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06. Myspace with Tiffany Kwak
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One of the TOP 8 inventions of 2003 was undoubtedly Myspace, which launched in August of ’03 and quickly became one of the most important social networking and music discovery platforms of the aughts. Helen speaks with Tiffany Kwak aka Lawrence, Kansas’s “that girl from Myspace” about her Myspace era and what we lost when we ditched Myspace for Facebook.
LINKS !!
Tangled Up In Spam by James Gleik - NYT Magazine
Oral History of Myspace Music - Stereogum
Song of the Week: Transatlanticism by Deathcab for Cutie
Recommended
Transcript
Tiffany's Myspace Fame
00:00:00
Speaker
We were at a stoplight and then I heard the car next to us and someone in there goes, hey, it's that girl from Myspace.
New Podcast Schedule & Newsletter
00:01:03
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to class of 03, the podcast about the year 2003 and all the ways it changed the world. I'm your host, Helen Grossman, and this is episode six, MySpace.
00:01:21
Speaker
One quick announcement before we get into this episode. We're going to be moving to publishing new episodes every other week for a little while. As I mentioned in most episodes, this is a labor of love and a product of curiosity. I write and produce and host and edit every single episode, which is a lot of work. It's work I enjoy doing, but it turns out it is a lot to do on my own.
00:01:49
Speaker
So in order to preserve the quality of this show, as well as my own sanity, new episodes will now go out every other Thursday.
The Rise of Myspace
00:02:01
Speaker
Another little announcement. I am going to be launching a sub stack or email newsletter to accompany the podcast in the coming weeks. So listen for an announcement about that.
00:02:13
Speaker
or follow us on Instagram at class of oh three pod for links to sign up to get 2003 tidbits directly in your inbox. Okay. So on to this week's episode.
00:02:29
Speaker
I'm going to take a wild guess that sometime between 2003 and 2008, you were friends with someone named Tom. You might not know him by his full name, which is Tom Anderson, but you'd know him by his photo. He's looking back at you from the scrawls on his whiteboard, smiling. You were friends with Tom because we all were. He was kind of like a gift with purchase of signing up for Myspace.
00:02:57
Speaker
In August 2003, a few employees at an internet marketing firm called eUniverse set out to create an alternative to Friendster, which is widely considered the first social media network. Friendster was founded in 2002, and by early 2003, it had over three million users. But as the site kept gaining new users, it couldn't keep up technically with the increased traffic.
00:03:24
Speaker
Servers were crashing, the site was slow to load, and users grew frustrated. Tom Anderson, Krista Wolf, and some of their colleagues recognized this opportunity and grabbed it. They launched and created Myspace in 10 days. Myspace was kind of an amalgamation of a bunch of different kinds of socially oriented sites.
00:03:47
Speaker
It had the social networking component of some of the internet's earliest networking sites. It had aspects of an online dating profile, a little bit of the music sharing ethos of Napster and early music forums, blogging capabilities.
00:04:04
Speaker
It was customizable, your template to arrange the colors and layout and fonts and GIFs if you just took the time to read up on some rudimentary HTML. It had a friend counter, so your popularity was visible to everyone. Of course, you also had your top eight to show off where you are in the social hierarchy.
00:04:24
Speaker
or who your favorite bands were. It also allowed people to connect directly with bands and celebrities, really for the first time. It was most popular and influential with bands who could share new music, concert dates, videos, and cross-promote other indie or local acts.
Myspace: Music & Ads
00:04:44
Speaker
If all these things don't sound interesting or revolutionary today, it's because Myspace's DNA is so embedded in our conception of social media that as the starting point, it seems so obvious, so dated. But coming of age with Myspace?
00:05:02
Speaker
And I mean this if you were a teenager obsessively scouring Myspace for bands to pretend you liked and mirror pictures to post as your profile picture. I also mean this for the broader coming of age of the internet too, with the rise of web 2.0. Coming of age with Myspace fundamentally informed our relationship to the internet as individual users and our relationship to the internet as a community playground.
00:05:31
Speaker
If you've listened to other episodes of the show, in particular episode two, Pirates of the Caribbean, you might be able to put the pieces together that Myspace emerged at an opportune moment.
00:05:43
Speaker
As the music industry was shifting, the recording industry was suing random teenagers and their grandparents for supposedly downloading music on Kazaa, iTunes launched and offered songs for 99 cents a piece. Over the next few years from 2003 to 2008-ish, maybe later, Myspace became the destination for music discovery, as well as a free sanctioned music streaming platform.
00:06:11
Speaker
The ecosystem of music discovery, listening to new songs, and social connectivity around this music cemented around this platform.
00:06:22
Speaker
And then they sold it to Rupert Murdoch and it became an ad platform and that's a story for another
Spam Legislation
00:06:28
Speaker
day. But at this precise moment in 2003 that MySpace was catalyzing, there was another conversation taking place around internet communication, but this one wasn't about top eights or forums. It was about unsolicited emails spam.
00:06:46
Speaker
In the fall and winter of 2003, the House and Senate passed unanimously the Can Spam Act of 2003, which President Bush signed into law on December 16th and took effect on January 1st, 2004.
00:07:01
Speaker
The Can Spam Act was the first national legislation to try to curb the proliferation of unwanted emails. The name of the law intended to use can like canning something or getting rid of it, a very boomer way of saying, stopping something. But critics quickly latched on to the Can Spam name as a calling card that the government essentially sanctioned certain kinds of unsolicited commercial emails.
00:07:31
Speaker
In essence, the law's most important provisions were that all emails must have visible unsubscribe mechanisms and that opt-out requests had to be honored within 10 business days. Senators were also required to provide legitimate physical addresses and could not write misleading or false subject lines. It also required accurate from-email addresses.
00:07:56
Speaker
Altogether, the government was just kind of saying, if you're sending an unwanted commercial email, here's how to do it.
00:08:04
Speaker
All you really need to do is look at your promotions inbox and your spam folders to see how effective can spam has been at actually canning spam. At the time of this recording, I personally have over 19,000 emails in my promotions inbox on Gmail and 150 in my spam folder. And it's only 150 because they delete automatically after 30 days. Please don't come at me for not cleaning up my inboxes. There's just too many emails. It's so overwhelming.
00:08:34
Speaker
In January 2003, a conference for programmers took place at MIT completely dedicated to the subject of email spam. While organizers were anticipating a couple dozen participants, hundreds of people frustrated and angry and weary about the spam epidemic showed up. A speaker at the conference told attendees that spam had become the organized crime of the internet.
00:09:04
Speaker
A lengthy February 2003 piece by James Gleich in the New York Times magazine goes into extensive details about merely all the different spam categories that the author receives. And his exasperation is clear and also relatable from the beginning. In a perverse tribute to the power of the online revolution, he writes, we are all suddenly getting the same mail.
00:09:34
Speaker
Whether it's the Viagra email or the free vacations, free girls with a Z, get rich quick schemes or the Nigerian Prince, the early 2000s were awash in spam messages and 2003 was a breaking point.
00:09:49
Speaker
Perhaps it could have been the end of unwanted, impersonal emails. But we all know that corporations usually win out in the end. And as a former marketer myself, with years of MailChimp and Clavio and whatever other inane email marketing platforms under my belt, it's really easy to skirt the spam filters and follow the law in the most evasive way possible.
00:10:15
Speaker
So while the internet was opening up these opportunities for genuine social connection and interactivity, the floodgates were open for more nefarious players who, according to James Lake, the author of the New York Times Magazine piece, often present themselves as people named Buffy or suspiciously as James. Also, no more constipation 68487 and UG586MIZ5W at msn.com.
Tiffany's Early Internet Days
00:10:45
Speaker
The internet in 2003 was a weird and wild place, its legs still growing, its identity still forming. This week, I spoke with Tiffany Kwok, who in 2003 was a teenager growing up in Lawrence, Kansas, experiencing the world outside of her hometown through forums, message boards, and her own online zines that she created.
00:11:09
Speaker
She also, in the mid 2000s, was very active and popular on Myspace, as you'll hear. So here's my conversation with Tiffany Kwok, aka Caucasian without the cock, aka that girl from Myspace. I hope you enjoy.
00:11:46
Speaker
Hello, my name is Tiffany Clark. In 2003, I was in high school in a place called Lawrence, Kansas. It is a college town in the middle of nowhere. I was on the internet. What were your memories of the early internet? If you were on the internet, no three, what were sort of like, what are the memories that come to you at that time? When you're young, you just want to talk to people. You want to learn more about the world and yourself.
00:12:13
Speaker
I really have a memory of being on this message board called Mad Rad Hair, where it was literally just people who were posting about like cool haircuts, very, you know, in the scene haircut, crazy hairstyles that were like, you know, proto hipster hairstyles, right. And so those threads are really interesting because
00:12:34
Speaker
I always wanted to emulate a lot of the things that were on there. And so a lot of that was just like posting about cool ways to dye your hair, cool cuts, you know, and then it was like, what shows would you go to? And just kind of posting, posting anything and everything around that. And then I also used to be on like the Backstreet Boys message board, so like not even like in the scene.
00:12:59
Speaker
cool scene quote unquote so to speak but like I just remember being on those message boards and that was like particular to like the fandom where we talked about like different songs our favorite factory boy um but then I also remember there was like a different message board that I would like peek into I think it was related to like pop punk it was like a pop punk message board
00:13:21
Speaker
And there was the craziest debate about Avril Lavigne like that was something that like this thread was like giant and it was a debate about whether or not Avril Lavigne was a poser or not. And I just remember like that for some reason like that specific thread was something that
00:13:39
Speaker
I apparently had very strong feelings about because I would check on it and see the debate happening. But that also is just a really early memory of people being so fiercely passionate about defending pop-punk against newcomers and musicians.
00:13:57
Speaker
Even the idea of a poser feels very early in the thousands. That word isn't something that we hear a lot anymore, but it feels very attached to that era. Do you remember making a MySpace profile and how that came into your world?
00:14:22
Speaker
being online, being on these live journal sites, just where you're constantly online reading other people's profiles. I definitely feel like I found it through one of those channels. And I was super excited.
00:14:38
Speaker
it was a chance for me to, this idea of creating a profile, kind of customizing it, showing off who you are friends with was like, okay, that's cool, I want in on this. And so I just remember being able to just customize my page, learning rudimentary HTML and just being that kid of, I want this to look cool. I remember having a block party, the band block party,
00:15:04
Speaker
song quote in there somewhere. My username or display name was Caucasian minus the cock. And I think that was also a big highlight where people would be like, that's your username.
00:15:20
Speaker
Yes, okay, that's amazing. So it worked out it worked in a lot of layers for me. And so yeah, I just remember my background was like mint green. I love that like sea foam mint green color. And I think I did have a lot of photos like
00:15:35
Speaker
They weren't like full face shots. It was like definitely like looking emo in the bathroom, you know, kind of like half my face. Yeah, that was like such a classic MySpace profile photo. It was like hair covering half your face or like mirror shot with your digital camera. But yeah, I just remember trying out just a bunch of different, you know, a bunch of different like
00:15:59
Speaker
I want to be anonymous, but still look cool. Conveying that in a photo in 2003 to 2006 was pretty difficult, but we got there. Trial and error.
00:16:13
Speaker
how are you teaching yourself HTML? Like was it, were there message boards? Like I think that was one of the most underappreciated parts of MySpace that like in the transition to Facebook, which their worldview was like, keep things stable and like keep things consistent and the world will follow. And MySpace was like, this is your space. You could do whatever you want with it. You can have crazy fonts. You can have crazy backgrounds.
00:16:41
Speaker
It was a very different aesthetic and a very different experience as a user, but what we lost in the transition was this customization and it also created a generation of people who now are like, I know some HTML when really we know like how to bold words and stuff. How are you learning about it?
Learning Web Design
00:17:03
Speaker
Totally true. And so it's interesting because I think my fascination with like learning, you know, even before I realized it was, oh, this is like front end code, quote unquote, there were, you know, like geocities, right? Like we had these sorts of like, you can build these different pages and have like your homepage. And so I remember even before my space, just like tinkering around with how do I build a website or web page? And I forget what it wasn't geocities, but I use something else. And I just remember having a bunch of different, like,
00:17:33
Speaker
You know, it looked awful because I just kind of want to do everything, you know, like more keys everywhere, italics everywhere, colors everywhere. But then I think with Myspace, it's like, oh, you can make these things look good. And so just kind of like surfing the internet, looking up and researching how to do certain things. Like if I want to build a block on this side, like how do I build a block? And so just kind of looking up different ways to apply that code. And then I would say at the same time I had in Myspace, I also actually had
00:18:03
Speaker
a webzine that was dedicated to interviewing local bands. It was very plain looking, but it was just a way for me to talk about cool music, find different bands to interview, and it was just my first website, really. And so that was really inspired by all of these different
00:18:27
Speaker
internet holes that I would go down in and all the different websites I interacted with, but then having the idea of like, hey, I love music. I want to write about it. I want to talk to people who do cool things in this industry. And then so just really was able to pull pieces together, write some rudimentary HTML CSS to get like a site up and running. It was so fun.
00:18:53
Speaker
to just go down the internet rabbit hole and look up different things that you could do. And so even now, I'm just like, wow, I cannot believe I did that. And then I just didn't think of it as a challenge. Because now I'm just like, oh my gosh, how would I host this? Where would I host it? How much would I pay? There's all these different micro decisions that come with the decision of having a blog or having some sort of website. But back then, I was just, hey, this is cool. Let's try it.
00:19:22
Speaker
It was definitely, I don't know, I don't know if it was a better time, but it was more creative in a lot of ways because a lot of things were just coming up at the same time. Yeah, it was more DIY, I think, you know? DIY, oh gosh. When did you start to realize that your reach was sort of reverberating beyond the middle of the country?
00:19:48
Speaker
I think for my WebZ, I definitely remember reaching out to a lot of teens and bands who were out not in Kansas, right?
00:20:02
Speaker
but still in the Midwest. And I think there was one band in Iowa that I was just like, I think it was either Iowa or Missouri. And I just remember they were so cool. They just became friends after I interviewed them. And so we had never met in person ever. But we had such a great rapport and they were so supportive of just
00:20:25
Speaker
me having a webzine and so that was really cool to see, right? Myspace is interesting because the influence I felt was more local.
Myspace vs. Facebook
00:20:34
Speaker
The first time I got recognized, I was sitting in my friend's car. I think it was like the weekend. It was super sunny. We were at a stoplight and then I heard the car next to us and someone in there goes, hey, it's that girl from Myspace.
00:20:52
Speaker
And I look over at my friend, I'm like, wait, did I just get recognized? And he just like, I think you just did. And so that was like the first time I just was like, well, this is kind of weird, but interesting.
00:21:18
Speaker
The second time I got recognized, I was actually at Urban Outfitters. I was shopping. I was checking out. And then the cashier was like, you're that girl from Myspace. And I was like, I don't even know you. This is so weird. And so it was pleasant. But it was just one of those things of like, hey, you're my store. You're on the internet. I recognize you. So that was fascinating. That was still within my hometown.
00:21:47
Speaker
And then the third time I got recognized, I was actually at a Jimmy Eat World concert. I'm sure it was a Jimmy Eat World concert. I don't think it was a different concert. And one of the guards or the bodyguards or security guards recognized me.
00:22:03
Speaker
as that girl from Myspace. So those are the three times I got recognized in public over a span of just like maybe, I don't even know, like a few months to a year while I was still in high school. And it was just one of those moments of like, whoa, like this is a real website and people, real people look at it. And like, you are not anonymous. I think we forget how young
00:22:23
Speaker
You are when you're a teenager, you know, and so that is it is totally but it's also simultaneously like I can't imagine how exciting it would be to be recognized at Urban Outfitters of all places. It was and it was honestly that was maybe the most I think that was the most exciting for me because you know, I think Urban Outfitters is just one of those places that like
00:22:46
Speaker
when you're in high school. It was the place to go to shop. We all wanted to work there. And some of my friends did work there. I ended up working at Urban Outfitters too for just like a little bit. Some of the features of Myspace, if you don't remember, you could have blogs at the top. It was your about me and then it was who I'd like to meet, which is interesting.
00:23:08
Speaker
Sort of like, yeah, my space was this hybrid. Like now that I look back on it, I'm like, was this about dating? You know, like, was this sort of a, you know, who I'm looking for? So, you know, it's that amazing blogs who you'd like to meet your top eight and then your interests, general interests, music, movies, TVs, books, and then heroes. Do any of those subjects like, you know, bring to mind anything from your profile?
00:23:36
Speaker
I'm pretty sure the people I like to meet, it was all bands I really liked, so I'm pretty sure Death Camp for Cutie was on there. Whoever was the band of the month or the week for me, that would constantly rotate. I don't really think I used the blog function super heavily because I had other blogs that I
00:23:59
Speaker
I like focused on more. And so I just remember it was all about kind of like finding cool people to connect to, you know, seeing what they were into and just, you know, finding people who were like like minded. I think I had Tom in my top eight.
00:24:15
Speaker
Myspace Tom. Of course. Did you have a song on your profile? Because on Myspace you could add a song and that was really in some ways the most expressive you could get about who you were and what your values were. What were some of the songs that you had on your profile? I think the entire Block Party album, Silent Alarm, every single song from the album had its time on my page. That was the breakthrough.
00:24:42
Speaker
For me, I think for a long period of time. So that's the one I remember the most. It was really fun to just have that music on there. I think that was the first time that we can maybe do that. I'm trying to think.
00:24:56
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. I mean, yeah, cuz like media files. Yeah, it's like having actual like lyrics blaring from like a page. Yeah, it'd be like you went on to you clicked on to someone's profile and then their music would immediately start playing. Yeah. So annoying, but also really fun. Yes. Yeah, it's like jarring. Yeah. But also like super necessary to just show your personality.
00:25:21
Speaker
It's, it's funny to think about when now because I think we have such a specific idea of like internet celebrity and like the idea of like the influencer the quote unquote like creator. And when we think about what like MySpace celebrities were like what, what MySpace
00:25:40
Speaker
recognition or notoriety was, it's like purely just based on taste, right? Like you weren't actually like, it wasn't about create creation. Like you weren't creating content in the way that content creators now are like constantly making videos or like posting spawn con or whatever. Like it was really just about like,
00:26:02
Speaker
your expression of self and people's recognition of like, oh, this is like a cool person who has good taste, you know. Oh my gosh, that is such a great observation because it is it is so true. And that's why I think it's so hard because for the longest time, right, like I really, I really maybe benefited from
00:26:28
Speaker
being part of a community that was so non-judged. Well, okay, people judge music tastes, yes. But, you know, I chose to be in spaces that were, you know, that had the similar interests of my own. And so there was like a little protective cushion. And so like having good taste,
00:26:45
Speaker
was definitely something that I think we all wanted to have as we came into adulthood right it's like oh like all these things are interesting and you know a really good signifier of what your personality is and so that's what you sought out is yeah I want more of this I want people to know that like I'm in the know I think about myspace celebrity all the time and
00:27:08
Speaker
like Tila Tequila comes up right and like that she was like huge on on the internet um and so i think there was a turning point in terms of like taste versus like content creation that definitely happened on on myspace and then i think with facebook coming on like things just kind of
00:27:27
Speaker
you know, took a turn, things just, you know, devolved. It didn't feel like a, like it was devolving at the time, right, when we were planning to turn to Facebook. But in hindsight, I'm like, why do we give up so easily? You know, why do we turn our backs so quickly, you know? Yeah, yeah. And, you know, and I think about that a lot too, because with Facebook, there was, I mean, it used to be pretty exclusive in terms of
00:27:54
Speaker
you had to have a university or college-specific email address to be able to even sign up. So that was cool. Because instead of being open, there's a step that you have to complete. It's sad how that transition from MySpace to Facebook happened, at least for me. I totally abandoned MySpace when it was like, okay, cool. There's this other thing I can use that is maybe more, I don't know,
00:28:22
Speaker
more mature for like an adult me. There is something about it where it's like, you had this moment on Myspace where it was like, there's Tiffany, there's a girl from Myspace. And then at the height of that to like,
00:28:39
Speaker
find Facebook so appealing. I find that so interesting and so curious, not in a judgmental way because we all did it, right? We all were so quick to be like, oh, here's this much better version of MySpace. Maybe it was that it was cleaner, a cleaner user experience. I don't know. It was easier to connect with people, to send messages, to write, to post on people's wall. Yeah. Oh my gosh. And like poking, like I'm a bird. Yeah.
00:29:07
Speaker
poking. Yeah, it is. I do think it had to do with a transition of like, I am not a teenager kind of looking to prove that I am that I have good taste like that was maybe like the turn.
00:29:24
Speaker
removing myself from local community and then going somewhere else for college. I think that also had an impact, too, of how would this Myspace serve me in this next chapter?
00:29:38
Speaker
maybe I didn't know, right? Like subconsciously, I just knew like I had to be part of a different sort of network or community to be able to find that next phase of my personality and like my coming of age. Yeah, I mean, early Facebook.
00:29:55
Speaker
And this is such a teenage girly, but I remember one of the earliest things on Facebook was that you could see when other people were online. And I remember being on Facebook and knowing what time of night the boy that I had a crush on would be on Facebook. And sort of planning, commenting at that time, which was so much more calculating.
00:30:27
Speaker
Gosh, so true. And I also think like how we use images and imagery in kind of just in all these internet spaces and places, right? And, you know, my space, I never really divulge a lot of just like my day to day, right?
Myspace's Legacy
00:30:43
Speaker
Because, you know, I,
00:30:44
Speaker
I wanted to remain as anonymous as possible, but still feel like I was giving off the best, coolest personality I could. Though with Facebook, people could tag you in photos. For me at least, that was huge. This is a side of me that
00:31:03
Speaker
it gets projected out on other people's like photo albums and things. And so that was also like the era of like those early MacBook, like photo, whatever the photo booth, right. And so so that was just like a whole new way of actually expressing myself. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's interesting to think about we talk about like curation now a lot like curation of your social profile and like the sort of
00:31:28
Speaker
on Instagram like when you curate your feed versus your story and like your profile and it's all there's this semblance or sense of control that you have as an individual over these profiles but like if you actually think about it Myspace was like the ultimate curated tool you know because you really like people couldn't tag photos of you they could maybe post photos on your on your they could post comments but
00:31:53
Speaker
Really, it was like, it was the ultimate like fact sheet about yourself that you got complete control over yourself. Definitely. I mean, and now it's just like, it's opened up so much, right? It's just everything, everything is content, content is everything. Yeah. And in some ways, you know, it's, it's, it's very overwhelming. And which is, I think,
00:32:17
Speaker
Maybe ironically, I don't have a lot of social media these days. After being way on the internet in those early years, nowadays it's just like, wow, I'm exhausted by everything and having to hourly express things.
00:32:34
Speaker
about myself. And so, yeah, it's an interesting arc. Now, everything is so open. There are just so many different ways that you can post about yourself, and it is overwhelming, and I've really opted to not do that. What do you think that Myspace had, and you sort of touched on it? But what do you think that Myspace had that we sort of lost in this transition?
00:33:00
Speaker
away from it. When we all turned our backs on Myspace after they were bought by Rupert Murdoch, let's just put that out there. It's not like we were, you know, we maybe had reason to do this. They bugged it with advertising. The product itself went downhill. There's a whole story there, but like,
00:33:15
Speaker
What do you think that Myspace had and it's sort of ethos of the, you know, one of the most important original social networks that we've really lost now as
00:33:31
Speaker
you know, as a culture, we've transitioned to social media as this content farm, essentially. It's really complicated, because at least for me, I really tie it to a specific moment in time where there was a lot of optimism, I think about the possibility of the internet.
00:33:52
Speaker
And so in some ways, Myspace could have only existed in this period of time that is so specific to our experiences in growing up with like the internet. And I say internet with like a capital I, you know, it was so formidable in terms of
00:34:09
Speaker
how we saw the world and how we wanted to interact with the world and so a lot of it is capturing that sort of naivete or that like optimism around the possibilities that was so unique to that time not just on the internet but also just personally. What we lost is just like a genuine form of expression I think like all of us trying to figure out this new way to interact with each other.
00:34:34
Speaker
it kind of had an amazing value showing people what could be possible. You know, I think the minute people understood that potential and then tried to monetize it, that definitely I think changed that wholesome nature of how it even started. There's something really sad about like the memory lives on but like literally we cannot access our MySpace pages. Like I wish I could go back and like
00:35:02
Speaker
I remember my last MySpace profile photo was taken on a digital camera where it was the kind of photo where everything was desaturated except for my green shirt and the green leaves and the green apple in my hand. It was one of those settings on a Nikon digital camera that
00:35:24
Speaker
We can never do that now, but, you know, or we could, but it would be a Photoshop thing, but it was something that was so specific. I wish I could go back and find that photo now, you know? I remember my last photo, and it was, you know, I was looking down, you know, I had the camera up at an angle. I think I was wearing a blue and green polo shirt that I got from Urban Outfitters, and I had a white headband, like a plastic headband, and so my hair was, like, swept to the side, and so, yeah, I wish I could.
00:35:53
Speaker
I wish I could access that too, but yeah, I would love to see your photo. I would love to see everyone's Myspace profiles now. Yeah. Everyone tell us what your last Myspace photo was before you turned your back on Myspace and got on Facebook. Oh my goodness. I should have taken a screen grab. I mean, honestly, it's one of the things where you don't really think about it.
00:36:15
Speaker
I think everyone thought Myspace will be around. It'll be here. This mostly affected musicians, but they announced relatively recently that they lost all of the recordings that were put on Myspace in a quote unquote server transition.
00:36:34
Speaker
every recording from like 2003 to 2012 is gone. We thought that these would be sort of, that Myspace would be there, you know, and I think it's a good reminder that like no platform is eternal. No, you're not guaranteed to have your Instagram around in 10 years, you know?
00:36:55
Speaker
this tool, this social media tool, captured so many, I would say, important things. It's like important cultural artifacts, and then it just went away. That loss is huge in some ways, but we've kind of processed it over time, as in this platform is no longer a real platform.
00:37:14
Speaker
people have moved on to other things, but there's still this chunk of cultural history that is just non-existent, that was a huge touchstone for people like us, right? I'm probably missing a lot of key things that happened during my MySpace era. What was my top eight? What was my last top eight? Who was in there?
00:37:34
Speaker
I would love to find that out, that loss of history. I think about that. It's pretty big. Yeah. It makes me sad. There's a macro and a micro to it, right? Like the macro, like the general sort of tracking of trends and of artists and of bands that were because my space had like music charts. Right. So they you could see which bands were sort of on the come up and updated every hour. It was like a real time, you know,
00:37:59
Speaker
assessment of like what people were actually like listening to and following. But then on a personal level, it's like, how what bands did I say that I liked when I was 14? You know, and like, what books did I like and who were my heroes? You know, I I couldn't I mean, I know that it'd be like I would hear one song of a band and put them on my Myspace profile just to have to say I listened to this band. You know, like
00:38:25
Speaker
Did I listen to Pinback? No. But were they probably on my myspace? Absolutely, because I heard one song, Fortress. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And that's what's interesting. I remember there was a time when people just wanted to have the most obscure sounding names on their profiles. And that was fun to just figure out, look at these insane band names.
00:38:49
Speaker
I think clap your hands, say, yeah, I mean, I was actually a band I listened to and liked, but they were on my they were on my Myspace as well. Absolutely. Yeah, totally. Like Tilly and the Wall. I just remember those bands like that was specific.
00:39:04
Speaker
you know a music discovery now in some ways there it's maybe a little easier there's so many different you know like band camp soundcloud there's a lot of different these communities for for music to kind of help curate a lot of a lot of the the new things coming in and out but in some ways i i kind of miss that challenge of like really having to dig
00:39:28
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I mean, I think TikTok now adds a music discovery tool. It's like the music is secondary. Right. The music is the soundtrack that doesn't it doesn't have the same sort of like I'm I like this band and this band likes this band and people who like this band like this band. And there's a chase that you had to do. There was a real sort of discovery that was so.
00:39:51
Speaker
interactive and immersive, you know, and even on Spotify and on SoundCloud, Bandcamp, whatever, like, all of those things are also curated for you, like when you're discovering new music on Spotify, it's because some algorithm. Yeah, Myspace was just such a great resource for so many different things. To be recognized on the street from that was honestly truly mind blowing.
00:40:12
Speaker
How do you think that this period of your life as, you know, the MySpace icon of Lawrence, Kansas like shaped, I mean, you said you're not, you relish anonymity and you don't really go on social media anymore, but like think going into your later teens, your college, your twenties, now your
Personal Growth & Myspace
00:40:33
Speaker
thirties,
00:40:33
Speaker
You know, how do you think that this period, this very formative period of time in such a public way, like sort of shaped who you eventually became? Being able to post your personality and taste so publicly also opens up to a lot of criticism.
00:40:52
Speaker
And I don't think I realize how hurtful that stuff could be until I went into college, right? Because I think, you know, you think you have the best taste in music when you're 16, but then you go to college and you're like, oh wow, like there's so much more that like I didn't even know about. Or, you know, obviously like there's just so many genres of music and
00:41:13
Speaker
and all that and so I do think it was one of those moments of like okay like I can I can take criticism I can have thick skin around being judged for having taste that's mine um and so in some ways it really introduced me to like
00:41:32
Speaker
the harsh realities of also being so publicly out there is it comes with a lot of judgment, a lot of criticism, and you're just like, oh wow, I didn't realize that there was negativity around me liking a certain band or people kind of thinking that's not cool or whatever that may be. And so I think in some ways it made me understand that it's okay to have
00:42:02
Speaker
Taste it's okay to have a personality and not put on the internet like what is mine is mine There will always be people who will think you have bad taste and things and will judge you for it, but You know, it doesn't matter what they say because what you like is what you like And so in a lot of ways
00:42:25
Speaker
Being part of MySpace and music fandom in that time I think helped me, I don't know, it just really helped me figure out what I liked and I had to be secure in that for so long. It's okay if people don't like the same things you do. The public sphere can be super, super damaging and so I think a lot of it is just, hey,
00:42:51
Speaker
I like the taste that I have. I like the music that I like. I don't, you know, I don't need to make it my personality. It is not my personality. And it just made me feel secure in my own taste. MySpace taught me how to just like be me and, you know, whatever the haters would say, they'll always be there. But, you know, I won't apologize for the things that I like. I think that's the core lesson. That's an amazing core lesson. Thank you, Tom.
00:43:20
Speaker
I know, Tom, thank you for this. You're the best. I feel like that's a beautiful note to close this out on. Yeah, I mean, honestly, it's been so fun to just walk down the MySpace memory lane.
00:43:55
Speaker
Thank you so much again to our guest this week, Tiffany Kwok, for sharing her memories of Myspace and the Backstreet Boys Forum. Do you remember your Myspace song or your Myspace photo? Do you still have them?
00:44:11
Speaker
Share them. Tag us. Class of 03 Pod. If you have a strong feeling about whether Avril is or was a poser, we also need to know. So, in honor of Tiffany's MySpace profile, our 2003 song of the week is titled in registration by Death Cab for Cutie off their fourth album, 2003's Transatlanticism.
00:44:34
Speaker
Widely considered one of the most important indie releases of the 2000s, trans-Atlanticism gained popularity alongside another monumental 2003 cultural touchstone, which will be featured in another episode, I promise. The OC.
00:44:51
Speaker
Before the album even came out, as lead singer Ben Gibbard's other seminal 2003 band The Postal Service was taking off simultaneously, Death Cab licensed some of their forthcoming songs from transatlanticism to be used in the first and second season of the OC. Rachel Bilson's character Summer Roberts was perhaps their fiercest critic. In the show, she says of the band's music, it's like one guitar and a whole lot of complaining.
00:45:20
Speaker
The whole album, Transatlanticism, is this meditation on long-distance relationships. The album title is a word Ben Gibbard thought he made up. Turns out he didn't really... it's a word. But he made it up to, or he used it, to reflect the idea that geographic distance between two people can also represent the emotional barriers between them.
00:45:45
Speaker
In the title and registration, the song begins kind of with this joke, with this funny-ish observation. The glove compartment is inaccurately named, and everybody knows it. But as the song unfurls, the narrator is looking through his glove compartment for some legal documents and instead finds mementos of a past relationship.
00:46:09
Speaker
The song slowly builds the texture of the track, reflecting the rain that's beating down on the hood of his car or the tape deck next to the glove compartment. It's the stuff that made Death Cab so irresistible then and now, the way it's lauded in the indie community at the same time that it's considered one of the best emo albums of all time, according to Rolling Stone, although Death Cab always took issue with that label.
00:46:37
Speaker
It's a song that you may have stumbled upon in your MySpace era and reflected on the profundity of this metaphor as you yourself were learning how to drive. MySpace was so essential to the music industry and especially to bands like Death Cab that by 2005, when they were launching their follow-up album plans, they released the first singles exclusively on MySpace.
00:47:02
Speaker
So close your eyes, summon your inner Seth Cohen, and imagine you've just clicked on a friend of a friend of a friend's third in their top eight, and this is the song playing. Title and registration by Death Cat for Cutie. The glove compartment isn't accurately
00:47:32
Speaker
And everybody knows it So I'm proposing A swift orderly chain
00:47:52
Speaker
All right, and that's all for this week, you guys. Thank you again for listening, and please, if you like this show, share it with your friends, rate it, review it.
00:48:05
Speaker
Send us your notes and your memories and your Myspace stuff at classofothrepod on Instagram or on email classofothrepod at Gmail. It will not go to my spam folder, I promise. Our theme music is by Luke Schwartz and Evan Joseph of Sawtooth and our show art is by Maddie Herbert of Dame
00:48:27
Speaker
studio. I'm Helen Grossman. I write, produce, edit, host, whatever, all of it, this show and I'm so excited for the rest of the season so stay tuned and see you in a few weeks.