It is the first night living alone – this one, right now. Telling myself I need to take a break from the carrying, the unpacking, the arranging of my possessions in an aesthetically pleasing manner, I hop onto the internet to check messages. A familiar name pops out at me from a Facebook notification- a dear friend who’d spent the entirety of the past year in Spain. She writes to tell me she’ll be at Wesleyan on Tuesday, and I go from alone in the glow of the monitor to basking in the glow of love, instantly.
I click the ‘Home’ button, and scroll through my News Feed. A tiny heart appears at the bottom of the screen- a man who’d led a Buddhist retreat had a new girlfriend! And they’d hooked up in 2006 and it was “fabulous”. This is way better than tabloids, because I actually sorta know this guy. I mean, we’re Facebook Friends.
MySpace is plastered with Dane Cook. MySpace is for bros. My 19 year old cousin assaults the ears of visitors to her profile with screamo and concludes her welcome message with “i probably don’t like you.” All of my friend requests are from electronic musicians. I do enjoy electronic music, by and large. A friend of mine who recently began producing tracks just joined MySpace, and already has over 400 friends. I asked if he’d been spending a lot of time “friending” MySpacers, and he replied, “well, half of them have friended me”. His Comments board is plastered with psychedelic images, a few of them animated. There is an image of a woman whose moniker contains the word “suicide,” holding a pair of black panties beneath a caption that reads “Thanks for the add! xoxo”.
That is all.
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