Of course I hate MySpace. I know of no self-respecting user who doesn't hate it, despite the fact we're all on it at least once a day.
My burning dislike of it, however, is mostly based on its horrible, horrible design. Not to mention its built-in capacity for users to make it even more horrible. Do you realize the terror struck into a designer's heart when viewing a profile with a tiled picture background, bright lime green text, and sparkly animated gifs? It's all the 1995 technique we though long and happily dead and buried back in full force. 90% of the modified profiles I see on MySpace are literally unreadable. I have to highlight text in order to read it, horizontally scroll to see information that should all be on one screen, and try to make out what's in that faded headline or picture. Why would you deliberately fade out all the essential elements on your profile page? None of it makes any sense. (Further despair in the article "Is 'Ghetto' a Design Choice?".)
If you manage to make it past the design, then you can get disgusted by the content. Now, I'm a pretty open, forward-thinking feminist, but even I feel compelled by the semmingly endless, tedious parade of wannabe porn stars to suggest they all find another method of building self-esteem that doesn't require the superficial praise of bored male teenagers and perverts. I'm geninuely, seriously sickened by the number of girls, most of them under twenty and in college, who list their ultimate life goal in their profiles as appearing in Playboy. That's all you can come up with? Glad to see that degree someone, probably not you, is shelling out tens of thousands of dollars for is going to go to good use. You know, there's empowerment and rebellion, and then there's exploitation. I don't think this is truly either ... I think it's just sad.
Oh, and on the other side of this, to all the guys in general on MySpace - just because I am a young single woman without any obvious disfigurement who happens to reside within your 75-mile radius, I do not necessarily want to be your new soul mate, or in fact have any contact with you at all. As incredible as it may sound, it is in fact the truth.
I guess this was all inspired by the various recent reports on the inherent evilness of MySpace. It doesn't have a thing to do with MySpace itself. It's the people who use it, who happen to be just as frustrating and occassionally dangerous as the people in the real world. Therefore, you use the same common sense in dealing with them as you're supposed to being using in the real world. And if you're not doing that, it sure the hell isn't some website's fault.
But, please, at least no more sparkly animated gifs. Let common sense prevail in design if nothing else.
