Before Instagram, Twitter or even Facebook, there was MySpace. While I use these current social media platforms just as much as the next millennial, there’s something about them that doesn’t even compare to the MySpace I grew up with. With MySpace, we didn’t worry about having an aesthetically pleasing feed, summarizing our thoughts in 140 characters or making sure we “looked professional.” The only thing we had to worry about was choosing our profile song or figuring out who was going to be in our top eight. To remind you of this simpler time, here’s a list of memories from the days of MySpace.
1. Your friends would know immediately when you logged on.
2. But before you could talk to any of them, you had to check your mail and be reassured of your popularity.
3. Not to mention your bulletin space.
4. Which was always filled with unnecessarily long updates of people’s lives or surveys because they were “bored :P.”
5. You always skipped songs on those iPod shuffle quizzes so your answers would be more fitting, but swore you didn’t cheat.
6. It was totally acceptable to ~* wRiTe liike tHiS *~.
7. But all the wannabe scene kids (aka, the early hipsters) were too above that. Instead, they’d write everything with perfect grammar – but in lowercase.
8. Emojis didn’t exist so you had to use some variation of =), =], :D, xD and so on.
9. And to make a heart, you had to physically type out ♥.
10. You would spend hours mastering HTML so you could customize your layout.
11. You knew of all the “secret codes” that would change the format entirely, making yours better than everyone else’s.
12. Layouts where you couldn’t even read the text made you cringe.
13. But to everyone's surprise, minimalist layouts became popular later on.
14. Photobucket was your best source for finding those 100px icons that summed up your existence.
15. You would use so many that they would take up half your profile. Don’t worry, though. You would just condense them by setting a marquee across the page.
16. Glitter graphics were great for unleashing your inner sass.
17. When you were updating your layout and had to mess around with the HTML, you would write “under construction” so you wouldn’t be judged for the disorganization.
18. The “Who I’d Like To Meet Section” was either used to get back at your ex or publicly declare your celebrity crushes, like Ryan Gosling and Zac Efron.
19. The most difficult decision was picking the one song that would play on your profile.
20. Chances are, if it wasn’t “Everytime We Touch” by Cascada, it was something emo like Fall Out Boy or Panic! At The Disco.
21. But despite how much effort went into it, you would mute someone’s music as soon as you went on their profile.
22. You would search the depths of MySpace to find musicians who you swore were going to be the “next big thing.”
23. And when you found them, you would secure your title as “fan since day one” by spamming their comments with how much you love them.
24. Another difficult decision was deciding who was going to be in your "Top 8."
25. If you moved one of your friends from No. 1 to No. 2, you knew there would be drama.
26. MySpace even had its own breed: scene kids.
No one was ever too sure what “scene” really was and how it differed from emo. They all just seemed to wear tutus, tease their colored and fringed hair, have T-Mobile sidekicks for phones and say "rawr" a lot. Side note: I was a wannabe one.
27. They never went by their real name.
Chris Chaos, Vanessa Venom, and Rachel Revenge are just a few examples.
28. They also trademarked™ their names because they were so original.
29. PC4PC was an actual thing.
Meaning, you would comment on someone’s picture and they would return the favor, but only after you publicly agreed upon it first.
30. And they envied “scene queens” like Jac Vanek, Hanna Beth and Audrey Kitching for their artsy pictures.
31. For MySpace photos, you always used a digital camera, not a phone.
32. There were typical MySpace angles that you perfected.
33. Like the overhead, practically aerial selfie.
34. Or the mirror pic with the flash on, which really just accented the dirtiness of the mirror.
35. Instagram didn’t exist, which meant that when you wanted to edit your photos, you had to use Picnik.
36. But if you were more advanced and serious about your editing, you downloaded Photofiltre – a total knockoff of Photoshop.
37. You would make the exposure so bright that you could hardly even see your face.
38. And you would occasionally add text to pictures of you and your friends.
39. But most importantly, when everyone else started getting a Facebook, you absolutely refused.
MySpace for life.
