MySpace, the largest social networking website in the world, some 80 million users strong, or about one-quarter the population of America and more than twice that of Canada, and growing, not just by the day but even by the hour;
in essence a personal website, a canvas on which to post personal pictures, profiles, videos, and blogs, and in reality a cultural revolution, unlike anything your grandma or your mom or even your older siblings have ever witnessed, for it is not just a emblem of the emerging generation but, above all, an advancement in Internet use and an enormous leap in technological purpose, a means to enhance communication, connections and convenience amongst people;
and a free medium for friends and lovers and artists and politicians and businessmen, to self-promote and network, unprecedented in both capacity and capability, such a widespread social phenomena that it is now altogether undeniable and inescapable;
created in 2003 by two individuals, Californians, then just a pinpoint site converged upon by young teens in search of the popular music of the day, emo rock, and now, in 2006, an intricate galaxy owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation in New York, now accessed all across the world by men and women of all ages, as well as groups, clubs, institutions and corporations, seeking to create an identity to offer to the world, and now home of both the world's largest bands, like Coldplay, and its smallest, like Invisible Orchestra, and now so vast and containing so many multitudes that it is brimming with paradoxes that confront every user, and spilling over with controversies which make headlines every day—
this is not its story, but rather, a few threads that comprise a fraction of the inconceivable web MySpace has become in the past three years.
Yeah, so a year and a half ago his friend says, "Dude, check it out"; and he was like, "Uh ... all right." So now, because he's kinda addicted to MySpace, you know, all that ordinary stuff doesn't do it for him. Nah, all he likes to do now is mess with people.
It's kinda like when he used to pick up homeless guys Downtown to help him crash frat parties, but just much easier, because now he just has to sit at a computer to act like a real bastard toward people. Just gets online, goes to MySpace, checks out some of the weirdos on there—and trust him, dude, there are a lot—and sends ominous messages, or posts creepy comments on their pages, and toys with their brain a bit. Just for fun, you know.
And the girls too. He got on MySpace for the same reason he started a band at Palo Verde High School: to pick up on freshman girls, of course. There are so many damn girls on MySpace, asking if they can have your number, then they want to hang out, and now it turns out they look nothing like they did in their pictures. Or, the worst is, they'll have nothing but above-the-neck photos on their page, and then in real life their faces look pretty good—but then it's like, whooaaaa, what's going on down there: bodies like train wrecks!
He dates them anyway. Dated a number of girls through MySpace, in fact. Girls who came to existence like genies, appearing on his MySpace page in an instantaneous and mystical moment. Like this one girl he met a year ago, Andy was her name (he thinks), a real indie chick, Filipina (or something like that), 19 years old (he's pretty sure; it was a long time ago), with kinda sorta dark hair. She calls him up, they go to his friend's little brother's rock show, and it was all good. She was pretty hot, he guesses. Then—check it out—they went to a party at a friend's house, and she decided she wanted to cook for everyone, right there on the first date, cookin' it up for the whole party while he kept on drinkin'; and so soon enough she was feedin' people and he was puking everywhere. Then they went to town, in his friend's bedroom. And then it was over, and yeah, he might have seen her once more, he thinks, but that's all. It was his typical MySpace affair.
Listen: He's not sure why he joined MySpace two years ago, just before it swept through the whole damn country, and he's not certain why he keeps going back to it, just about every day. Like everyone else, a friend had informed him of the site, encouraged him to join, said it would be fun. Since then, it hasn't really served a purpose in his life but one. Maybe.
But other than for that one thing, all MySpace has been is another in the world's endless succession of ways to occupy idle time. Maybe that's why Erik, a top-8 friend on his page, always screws around on MySpace: He's just trying to pass idle time.
Except that one reason, which maybe is reason enough to be on MySpace every day, as Paul is. It's not dating—he's tried that; that doesn't work—and it's not advertising himself with shirtless photos taken by himself, his cell phone pointing, flashing in the mirror. It's not even the music, like it once was, because these days everyone who's ever clanked two pans together sends mass messages for people to check out his songs. So not that either. The only good reason for him now to keep up MySpace is Thailand.
He's fascinated by Eastern culture, and he already has his plans set for an August trip to Thailand. Through MySpace Paul has already made contacts in that distant country, has already connected with future friends. He has been learning their names, and faces, and customs, and language, as well as the activities with which they keep busy. In this way MySpace is incomparable. It's letting him visit the individual people of Thailand before he ever goes to visit Thailand.
Her name is Brandy and she does not eat meat, not even fish, and she likes Harry Potter, a lot, and please, please, please! do not send her a request to be friends unless she already knows you, and, no, she did not join MySpace to meet or sleep with guys.
Okay. If you, however, went to Las Vegas Academy with her, or perhaps Viewpoint school in Calabasas, California, hit her up. Because that's why she's on MySpace (and the reason she was on its predecessor, Friendster). It's a portal to nostalgia for her, 23 years old now and going to school at UNLV. She longs for her old friends, plain and pure. Ah, yes, those people with whom she was once close (physically, of course, because neither MySpace nor even the Internet existed in the old days for her generation—the last that can claim such a thing), but whom time had removed from her life. Because with MySpace she has found a way to make geographic distances somewhat obsolete, and a way to nullify that invisible separation created by time. Because it's like everyone—and she means everyone!—is on MySpace. It's like, if they're still alive, you can find them through MySpace.
And it's so simple! Brandy just excavates her memory for names, types them into MySpace's search engine, and then BOOM! there they are, their picture and profile at your fingertips, so that you don't even have to encounter that awkwardness of reuniting if you don't want. Nope. You can just browse their pages, see who got fat, who didn't; who got hot, and who's still not. And then you move on, giving flesh to another phantom from your past.
Or she'll reconnect. She'll send a message to the estranged friends, who'll then be like: "OH MY GOD, BRANDY!" Oh what a joy it is! Finding that which was once lost!
Brandy has dug up ex-boyfriends through MySpace, gone to lunch with guys she had known a decade earlier, and just the other day she reconnected herself with her best friend from elementary school. It really is amazing.
She likes to go online and communicate with her immediate friends too, of course. Doesn't everybody? And like anyone else you talk to, she associates with a lot of MySpace addicts in desperate need of intervention. But for her, resurrecting the past is the worthwhile part. Because if it were only about friends who live in your time and place, why not just get together with them in person?
Brian, Max, Robert, Ronnie and Omar (Escape the Fate)
They met through MySpace, then promoted their early shows on the site; and then they were discovered on it, in turn being signed by historic punk label Epitaph Records. And now the emo rock band from Las Vegas, having accomplished the dream of the innumerable bands still offering their amateur music on the networking portal, have posted their debut EP on their MySpace page, and have ascended to the realm on MySpace of bands that have made it.
They're not just a business; because if that's all they were, their only concern would be profit; and, well, that's just money. And there's plenty of that to go around in Las Vegas. No, they're young adults with youthful hearts and unflagging idealism, and so they maintain other objectives—such as enlightening people, such as helping evolve the cultural identity of this town, and such as connecting with other youthful hearts not only here but all over the world.
And so it was natural to register their vintage street-wear boutique, Fruition, a physical store on Maryland Parkway and Flamingo Road, onto MySpace, a medium that connects youth, networks not only people but also products, ideas and sentiments, and provides an endless and accessible canvas to their visions. The truth is, as soon as they opened the store they initiated a MySpace site.
Most businesses these days do. First of all, it's free. And with such a large infrastructure—tens of millions of people and businesses logged onto MySpace—it helps achieve maximum exposure, which any good business seeks. They're under 25, and doing well. They've been open and operating and proliferating since August last year, and half of their success has come on account of the Internet.
But that's just business, and if they were concerned only with business, that's all Fruition would be: a business. But it's more. It's a way of life. It's their thoughts and philosophies and expressions. It's their art.
MySpace expedites and expands their total mission. You see, they don't want to just tend to a more intelligent and cultural clientele: they want to help foster a more intelligent and cultural clientele. MySpace allows them to articulate that—through pictures of their products, art that coincides with the culture their clothing helps comprise, and even their very own written messages—on a page that is at once inexhaustible and convenient. In this way, customers are led to buy into not only their products but their vision as well. To visit their page is to gain a better understanding of the thought behind their fashion.
They've been able to reach people never fathomable before MySpace. People in New York, Japan, Singapore. They come to Las Vegas, visit their store, and say: "I saw your site and everything really resonated with me." It's a beautiful thing.
In similar fashion, they've been able to share their vision with other companies, in places like LA and San Francisco, and in return they complement Samantha and Chris' ideas with theirs, resulting in a fusion of all sorts of clothes, both highbrow and lowbrow. And further, because they are specific and calculative with whom they target as potential clientele, they've been able, via MySpace, to navigate through the clients and friends of kindred companies, to handpick their demographic.
Their MySpace page lets people know first that they are an existing business, and then that they are much more than that. It metamorphoses on a regular basis, and in many ways they live vicariously through it.
He was who he is long before MySpace was even conceived of: a teacher by vocation, and a homosexual to his core. Two immutable characteristics not entirely exclusive, but also, in this case, not entirely reconcilable either.
For Dr. Jeff Crouse, born here in the United States and educated in Britain, had worked at Bishop Gorman High School, a Catholic institution by doctrine opposed to gays and lesbians. For six years he had found a way to live as a homosexual and teach at Bishop Gorman, and if there was ever any dissonance it occurred in his heart, where his vocation and his sexuality shared residence, for he is also a believing Catholic.
But then came MySpace, a public domain onto which individuals young and old post their personal profiles, promoting themselves to potential friends, lovers, clients, business partners, voters, and at the same time exposing themselves to the world. It's a risky paradox.
Yet, Dr. Crouse could not resist. He registered a page for himself, full of personal photos, personal blogs, and a list of personal interests, like film and philosophy and other gay men.
And he did under the presumption that it would be separate and secure from his job at Bishop Gorman, for there was no signs of Gorman or its students on his page whatsoever; and, besides, schools don't even allow MySpace on campus anymore, having comprehended just how vast and consuming that site has become for youth all across America, indiscriminate of age, race, or religion. In short, Dr. Crouse was just another individual integer in the MySpace nation.
But then the two crashed. The administration at that private school, inflexible in both their faith and policies, two dynamics not at all exclusive in the Catholic institution, came across Dr. Crouse's page. Perhaps by mere chance, reaching up into MySpace's sidereal space and plucking his; or perhaps they had been tipped off; or, perhaps Bishop Gorman, aware of MySpace's popularity and its well-deserved reputation for impious content amongst users, went on an exhaustive search of the entire intimate school. (We don't know: they have declined to say.) In any case, they needed only to see that their male film instructor was seeking other men for romance to bring an end to his tenure at Gorman. It didn't matter that he loved teaching—had even written it in the same biographical paragraph in which he had confessed his homosexuality; had written that he adored his job, in fact—for the administration had already known that. No one comes to the classroom every day with enthusiasm and efficacy, as Dr. Crouse had, unless they have an inherent passion for it. No: All that mattered was the proof on that MySpace page that Dr. Crouse was in violation of the contract he had signed six years earlier that said he would not abide in contradiction to the doctrine of the Catholic church—a contract that had been drafted, and that he had signed, far before MySpace ever came along.
And with a single slash the administration severed Dr. Crouse's employment with Bishop Gorman as a teacher, and raised in Las Vegas' public conscience a critical contemporary issue: Where does one man's (or group's) liberty begin, and another's end?
In Dr. Crouse's case, the school was justified because it is a private institution based on church doctrine, but in the real world, where employers cannot discriminate based on things like sexual preference and handicaps and medical conditions, can a man be condemned for personal information on his public MySpace account?
On every MySpace page there is a link to safety tips, in which the portal cautions users against posting information or pictures that might embarrass them or lead to undesired consequences. Dr. Crouse, however, did nothing more than promulgate who he is.
And, of course, he has continued to be who he is. His MySpace page is still up and active, and it still states that he is a teacher and that he is looking to date other men.
It didn't take much convincing to get her dad to jump on the MySpace train, even though he, like his dad, Jimmy Carter, wasn't very familiar with the vehicle. All she did was explain it to him—how MySpace is a locomotive headed forward, open to free and direct and unfiltered promotion, and already packed with users, 78 percent of whom, according to the vice president of marketing at MySpace, are at least 18 years old, and all of whom are inclined to networking—and he without hesitation said: "Hell, let's do it!"
Because, in reality, that's what campaigning is all about: self-promoting, branching out, and reaching out to winnable voters. It's a perfect fit. And if her dad is going to take John Ensign's seat in the Nevada senate he has to board every opportunity that passes—especially one this big.
MySpace is such a new idea that few politicians have thus far joined on. In fact, her dad is the only one she knows of in Nevada. Some political experts attribute this to the demographic associated with MySpace—teens, who if even of age to vote are historically apathetic, and who are therefore not worth a serious politician's time and energy. But we, she says, see MySpace, a free site that doesn't cost us any resources, in the opposite light; we see it as an unprecedented and unparalleled opportunity to confront apathy from up close. Guys like my dad, she continues, and his dad, who campaigned for and won the presidency of the United States in 1976, decline to believe in an apathetic group. There are only unreached groups.
So far, after having Jack Carter's MySpace page up for less than a month, they've accrued small but incontrovertible results: a little money, a few volunteers, but a good deal of buzz. And that's the point, her dad says. He would like to see more contributions, of course (even ones as small as $20, for they do indeed add up), and more volunteers (especially college kids), but the main thing is to get the word out, to evangelize Jack Carter. They now have over 300 friends on MySpace, and the Jack Carter for Senate group has 382 members, each of whom possesses the capability on MySpace—essentially, through blogs—to spread the gospel of Jack Carter to countless people more.
The idea to utilize it struck her like lightning in April, after she had read an article in the LA Times about how the Latino high school demonstrators—some 10,000 of them—had organized through MySpace. She thought: What an incredible tool for organization. And so she approached her dad, and she said: "Dad, it makes a lot of sense." He's always been open-minded and inclined toward technology and innovation, she says, and so he agreed. She started his MySpace page from San Francisco, where she's getting her Ph.D. in neuroscience, and she updates it regularly, and sends out bulletins daily.
Now her dad's convinced that MySpace and other web mediums will be used by politicians extensively in the future, and he is happy to be ahead of the game. Whether or not it helps him defeat John Ensign this year remains to be seen.
And so I asked him, I said: "Ain't it conceivable then, that MySpace could be used for dirty politics too?"
And he knew what I meant, because he, Hugh Jackson, was not only a political insider by trade, but part of the new wave of political insiders who use the Internet—blogging, primarily—to air their information. In fact, his blog, the Las Vegas Gleaner, is one of the most widely read blogs amongst political junkies in our state—including journalists like me and the politicians themselves. And so he was not just abreast of our state's current politics but also of new Internet-based trends. And so he also knew that MySpace is rampant amongst America's youth, without distinction of class or region, and that it itself is rampant with promiscuity, confessions, and very sensitive information—the type that a politician, ever concerned about his image, would not want the public to know about his son or daughter. MySpace is where boys boast of their inebriated nights, and where girls promote themselves with provocative pictures in their most risqué outfits.
And so he, Hugh, said: "Absolutely. We live in a new day of politics. Politicians now have to tell their kids to behave, especially on the Internet. There's already wonkette.com: They've exposed the MySpace pages of Bush and Frist and are having fun with other politicians' kids. And there are certainly people in Nevada just as willing to attack; we've seen it before."
It's true. In 2002 there was a blog run for the sole purpose of calumniating Dario Herrera; currently, a blog against State Treasurer candidate Kate Marshall; and in commissioner campaigns and the race for sheriff we see ignoble politics all the time.
Before I spoke to Hugh I searched through that galactic realm of MySpace and came across the pages of several children of Nevada politicians running for election this year—pages that aren't any different than the promiscuous and confessional pages of so many other young MySpace users, and pages that, if exposed, could wreak serious damage to a politician's image.
Yesica and Sandra
He was 19. She, the older girl, was 14. And the other one was just 13 years old. On May 24, 2006, they were discovered north of Las Vegas, on U.S. 93, in a stolen Dodge pickup; and he—he was nowhere to be found.
The plan was to meet him in Las Vegas, the girls, Yesica Saban and Sandra Merary Torres, would later tell detectives from the department of public safety in Orem, the town in Utah from which the girls took off. He's from California, they said, and he wanted to meet us halfway.
They had met him on MySpace. He began chatting online with the girls, one of whom, Sandra, the younger one, was just a tiny little thing at 4 feet, 11 inches and 100 pounds, with a face not yet defined or sullied by adulthood; and the other, Yesica, much more of a woman: 5 feet, 6 inches, 160 pounds, often wearing large hoop earrings. Then he exchanged numbers with them, the girls, both possessed by the rebellious throes of their early teens. Then the conversations increased.
Since its explosion in popularity, MySpace as a corporation has been making a conscious effort to protect its users, above all the young ones. For child exploitation has skyrocketed in conjunction with the site's big bang. John Sheehan, an agent for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said that in just the past few months the number of complaints his organization has received has elevated from 50 per week to about 200, mostly on account of MySpace and mediums like it. And so last week MySpace's new chief security officer, Hemanshu Nigam, a former prosecutor against Internet child exploitation for the U.S. Department of Justice, set up enhanced safety measures that bar adults from randomly finding young teens, offer anyone the opportunity to privatize their page to people exclusively within their network of friends, and make advertisements more age-appropriate.
But none of that would have made a difference with the two girls, for in their case—which, like many things that wind up in our desert, was odd—it was they who had wanted the forbidden love, and it was they who had instigated the clandestine plan to meet the older man. Detective Greg Olney, of the Orem Police department, said that by their investigation it appeared the only crime committed against the girls, which wasn't even in fact a real crime, was that they had been somewhat mislead.
Because the girls had not known then, stranded on the side of U.S. 93 on a lonely Wednesday, fresh out of gas, that the man in fact resided in Utah just like them; nor did they know, while they had been stealing gas to make it out to Nevada, that he had never left that state to meet them, but had just said okay to their plans to get them off his back. And so without apprehension, and without any preambles, they had on Monday taken off to Las Vegas; had jumped into a truck whose doors, to their fortune and misfortune, were unlocked, and whose keys, by some enigma or act of complicity, were resting inside the vehicle. The girls were then reported missing.
The irony of it all, say representatives from MySpace, is that if the incident would have taken place a year in the future, with MySpace's massive and speedy networking capabilities, there is a good chance that something like an Amber Alert would have been in place on MySpace to help locate and bring them home safely.
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