Who is an English teacher invading MySpace helping?
OK, some of you may have heard about the book Generation MySpace: Helping Your Teen Survive Online Adolescence by Candice Kelsey. [I haven't read it but] It’s about how parents can guide their children through the world of online social networking, safely. I heard an interview with her once, and she seemed like a smart and lovely and caring person, so even though I’m skeptical of what this book contains (I imagine it to be full of talk of predators, to misunderstand what lots of the social functions are of MySpace, to blame MySpace for things that more traditional media AND educational/social settings for teenagers play an equally big role in), I was intrigued enough to go to the website and learn more about it.
Aside from the regular website, Kelsey’s got a MySpace profile set up for herself/the book, which is designed to show curious and unknowing adults what MySpace is all about - a good tutorial for people who aren’t familiar with the site, for sure. But it’s very interesting what she’s done with the “exhibition”. She points out typical traits of a teen’s MySpace page (and I’m not entirely qualified to comment on her accuracy, because most of my friends aren’t teenagers; nonetheless, I am a fairly heavy user of the site), including language use:
The “About Me†and “Who I’d Like to Meet†sections are utilized by teen MySpacers to best represent their online persona. Here you’ll notice the tendency to exaggerate desires and personality traits; the flashier you sound, the more interesting your online self may seem to other members. The presence of mIsMatCHed letters is just part of the mystique, and parents just aren’t hip enough to gEt It. Also, the abbreviated language may cause u 2 “lol†or at least 2 wanna sign off bad enuf.
Ah, that mystical, magical world of MySpace, closed off to the lurking eyes of square parents. But here’s what really got me. This text appears under the text field heading titled “Who I’d like to meet:”
Other than being grammatically incorrect (the who should be “whom”), this section is a breeding ground for upping one’s coolness factor. Girls tend to list celebrities they deem hot while boys tend to list professional athletes or musicians (with the occasional porn star). In some ways, this box is the most important in setting the tone of one’s profile as it allows the MySpace teen to establish with what icons she identifies and why.
Oh shit. Who called the Grammar Police on MySpace’s ass??? Tom must have failed high school English. What I love MOST about this whole thing is, though, that right after the field it says, Buy this invaluable parenting book now! Go to amazon.com to pre-order. Now, I think this model MySpace profile for parents to see is actually a pretty cool idea, a useful tool. But it seems a little off to set up a MySpace page simply as a marketing tool for a book that’s antagonistic to MySpace. If part of what’s wrong about MySpace - as has been said by Kelsey and others - is the insidious presence of targeting advertisers, then this page does nothing but latch on to that supposedly negative aspect of it for its own positive gains. It’s kind of biting the hand that feeds you-ish.
The profile also takes some low blows at teen culture, which, if you ask me, someone claiming to try to understand and help not only parents but also their kids (and *ultimately* their kids), shouldn’t really be taking. From the “Music” field:
Here you may find an endless list of bands, most of whom you will never have heard of, and whose names, quite honestly, sound like rare sub-tropical diseases. Occasionally, a nod to a few from my generation appear; it’s somewhat comforting to know that SOME teens realize “Landslide” was originally sung by Stevie Nicks.
“Landslide” first released (ahem, by Fleetwood Mac not Nicks solo): 1975. Earliest possible year today’s teenagers could have been born: 1988. Earliest possible time someone born in 1988 would probably start recognizing the music played around them as “music” produced by named “artists”: 1995 (and that’s probably pushing it). Top five Billboard songs in 1995: Gangsta’s Paradise (Coolio/L.V.), Waterfalls (TLC), Creep (TLC), Kiss from a Rose (Seal), On Bended Knee (Boyz II Men). Etc.
From the “Television” field:
I guess it’s assumed that all teens watch television; in fact, I have yet to see a profile that said, “I am too engrossed in sports, theater, scholarly work, and my family to watch any television.” Frankly, I’m pretty surprised any teens still watch the tube considering how much time is spent here!
Teens may not be saying these things, but mid-20s people sure are: tons of my friends fill that field out with either some anti-TV comment, or with one TV show (usually Arrested Development) just to fill out the field. So if the people who are in their mid-20s who are on MySpace now are any indication of what the people who are teens on MySpace now will be like when they’re in their mid-20s on MySpace, maybe the kids are all right.
From the “Books” section:
Ah, here you may find the obligatory hateful invective toward books; as an English teacher it pierces me to the core. I like to imagine that most of these lit “haters” are simply posing and secretly have an annotated copy of Moby-Dick stashed under their keyboard.
Way to homogenize the teen attitude there. You’re taking away their individuality! Lots of them probably do like books! You’re not doing any good! Of course, part of the problem with these “Interests” fields is that MySpace makes up what the headings are. If MySpace asked people to complete things that were less dependent on categories based on shallow pop culture, I bet you’d see a different version of teens. Favorite…sports, artists, magazines, plays, foods, season, town/city, color, activity, websites…there are a lot of untapped possibilities here, and I think you’d see teens (and other age groups) respond positively if more options were given for these fields; in fact, you increasingly see people changing the page code so they can creat their own headings. OMG! Teens are dynamic and multi-faceted just like adults are!
Finally, from the “Heroes” field:
Many times you’ll find teens giving much deserved “props” to their parents in this section. I’m sure it is sincere, but sometimes it feels a bit disingenuous. A standard hero also seems to be the baby brother or sister — pretty cute! (If I may, I invite you to click on my “pics” to see some of my heroes… my students.)
I can just imagine my teenage cousin’s mom saying, “I saw that you said I’m your hero on MySpace…what the hell, you disingenuous little bastard? If you’re not going to be sincere, don’t mention me at all.” …um… “Sorry, Mom…I love you.” ??? Let’s not assume that teenagers don’t seriously appreciate their parents, friends, or whoever else they claim as their heroes. It’s not fair, and it ignores their status as thoughtful human beings who, lots of times, do actually know what’s going on, despite what the media - and apparently people like Kelsey - want to say about them in order to sell more clothes, CDs, or books.
Anyway, I didn’t go into this whole thing intending to be mad about it - the Grammar Police issue was the only thing that originally surprised or irked me - but I guess I just found Kelsey’s model profile page really annoying. Its descriptions suck all the creativity, life, and reality out of what teenagers/people do on MySpace. It washes the whole thing into one template that parents should be scared of their kids producing…and, most aggravatingly, it gives teens no credit for having their own generational trademarks, or for taking hold of online means of doing things outside of what mass-produced and distributed pop culture gives them. Even if they’re still largely referencing pop culture, I’d suggest they’re doing so creatively, in a way that marks them as a distinctive generation of Americans. To mock their music, to bitch about how their linguistic prAcTiCeS are silly, to claim that their tributes aren’t sincere, - well, this seems like the most deeply insulting attitude one could take toward the generation.