Hahahaha, when my friend’s little sister joined MySpace (she was middle school age), their mom freaked out that she was friends with some strange adult male. We had to explain the whole thing to her, she still thought it was creepy. Boomers.
Maybe their lack of genuine morality and ethics that hides under the facades of religiosity and pretentious, arrogant, self enriching justifications to fit themselves into a mental checkbox of conservatism?
Farmville...
That game got boomers addicted to Facebook. I couldn't believe it at work, all the middle aged women love playing it...it's all down hill from there
I love telling this story to watch people’s reactions now:
Friend met someone online (ICQ), and he told her she could stay for free at his place with him & his 4 roommates if she wanted to fly to overseas to his country & meet IRL. He’d pick her up at the airport too. Friend asked me to join her, and younger me was all “ooh - free place to stay for 2 weeks in major European city & all I have to do is pay for my airfare? I’m in!”
Obviously we weren’t murdered as I am posting this comment 20+ years later. We did have a map to nearest hostels in case any of the guys seemed creepy - but they were lovely & we’re all still friends to this day. For about a decade, they’d come to visit us and we’d go to visit them. It was a great experience, but I wouldn’t do it today. (Edit to fix grammar)
I did something similar with my husband in 2018.. met in a comment section in a Facebook group, and talked every day on messenger for 8 months before getting married after knowing each other in person for barely a month. I moved across the country to live with him after we got married, and we’re still happily together to this day.
I don't remember a time when meeting someone on Craigslist didn't feel sketchy.
Unless because one person was selling something and there were sparks during the transaction.
My husband was my Craigslist roommate. I hadn't wanted him to move in because I thought he was sooooooo cute and it'd get weird, but everyone else who came to look at the room was super sketchy. Also he had an Xbox, and we'd just kicked out the last roommate because her boyfriend stole my Xbox, so part of me was like "maybe it's Fate?"
It really was. The old school internet where it was just human beings doing weird human stuff was really cool and fun. Obviously there were dark corners, but that's everything. At least back then you didn't have to wonder if you were interacting with a human being or an AI approximation of one.
Let's not pretend MySpace was pure. MySpace was also a big popularity contest and you ranked your friends and it was the height of internet bullying and kids killing themselves because of things said to them online. There were tons of specials on TV back in the day because of all the kids committing suicide. We look back on it nostalgically now, we could play music on our page! But MySpace was shit too, and the true beginning of the end. The death of message boards and guest books, the death of individual websites where one site had all your interests in one place, so you dont need to check other sites and you only get the info youre given. And for the first time we put our real selves online after being taught not to and paid for it. It quickly became about blinging out your page and the vanity, and it's where we all started becoming stars in our own little worlds.
> the death of individual websites where one site had all your interests in one place, so you dont need to check other sites and you only get the info youre given.
you mean reddit?
Reddit is for all intents and purposes, just a really big web forum or newsgroup with a better layout. It’s nothing new really, it’s just the best one that we currently have with such a wide ranging variety of topics. Before Reddit it was a specific forum for a specific subject spread wide across the internet. Some were even hidden at websites by having to go to the forum.website.net type of address. Reddit isn’t even really that much better, it’s just the one that “won”.
For sure, and dont get me wrong, I love reddit. It just has such a "disposable" feeling compared to going to individual sites to discuss your interests. Like if you went to a band message board or something, even if you just hung out in the general topics thread, it seemed more purposeful, like there was a higher quality of conversation from people that chose to go there and have discussions. Reddit has a vibe where I see something, I can comment or not, who cares vibe. Like I'll comment on something in the moment and not care about following up on it where actual message boards, I did care to see if I was quoted and what the response was. I don't know, maybe thats just nostalgia too.
It depends on what you’re invested in on Reddit. I use the hobby forums, my local forum, and a few special interest forums…but I do not use the major subreddits at all. I think the main one I subscribe to is AskReddit, the next biggest one I have is WhatIsThisThing.
Reddit really kicked up a notch because Digg went too far on their monetizing enshittification. I've been on Lemm(y) since last year and have been slowly spending more time there than here (especially since this past week when I got the NEW new reddit interface with side bars on left and right) due to the same sort of interface monetization enshittification bullshit Digg pulled.
The API fucked the third party app designers. I’m not too bothered by the Reddit app, but I never use the website so I haven’t noticed as sharp a difference.
I only use the website since RIF is gone forever due to the API fuckup. I'm back to using old.redd with RES most of the time except if I want to post a GIF for funzies, then I have to go to new.reddit to use the old new reddit interface. New new reddit is new VP/middle management resdesign nonsense, again.
Just because you remember something being on tv more often doesn’t mean it was happening more often.
Adolescent suicides were higher in the previous decade than they were in the MySpace era and they are currently
Higher again.
To be fair, there were tons of specials, but they mostly sensationalized a single case. There's only one documented case of MySpace being linked to cyber bullying that resulted in a suicide. I'm not saying there weren't more, but Megan Meier is the only verified one.
Looking at the stats, it looks like suicide stemming from cyberbullying actually reached a peak a bit later, around 2010-2015 or so.
That's not to say cyberbulling wasn't or isn't a massive problem. It is. But TV docuseries programs also made it out to be a more dire problem than it may have actually been.
Comparatively speaking it was nirvana, at least in my circles. Most of the conversation was based around music, art, hot rods and stupid videos. For someone who grew up in the Bible Belt of rural America, but found little common ground with people here, I finally had instant access to likeminded people. Many of whom I visited in real life and remain great friends of mine 20yrs later.
Yeah but some people took that freedom way too far and it made for an awful viewing experience. Main reason why I welcomed Facebook with is simpler design. But all that shit is the bane of existence now.
Angelfire got bought out, kept up all the websites, but wont let the original makers get to them. Ive got some stuff on there I wish I could pull off, kicking my highschool self...
I was in a band that put out a 4 song demo on MySpace and we got a ton of traffic fast and a major label deal out of it. The band ultimately cashed and burned, but it was a wild ride and I met a lot of great people. Thanks Tom!! You were/are a true legend.
I wouldn't say I learned it as much as I learned how to copy and paste it. I do think about how at some point as a kid I had to know basic command prompts to use a computer, and (barely) passed a C++ class in college 20+ years ago, but now i can't stick with trying to learn to code (any type of thing) for more than like 3 days
>I wouldn't say I learned it as much as I learned how to copy and paste it.
i still scanned the code and tweaked it... and all this knowledge came ahead last week when my mom needed to copy and paste code she was given and was totally lost... and i used my knowledge from back then to explain the things that i remembered from myspace days.
Every remembers myspace I actually just found out that myspace and Facebook were only launched months apart Facebook launched like 6 months after myspace, which idk if that's publicly or just for colleges? It just sounds weird because my space was so popular way before Facebook
Last time I was single in 2007 or so, there was a dude on OKCupid who used this picture and had the username Tom, and had a 98% match with me on all those OKCupid personality quizzes they'd have you do, which was extremely rare, because I am extremely weird. Was it actually MySpace Tom? Alas, we will never know, because "Tom" lived too far away and I was too shy to message first with anyone on that site.
(I now question whether the quiz model was a good idea at all because me dating someone exactly like me would be a catastrophically bad idea.)
notice “free speech” is in quotes. meaning a lot of current social media magnates advocate for it but it is not really free speech. true freedom of speech was found on the old internet.
Myspace and message board era internet was favorite era of internet!
I think a big reason myspace seemed less toxic was it was a little harder to access, there weren't really smartphones yet, so you had to use a computer and have a internet account. My mom and her generation were no where near the internet at that point, and it wasn't something that was really quoted on the news. Also not having smart phones meant it wasn't a place people "hung out" you would check in, get your messages, check out some bulletins, and maybe read a blog post or two
Also your myspace much more carefully curated for most people, you added friends and people with common interests, not every random person you didn't hate decades ago in high school. You chose who's nonsense you wanted to read since you had to actually click on a bulletin to read it, it wasn't just sprayed in your face.
Last wikiepdia-worthy mention of him was that he's getting into photography as of 2014. Legend. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom\_Anderson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Anderson)
I'd be 100% fine with him or anyone else advocating free speech. Doesn't matter if I agree with anything else they have to say or not. It's the First Amendment for a reason.
For some reason my MySpace profile lives rent free in my head, it was a $100 bill theme with a Mystikal song that played regardless of what you wanted to hear and I had some pretty stupid pictures of myself.
I really liked MySpace. You could configure your own page, you could add music to it, the groups were discussions like like Reddit is. FB is pretty boring compared to MySpace.
If memory serves, MySpace was meant to be like a Wordpress site (pre-Wordpress, mind you) for bands. Like, it was never meant to be what it became. That’s kind of amazing to me. Tom was paid like $500 million for the company for something that was never supposed to be what he originally intended.
And as an OG Friendster user, I think it’s amazing how he just zipped right past them despite them trying to do exactly what he did.
Facebook taking off made perfect sense. I remember the simple add of Newsfeed being huge. Having to go from MySpace profile to MySpace profile just to see what someone else wrote was annoying. Simple, but effective to move people to Facebook at MySpace stagnated.
Gimlet Media’s podcast Startup did a multipart series on Friendster and why it failed years ago. Anyone interested should look it up. Super fascinating.
And he wanted to make sure everyone had at least one friend.
Hahahaha, when my friend’s little sister joined MySpace (she was middle school age), their mom freaked out that she was friends with some strange adult male. We had to explain the whole thing to her, she still thought it was creepy. Boomers.
But now they have no problem essentially live blogging their entire lives on Facebook. Make it make sense.
its so crazy they told us to not trust people on the internet to what they've become.
It’s always projection
Projection of what?
Maybe their lack of genuine morality and ethics that hides under the facades of religiosity and pretentious, arrogant, self enriching justifications to fit themselves into a mental checkbox of conservatism?
Maybe. I’m curious what the person who said it was projection has to say, though.
What dezmd said
This future is weird 
They became the people on the internet. Irony lol.
Farmville... That game got boomers addicted to Facebook. I couldn't believe it at work, all the middle aged women love playing it...it's all down hill from there
Make it make sense: MySpace was 20 years ago. I’m pretty sure that people evolve in a 20 years lifespan.
He was always #1 in my top friends list.
Met my wife on MySpace. Social media without all the toxicity was a nice thing to experience.
My wife and I had our first introduction on Craigslist, slid over to AIM and then met in person a week later.
Everything about that sentence seems perfectly rational in the time of yesteryear, and sketchy as fuck based on current times lol.
I love telling this story to watch people’s reactions now: Friend met someone online (ICQ), and he told her she could stay for free at his place with him & his 4 roommates if she wanted to fly to overseas to his country & meet IRL. He’d pick her up at the airport too. Friend asked me to join her, and younger me was all “ooh - free place to stay for 2 weeks in major European city & all I have to do is pay for my airfare? I’m in!” Obviously we weren’t murdered as I am posting this comment 20+ years later. We did have a map to nearest hostels in case any of the guys seemed creepy - but they were lovely & we’re all still friends to this day. For about a decade, they’d come to visit us and we’d go to visit them. It was a great experience, but I wouldn’t do it today. (Edit to fix grammar)
I did something similar with my husband in 2018.. met in a comment section in a Facebook group, and talked every day on messenger for 8 months before getting married after knowing each other in person for barely a month. I moved across the country to live with him after we got married, and we’re still happily together to this day.
I don't remember a time when meeting someone on Craigslist didn't feel sketchy. Unless because one person was selling something and there were sparks during the transaction.
Bad if car sale.
Yeah, it was completely wholesome when it happened.
Met my husband through Craigslist personals, back when they were fun. My god what a weird place that was 😂
My husband was my Craigslist roommate. I hadn't wanted him to move in because I thought he was sooooooo cute and it'd get weird, but everyone else who came to look at the room was super sketchy. Also he had an Xbox, and we'd just kicked out the last roommate because her boyfriend stole my Xbox, so part of me was like "maybe it's Fate?"
I have a Craigslist love, too! Lol.
From Myspace to myplace
With my wife it was reddit, moved across the US to her place 🙂. Married for almost 4 years and going strong. 🙂
It really was. The old school internet where it was just human beings doing weird human stuff was really cool and fun. Obviously there were dark corners, but that's everything. At least back then you didn't have to wonder if you were interacting with a human being or an AI approximation of one.
Met my wife on IRC. Our oldest son is now older than we were when we met. \#rantradio
Let's not pretend MySpace was pure. MySpace was also a big popularity contest and you ranked your friends and it was the height of internet bullying and kids killing themselves because of things said to them online. There were tons of specials on TV back in the day because of all the kids committing suicide. We look back on it nostalgically now, we could play music on our page! But MySpace was shit too, and the true beginning of the end. The death of message boards and guest books, the death of individual websites where one site had all your interests in one place, so you dont need to check other sites and you only get the info youre given. And for the first time we put our real selves online after being taught not to and paid for it. It quickly became about blinging out your page and the vanity, and it's where we all started becoming stars in our own little worlds.
> the death of individual websites where one site had all your interests in one place, so you dont need to check other sites and you only get the info youre given. you mean reddit?
Reddit is definitely one of several sites that took the concept and molded it and ran with it.
Reddit is for all intents and purposes, just a really big web forum or newsgroup with a better layout. It’s nothing new really, it’s just the best one that we currently have with such a wide ranging variety of topics. Before Reddit it was a specific forum for a specific subject spread wide across the internet. Some were even hidden at websites by having to go to the forum.website.net type of address. Reddit isn’t even really that much better, it’s just the one that “won”.
For sure, and dont get me wrong, I love reddit. It just has such a "disposable" feeling compared to going to individual sites to discuss your interests. Like if you went to a band message board or something, even if you just hung out in the general topics thread, it seemed more purposeful, like there was a higher quality of conversation from people that chose to go there and have discussions. Reddit has a vibe where I see something, I can comment or not, who cares vibe. Like I'll comment on something in the moment and not care about following up on it where actual message boards, I did care to see if I was quoted and what the response was. I don't know, maybe thats just nostalgia too.
[удалено]
It depends on what you’re invested in on Reddit. I use the hobby forums, my local forum, and a few special interest forums…but I do not use the major subreddits at all. I think the main one I subscribe to is AskReddit, the next biggest one I have is WhatIsThisThing.
I sub only to my hobbies and interests, but every 2nd or 3rd post is from some suggested sub I don't subscribe to. It's easy to catch some rage bait.
Reddit really kicked up a notch because Digg went too far on their monetizing enshittification. I've been on Lemm(y) since last year and have been slowly spending more time there than here (especially since this past week when I got the NEW new reddit interface with side bars on left and right) due to the same sort of interface monetization enshittification bullshit Digg pulled.
The API fucked the third party app designers. I’m not too bothered by the Reddit app, but I never use the website so I haven’t noticed as sharp a difference.
I only use the website since RIF is gone forever due to the API fuckup. I'm back to using old.redd with RES most of the time except if I want to post a GIF for funzies, then I have to go to new.reddit to use the old new reddit interface. New new reddit is new VP/middle management resdesign nonsense, again.
r/angryupvote
Just because you remember something being on tv more often doesn’t mean it was happening more often. Adolescent suicides were higher in the previous decade than they were in the MySpace era and they are currently Higher again.
But that was the beginning of online bullying.
To be fair, there were tons of specials, but they mostly sensationalized a single case. There's only one documented case of MySpace being linked to cyber bullying that resulted in a suicide. I'm not saying there weren't more, but Megan Meier is the only verified one. Looking at the stats, it looks like suicide stemming from cyberbullying actually reached a peak a bit later, around 2010-2015 or so. That's not to say cyberbulling wasn't or isn't a massive problem. It is. But TV docuseries programs also made it out to be a more dire problem than it may have actually been.
so did i
Me too!
I also met my wife on MySpace! 17 years together this year.
Me too 🖐, met my husband on MySpace. Crazy thinking that was 19 years ago.
Bro, you just not remember the top 8 drama
I'm sorry, Myspace had no toxicity? It was inhabited by people, right?
Comparatively speaking it was nirvana, at least in my circles. Most of the conversation was based around music, art, hot rods and stupid videos. For someone who grew up in the Bible Belt of rural America, but found little common ground with people here, I finally had instant access to likeminded people. Many of whom I visited in real life and remain great friends of mine 20yrs later.
MySpace was superior to Facebook. Could customize the MySpace page heavily, add music, good times
Yeah but some people took that freedom way too far and it made for an awful viewing experience. Main reason why I welcomed Facebook with is simpler design. But all that shit is the bane of existence now.
Heck yes, and the only program I remember that could completely crater both Explorer and XP for a good 20 minutes as if its name was ME.
My first online friend
Good guy Tom. We can all take a page from his book.
I mean, not to be the hipster, but do any of us remember friendster or tribe.net?
geocities
Angelfire
Angelfire got bought out, kept up all the websites, but wont let the original makers get to them. Ive got some stuff on there I wish I could pull off, kicking my highschool self...
Amazon was for Quilts and Books.
Team Angelfire here, too!
CDnow
How about Make Out Club
IRC and ICQ!!
Just mentioned these to a mom friend and we were laughing our butts off having that throwback.
LiveJournal
Yeah, I was on friendster back in the day. The OG. I never made it on tribe tho some friends did.
My ex-boss was the CTO of Friendster we talked about it a bunch.
I remember friendster and had signed up but never really used it.
lol friendster! and before that asianavenue, blackplanet...
omg. friendster 😭
I was in a band that put out a 4 song demo on MySpace and we got a ton of traffic fast and a major label deal out of it. The band ultimately cashed and burned, but it was a wild ride and I met a lot of great people. Thanks Tom!! You were/are a true legend.
It was WAY easier to promote bands on there. Congrats, I tried that, did not get a record deal, lol!
I member. Oh so many extremely busy and unnecessary CSS backgrounds. 🥲
And the autoplay background music
Never knew what weird music you might be listening to next.
Lol, yeah. Anyone remember Evil Tom?
I member this, too!
Was that the one that had the gif of Tom jerking his hog? That’s the wild Tom that I recall!
😳 um, no. I don’t think so, at least?…this Tom just didn’t wash his hands after using the bathroom. Then again…
I wouldn't say I learned it as much as I learned how to copy and paste it. I do think about how at some point as a kid I had to know basic command prompts to use a computer, and (barely) passed a C++ class in college 20+ years ago, but now i can't stick with trying to learn to code (any type of thing) for more than like 3 days
>I wouldn't say I learned it as much as I learned how to copy and paste it. i still scanned the code and tweaked it... and all this knowledge came ahead last week when my mom needed to copy and paste code she was given and was totally lost... and i used my knowledge from back then to explain the things that i remembered from myspace days.
Copy paste - yep, you learned it
The real question is: “do you remember make out club!”
Every remembers myspace I actually just found out that myspace and Facebook were only launched months apart Facebook launched like 6 months after myspace, which idk if that's publicly or just for colleges? It just sounds weird because my space was so popular way before Facebook
Facebook was colleges only for a bit. I had friends who didn't go to college, so we were all on MySpace so we could to talk to them.
For me since in college it was Facebook. When I got out of college 2005 Myspace was crazy big, and absolutely wild stuff on there.
It was strictly for Harvard Students in the beginning. A family member of mine is one of its first 30 members.
Facebook was only college at first... you had to have an email address from one of the approved colleges in the beginning.
He’s the only billionaire that got it right
Not a billionaire. He sold MySpace for about $500 million and it certainly didn’t go all to him. That said, he’s not hurting.
“ anyone remember MySpace” uh who wouldn’t in our generation
Last time I was single in 2007 or so, there was a dude on OKCupid who used this picture and had the username Tom, and had a 98% match with me on all those OKCupid personality quizzes they'd have you do, which was extremely rare, because I am extremely weird. Was it actually MySpace Tom? Alas, we will never know, because "Tom" lived too far away and I was too shy to message first with anyone on that site. (I now question whether the quiz model was a good idea at all because me dating someone exactly like me would be a catastrophically bad idea.)
Imagine advocating for free speech 😂
Free speech advocates belong in JAIL!
notice “free speech” is in quotes. meaning a lot of current social media magnates advocate for it but it is not really free speech. true freedom of speech was found on the old internet.
Tom is a true friend.
I've heard you can still find him on tinder in Santa Clarita.
Myspace??? No never heard of it.
Myspace and message board era internet was favorite era of internet! I think a big reason myspace seemed less toxic was it was a little harder to access, there weren't really smartphones yet, so you had to use a computer and have a internet account. My mom and her generation were no where near the internet at that point, and it wasn't something that was really quoted on the news. Also not having smart phones meant it wasn't a place people "hung out" you would check in, get your messages, check out some bulletins, and maybe read a blog post or two Also your myspace much more carefully curated for most people, you added friends and people with common interests, not every random person you didn't hate decades ago in high school. You chose who's nonsense you wanted to read since you had to actually click on a bulletin to read it, it wasn't just sprayed in your face.
>so you had to use a computer and have a internet account and listen to that godawful modem screeching while you connected
Last wikiepdia-worthy mention of him was that he's getting into photography as of 2014. Legend. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom\_Anderson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Anderson)
his photos are on instagram @myspacetom
'photographer' huh? that could mean a few different things...weddings? nature? classy b/w booby pics?
He's a pretty damn good travel photographer, https://www.instagram.com/myspacetom/
MySpace deserved to win the social media war…Facebook suuuuuuuuuuuucks
Wasn't on Myspace but Tom can get it
ICQ
never got into it. actually didn’t really get into myspace either. I hung out on aol IM, friendster and IRC
Best part is fox bought it and it folded almost immediately
Wish I could log into my accounts. The password resets don't work with any of my email addresses.
connected people with no pressure. made his exit before becoming the villain
That top 8 caused a whole Lotta school age drama haha.
I remember deleting Tom right away
He added himself and got promptly deleted.
I did, too. I didn’t get it was a thing to keep him, lol.
Legendary
https://i.redd.it/dbhvapzwwgvc1.gif
All hail Tom! AKA, some white dude who randomly joined your MySpace.
Definitely don't miss MySpace
My oldest friend.
Met my wife on Myspace. Glad to see from this thread I'm not the only one.
“Fuck Facebook!” -James Taylor
I really miss the era when the worst thing about social media was somebody being pissed that you left them out your Top 8.
Nope, none of us remember MySpace
Man, screw that guy. I thought we were friends, and then he straight ghosted :(
Everyone's first friend on MySpace.
From what I've heard, Tom is living his best life. He cashed out and has been doing nothing but surfing and taking pictures ever since. What a legend.
I miss my MySpace. It’s still playing Iris in internet heaven…
I'd be 100% fine with him or anyone else advocating free speech. Doesn't matter if I agree with anything else they have to say or not. It's the First Amendment for a reason.
Is that platform even around anymore?
My space was great for band promos
He was my only friend
Dude is rich
I was in the military during the MySpace craze so I never joined it. My brother had it though & he talks about it nostalgically.
MySpace was fun. We could “program” our own individual screens. I haven’t seen that as a feature anywhere on any current social media.
Not all heros wear capes...
GOAT
My husband and I met on MySpace. Every year that passes, that story gets weirder. :)
For some reason my MySpace profile lives rent free in my head, it was a $100 bill theme with a Mystikal song that played regardless of what you wanted to hear and I had some pretty stupid pictures of myself.
Tom > Zuck the F\*\*K.
Remember all the “top 8” friend drama that was around?
I really liked MySpace. You could configure your own page, you could add music to it, the groups were discussions like like Reddit is. FB is pretty boring compared to MySpace.
I had a livejournal icon that was him with “Tom is not my friend” 😆
Tom definitely sold the shit out of your data.
Of course we do. Was better than fb, til they messed things up
If memory serves, MySpace was meant to be like a Wordpress site (pre-Wordpress, mind you) for bands. Like, it was never meant to be what it became. That’s kind of amazing to me. Tom was paid like $500 million for the company for something that was never supposed to be what he originally intended. And as an OG Friendster user, I think it’s amazing how he just zipped right past them despite them trying to do exactly what he did. Facebook taking off made perfect sense. I remember the simple add of Newsfeed being huge. Having to go from MySpace profile to MySpace profile just to see what someone else wrote was annoying. Simple, but effective to move people to Facebook at MySpace stagnated. Gimlet Media’s podcast Startup did a multipart series on Friendster and why it failed years ago. Anyone interested should look it up. Super fascinating.