Sunday, September 09, 2007

Face-Off? Or OurSpace?

What's The Deal?

I was talking to an older friend of mine the other day (ahem... RevJ), who was showing his age in not understanding the new phenomenon that is facebook. Being the mature, school-leaver-type that i am, who is in possession of both a facebook and myspace account, i consider myself in a position to judge both. Of course.

While i most definately went through my myspace phase, i think i've outgrown it now. From what i've seen (and heard), myspace is great for school-aged kids because of all the colour and busy formatting. At first, i really didn't see the difference between myspace and facebook, apart from the pretty colours (which, i'll admit, made me want to keep my myspace... i'm such a child). But, i soon got addicted to facebook (damn you, irishman!). Somehow, it's just so much easier to look at your friends profiles, send them messages, muck around... if you knew my friends and i, you'd understand that the novelty of poking a friend, throwing nachos at them, sending them a fish, joining stupid groups that epitomise life or commenting on how ugly they look in every single photo of them (ahem... PB) is right up our alley. Being able to do it with a click of a button, while at the same time doing homework, is the perfect procrastination tool. So much easier than myspace. In my opinion, anyway.

But what RevJ had the big qualms with (as raised in a discusison between him and Dr.B, as they tried to figure out exactly how to work their new facebook accounts - after i'd givne Dr.B his daily tutorial) was why people bothered sending messages to each other. He said why not just use a phone, or, even better, actually SEE the person. Eventually, he grasped the idea that sending messages via facebook not only saved the money involved in picking up a phone, or, worse yet, driving across town, but also was just so much more fun!

Next came his confusion about why we (namely Angel and i) could spend an entire hour writing messages to one another on someone else's wall (namely PB), until it was completely filled with our babble - simply because we felt like it. It was beyond his comprehension - but then again, it was fairly bizzare of us...

Dr.B's inability to understand lay in our cries of 'oh, i got a wall post! i'm loved!' - he didn't get how an electronic two liner could make us feel 'loved'. Here's why i think it is. When you're with someone, they are already talking to you. It takes no effort, nor is it anything out of the ordinary. A wall post (or text message, or email, whatever) means that someone has taken time out of their day to spontaneously think about you and let you know that they are doing so. They've put effort into a message (which is often funny, and worth it just for the laugh). It's more love!

I guess you have to be a certain age to appreciate facebook...

Annie

1 comment:

Loz_K said...

this kinda reminds me of a magazine article i read in either cosmo or shop til u drop.. cant actually remember which 1 it was but they were the only 2 mags i had in hospital so it had to be one of those coz i dont regularly read magazines :P

aaaanyway, the article mainly weighed up myspace and facebook and asked heaps of people what they thought. facebook won coz of all its extra features, and the 'neatness'of its layout.

i, however, when reading this article was like NO WAY i love my myspace and will always be loyal to it, even though i also have a facebook. this was a good few weeks ago and im thinking now facebook is growing on me. some of the features are fun to muck around with, even tho some of them are completely random and pointless. and im starting to get old school friends on facebook who don't have a myspace, i think the fact a myspace is an actual website anyone can view if u set it to public, sorta freaked out most techologically challenged friends of mine, or perhaps most people in general too i guess.

but i think the main reason i loved myspace is coz i had it first, it was my baby, i put effort into creating it, picking a background which was "me", adding friends etc etc blah blah. and i think i was more attached to using it because the majority of people who i sent comments to only had a myspace account and not facebook, so was just easier to be on myspace.

that and i only made the facebook account way before it became the craze because 1 of my friends told me they had photos i wanted up on their facebook and the only way to see them was to join :P

anyway, thats my 2 cents, or should i say $2 with the length of this comment. sorry hun!