The Rise and Fall of Social Media
2005 was the last best year for meeting people from the net, partly because people could send private messages without being distracted. MSN Messenger was the way to go because you could send images and videos unlike sites such as Face Party or MySpace. People in general were more confident about being online since catfishing wasn’t prevalent. It was always obvious if a Brit was using a picture from an American. The texture would be wrong, along with subtle details like facial structure, American products, a car on the right side of the road, and background details such as a house made of wood. In the early-to-mid noughties, having a profile on a social media site was simply an extension of who you are rather than the ultimate representation. People did not strive to be popular on the internet like celebrities needed TV in the 20th century. Nowadays, YouTube is a combination of PBS and MTV.
I find it ironic that using the net was seen as a geeky loner activity until it was normalized on cellphones, which made library trips seem redundant. Nowadays, browsing the net has become a truly social activity where you can be in public while your friends around you observe your activities. Ironically, people have become geekier by ignoring others to remain fixated on their phones. The justification is that you can gain more friends through the hashtag algorithm, but this algorithm only serves to fuel the narcissism of some people who choose partners on the basis of who has the most likes or who has taken photos with the most celebrities (which compensates for the lack of vacation photos). In the old days, a person would have been criticized for spending too much time in front of a computer.
A greater irony is that the preference of Instagram over Facebook harkens back to the days of Face Party and MySpace where the only way that a person could disparage you was with words instead of gifs and memes. Gifs are a two-way street, they can advertise your work as an actor but they result in two problems — plot spoilers and moments of sincerity being used for ridicule. I’m glad that I never went through with being an actor or a Nickelodeon presenter (a rightly discarded opportunity in 2001). Despite the increase in self-esteem that the internet has instilled in people, the greatest irony is that people are somehow more uptight about meeting new people on the net. The fear is partly because there are more horror stories. When they finally have the courage to meet a potential partner, there is a pact made to corroborate a false origin story as to how they met. It’s only on Facebook that someone will respond to a stranger’s first message by saying: “I’m sorry, do I know you?”
In 2004, websites like Face Party didn’t have search engines where you could search for people’s names like on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (which has made reality TV redundant). In 2004, teenagers didn’t have family members on their friend lists, so they weren’t being monitored. People could share photos, comments and relationship statuses without fear of them becoming memes or screenshots. Teens were less self-conscious. Social media was at its purest. Before MySpace had experienced a surge of popularity in late 2005, there was no pressure to have as many friends as possible. It made you look good if you had a small number of friends. Not only did it mean that you weren’t a friend collector but it meant that you had offline friends. You could actually go a long time without any updates, and nobody would think that you’ve gone off the face of the planet.
Besides making new friends, the main attraction behind social media was that you didn’t need to buy a photo album when you can store things online (although there will always be a market for photo frames so as to showcase your nostalgia to house guests). Social media was just simply a way to cut down on text messages and phone calls as well as keep in touch with loved ones who want to know what you look like after you’ve gone your separate ways. Face Party was the most innocent social networking site because it wasn’t about trying to get the attention of a celebrity. There wasn’t pressure to upload photos in as many locations as possible. We were just teenagers with webcams and limited rolls of film that were to be used sparingly. “Less is more” had actually meant something. There was a sanctity about being a photographer. Nowadays, anyone can be a documentarian or porn star. During the Face Party era, people would have been accused of being vain for having so many photos of just themselves. On Instagram, nobody thinks twice about it. Partly, this is because so many people do it, but it’s also because you can be prolific for free.
In the noughties, women looked attractive without resorting to filters that make their faces look ethereally flat. Lack of definition means lack of depth, hence the faces look one-dimensional. The glow of the eyes can take away from the face or vice-versa. Light can only have beauty with shadows, hence you need the valleys to appreciate the peaks. In 2015, airbrushing made Calista Flockhart look bad in Supergirl. In 2005, it actually meant something when a girl went out of her way to look like a model by hiring a professional photographer. Nowadays, it’s not saying that much. It’s become trickier to work out if the person is real, especially since some people are so self-conscious about the way that they look that they only upload professional photos. Such professionalism results in the most deluded sense of grandeur since some people only want to befriend people who have a high number of likes and friends.
There are some women who no longer want to have relationships because they receive validation in the form of likes and retweets. This is why I miss the days of Face Party and MySpace because photos didn’t have like buttons. If you wanted to show your admiration, you had to use words. However, Face Party had a feature where you could rate someone’s profile with illustrated words like star and minger. The Look It’s Me and Profile Heaven sites had a feature where you could rate people on a 10 scale, but these sites became irrelevant once celebrities made themselves approachable online. There are people who vie for the attention of a celebrity so hard that they don’t realize two things: they will never be that celebrity’s friend as a fan, and they are more likely to be that celebrity’s friend if they become a legitimate celebrity through an artistic medium.
In 2004, people were willing to give you the benefit of the doubt that your social life was more prolific than what could be captured online. Nowadays, people believe that every social encounter is captured online. Not even the prolific Bruce Lee was photographed as much as that. The mindset is that if you don’t have a photo to prove that you had an encounter then it never happened. In 2004, you couldn’t take that many pictures unless you had many rolls of film. I suspect that if digital cameras or smartphones were invented earlier then Face Party would have been a more popular site. By the time that MySpace and Facebook became popular, these technological advances were more commonplace.
It was initially difficult for me to upload photos online because I didn’t have a scanner or even a webcam until I started college because I needed to scan and print things for homework. By the time that it was 2008, it became prevalent for photo developers to give you a copy of your photos on one disc so that you could upload your photos without needing a scanner. One significant difference between 2004 and the smartphone era is that people could use the internet without being motivated by the opinions of friends. With the net now being on everyone’s cellphones, we have about as much privacy as sending a text message. This affects people’s ability to be candid or honest with who they are talking to online, especially on dating sites. Although, back then, you could have group chats on a messenger service like MSN. Facebook would eventually steal MSN’s thunder. Elsewhere, Skype and FaceTime bottled the lightning of MSN’s video chat software. Facebook were a little late to the party in that regard.
During my heyday, I could have long conversations with people on MSN because there wasn’t a whole lot happening on sites like Face Party and MySpace. I can have think of two times when a woman engaged me in a MSN chat that lasted for 24 hours - one of those white women was someone who I first met offline, so it wasn’t a surprise when we had sexual encounters. The other woman wasn’t so lucky since she lived down South. Either way, these long chats would later give me the confidence to write long dialogue scenes. That’s an important detail for me to throw out there since I realize so many people out there associate long dialogue scenes with the films of Quentin Tarantino.
In 2012, I removed over 800 people from my Facebook friend-list because there wasn’t an unfollow button at the time. Some men post revolting things out of humour or to show how they’ve been injured. Some women post images of animal abuse as part of their activism but this was before Facebook had installed a blurry disclaimer. From both genders, I was used by some people to prove that they are not racist. I became the token black guy despite being only half-black. You know that you’ve reached a new low when you’re referred to as “this guy on my friend list” as opposed to a friend. I was tiring of being invited to play juvenile games, join groups and like pages. I was also getting tired of being tagged in silly images, and this was before memes were the zeitgeist.
It grew tiresome to receive friend requests from people who wouldn’t engage me in conversation. These people were either spies or friend collectors. There is something awfully insincere about people who wish you “Happy birthday” when they don’t usually go out of their way to converse with you online let alone invite you to places. Offline, I wasn’t being engaged in intellectual conversation; and I was used as a bodyguard. Online, I didn’t want people to find me so I changed my name. Life is too small to have a Facebook friend-list which consists of acquaintances, pen pals and spies. I only want family and friends who actually want to meet me. Facebook reminded me of college in how most white strangers are willing to befriend each other but not an ethnic minority who is in their class.
In 2019, I decided to surprise a former Facebook friend on her 40th birthday. She is a middle-class metalhead named Catherine. I had first known her through the Face Party site in 2007 then we became MySpace friends before FB ones. She is a Mancunian who I never got the chance to meet despite Manchester being a place that I socialized in from time to time. After I sent her the birthday message, she typed: “Oh my goodness, Joseph? Oh wow… I didn’t think you still had FB. I’ve looked for you over the years but was unable to find you. How are you? My…It has been such a long time. Thank you for my birthday wishes. I really appreciate it xxxx”
Ironically, when I suggested that we should meet up, she ghosted me. I tend to find myself learning more about life by being online than offline. When I’m outside, I feel like I’m looking inside something from the outside but I feel more like an insider online when it should be vice-versa. There is a peculiar irony about how I connect with people. During the early days of social media, the most in-depth conversations that I had were offline. Nowadays, the opposite is true. I never fail to be surprised by the number of people online, strangers, who open up to me about private things. Ironically, it’s difficult for myself to get a girlfriend online since I never go on vacation. Therein lies the kicker to the stomach, photos of yourself on vacation are a sign of affluence - an affirmation that you are financially stable. I don’t have the sort of high-quality photography which looks like it could be used for a brochure or a magazine. It would have been nice to live one of those lives where a photographer happens to capture me in the moment as I convey facial expressions during a conversation or something else. If only I was a celebrity.
