Goodbye to MySpace

At 9:19am on a warm Saturday morning in June 2010, I said goodbye to MySpace.

“Omit needless words.” – William Strunk

… but why limit it to words? Why not all of life? Less is more.

I was an early adopter of MySpace.  I joined before there was a Facebook and held on longer than I should have.  Here’s a few reasons why I finally ended the relationship:

• The random SPAM messages from people I don’t know (or care to know) is annoying.
• The risque advertising was both inappropriate and unavoidable.  I was embarrassed to even log in at times and began avoiding the site.
• People (often even my friends0 would behave in ways and post pictures of themselves that they would not otherwise do in real life.  The ‘technological barrier’ of the ‘relationship’ often allowed there to be too much duplicity.
• The lack of features or ability to grow and change with it’s users.
• The pages are HIGHLY user customizable, which means they nearly always look terrible.  As a design professional, that annoys me!
• Tom really isn’t my friend.
• Most of my friends had long since jumped ship, those who still had an account hadn’t logged in for years.
• I hadn’t logged in for over a year.
• I’ve grown up

The last, and perhaps most important reason, MySpace gave me access to my friend’s lives without giving the time needed to maintain the relationships.

“It’s so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.” – Boyz II Men

Part of growing up is realizing that the ability to let go is more important (and often tougher) than trying to hang on to something you’ve long since lost.

To everything – turn, turn, turn
There is a season – turn, turn, turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven