A young relative invited us to look his MySpace page, and out of curiosity I've "browsed" a bit there. I'm definitely not impressed with most of what I've seen, although most of it is relatively "harmless" ... I think.

It appears that several "helper" sites offer canned "biographies" and/or "personalities" that are widely used and/or just copied/emulated by those unable to come up with something. Childishly trite descriptions, all virtually identical, are abundant.

On the surface, the main purpose is to see how many "friends" one can recruit, which is a boringly useless pursuit when others are doing the same, since it results in everybody having the same "friends," none of whom appear to have any interest in actually speaking to each other. (One quite visible "person" appears as a "friend" on close to 20% of others' pages that I've looked at, but has no "friends" on his own page.(?))

MySpace, as the supposedly "most popular" example, is heavily infested with spammers similar to those who have been hitting mudcat. If you browse for "within 50 miles" of a specific ZIP code (in the US) and include ages down to at least 30, fully 5 to 10 percent of the "profiles" returned will be pages showing nothing but links to porn. (Clue - Florida is not within 50 miles of Kansas: 100% of "out of range specified" hits, or those who do not show a "city" ident, are porn spammers.) Thus far I've seen no actual "porn" on MySpace, - - - only "links to porn."

Less popular sites may offer a little more, but the "concept" seems really thin, and unlikely to lead to anyone with "ideas" (or personalities) of much interest.

John