any of them. On the site I’m a part of a Web group called “I secretly hate MySpace, but I spend an unhealthy amount of time on here anyway.”
 
I thought of starting my own mock-therapy group: “The people who don’t understand why they keep coming back to MySpace when it’s obviously ruining their lives.” Or even one better: “The people who lived a week without MySpace and lived to tell about it.”
 
Day Seven
This was my last MySpace-free day. The next day our computer was scheduled to be fixed, and I was to again be able to waste my time browsing through the profiles of people I don’t now. I wondered, “Am I ready to re-enter the world of unfinished homework and mismatched socks?”
 
Life without MySpace really wasn’t as horrible as I thought it would be, though it was significantly less exciting. Considering that I had made it an entire week without it, what’s to say I couldn’t go an entire month, the rest of my life even? For a wild moment I thought I didn’t have to go back, that I really could start the resistance.
 
But then I thought of the dozens of comments and messages that I haven’t read, the Power Rangers parody that I have been dying to see all week. I asked myself the question again, Am I ready to go back?

“Yes, yes I am.”
 
Yasmin is a junior at Riverdale High.
 
*Name changed for privacy.