Over the last year, I’ve become very disgruntled with the amount people using useless and/or unnecessary social networking sites on the web. In November, I deleted my Myspace page, and other than the ability to message 4,000 people all at once, I have not missed much of it. I still run the T.O.F.U. (myspace.com/tonsoffununiversity) profile there, which I am trying to keep very simple.

Instead of hoarding people and sites, we should be evolving with the web. For example, the first social profile I created was at Friendster. It sucked over time, so I moved to Myspace in 2003, and now I’m at Facebook, which has learned a lot from the “growing suckage” of it’s predecessors. These predecessors are now learning from the new kids on the internet block; keeping up with the trend of quality usefulness and user-friendliness. Smart, that is.

However, I feel that when one does add themselves to a new community, they should pick one or two and stick with it. Each online community is very much like a house or a city, very few people live in more than one. It doesn’t seem logical.

By this, I figure I will leave Facebook once a better, more efficient networking portal comes along. It may exist already, but I would probably have to utilize my web-addiction a lot more to find it and develop yet another group of people I will always hardly know personally.

A good friend of mine has accounts and profiles registered on dozens of various social networking websites. I also know that this friend is annoyed with the amount maintenance needed to keep them updated, and eventually forgets about them, only to re-register as a new user. With me trying to be creative and maintain my touring schedule, I was falling behind on my Facebook and Myspace maintenance, so one of them had to go and I went with the lesser of two suckas.

My LiveJournal account has much more value to me than my Myspace profile ever did, which is why I’m keeping it. But now that I’ve “WordPress-ed” my site toward blog-friendliness, I am now reconsidering how I will use my LJ blog. I have considered using it as a Neat Links page, or as my gig listings. Not sure what I will do with it just yet.

I dig the web big time, but I certainly see the lack of much actual art/action stemming from being a member of any website or social network. I think there are a handful of people who have made their careers through web affiliation or promotion on some of these, but it seems to be a small handful of barely-skilled entertainers, and I believe it is a fleeting fame they are falling into. Over time, it’s a very small percentage of the world that actually cares about people who are famous for being famous. Fame in art is nice, but not necessary or primary. Art in fame would be nice to see.

Looking at the nature of shitty things on the net versus actual shitty things in the world and can I see that the web is a moving, growing tabloid of low-quality public interest and a broken amplifier of what the world really is and could become. The truest aspects of what counts in life can a should be found offline, on one’s own, then maybe one can research it online.

The internet is amazing. I certainly get most of my information from it, and have made more of a career through it, but I also tour a lot and perform many, many times a year in front of hundreds of thousands of people. That helps too. No matter how many people know you on the internet, one can never truly understand their own impact until they personally meet and greet the people they have or are impacting.

I feel like there needs to be better contact and context from artists online. If you have a growing fan base, stay in touch with them. Take the time to reach out and know your audience. I can learn from this philosophy too. I have really slipped in the last year with regard to keeping in touch with friends, fans and users. I am going to make a difference this year.

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This entry was written by Mike McGee, posted on 27 January, 2008 at 4:59 PM, filed under Personal Updates and tagged facebook, Internet-Stuff, myspace, online, social networking, websites. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.