Error: I'm afraid this is the first I've heard of a "writeback" flavoured Blosxom. Try dropping the "/+writeback" bit from the end of the URL.
Weariness
I think that my two favorite features of Myspace are the ability to see the status of messages that you send, and the button that appears below bulletins that allows you to remove the sender from your friends list. Regarding the status message: this really appeals to my deep well of schadenfreude. It's like impatiently waiting by the phone for someone to call you back, 2.0, people sweating bullets while mashing F5. That bitch has time to read my message, but not enough time to write back?! I wonder if the guy who wrote the Myspace code, Tom or whoever, intended to make people insane or if it's just a happy side effect. I do wish that other forms of communication had the same level of transparency, like a voicemail system that informs repeat callers that, in fact, their messages are being deleted unplayed. Delicious!
Regarding the remove friend button: I wonder whether this feature was available at the conception of the bulletin system, or if it was introduced upon request. It's funny that the coder/s realize how fucking obnoxious receiving bulletins is that they give you a way to sever all ties with chronic bulletineers, but they don't just remove the broadcasts altogether. I suppose they expect that you should police your own "friends."
And that pretty much sums up all that I like about Myspace. Everything else: the non-scrolling background images; embedded audio; horrible polychromatic fonts against clashing background colors; stupid, meaningless, and often misattributed quotations. The Internet Prime, circa 1996. The worst offense, to my mind, is how fucking scene it all is. I guess I appreciate the opportunity afforded to independent musicians, but Myspace is unquestionably the face of hipster posturing in this young century.
Speaking of "scene," I've become pretty sick of the way that I've been acting recently. I'd like to begin with an apology to my friends on the off chance they care enough to read this: I'm sorry for the judgmental prick that I've become. Now this is where you pause to think "You've been an insufferable prick ever since we met." Well, fuck you. It wasn't always this way. I remember a time when this fresh-faced lad, a newly minted high school graduate, approached each day with a smile and a sense of adventure.
I don't want to place the blame for this situation on anyone else's shoulders, but I remember vividly the events that started my descent into ignominy. Stop me if you've heard this before: I met a girl, totally unlike anyone I'd met before. She was my antithesis, while I totally conformed to what one might expect from a white suburbanite in the late nineties, she completely eschewed the mainstream in a way that was totally outside my experience. I fell for her hard. And events progressed more or less straight from the script of any coming-of-age romantic comedy. The degree by which I was in awe of her was matched by how totally she intimidated me, and it wasn't until after she moved to New York that I attempted to express my feelings to her. I began to emulate her attitudes, her taste in music, even her chosen path through college, in what I expect was subconsciously an attempt to become more impressive. What I'm saying is that she deeply influenced the person I became. She had a great breadth of knowledge and experience, and she was a bright and charming person. I have attempted to gain a measure of that breadth, but I feel that it has caused me to affect a world-weariness that I find unpleasant.
I guess that the point of all of this is I feel like I have become a caricature, and I need to find some way to change. I've been making a concerted effort to be less of a dick, but I still catch myself making faces or shitty comments almost on impulse. Anyway, enough of that for now.
#