Fengtastic!

How not to MySpace, Part 1

Do you REALLY want to make friends on MySpace?

Here are a few tips.

Photos:

Your main profile picture should be a picture of you. Outlandish, I know … everyone would really rather look at your car, your cat, an animated .gif of Tinkerbell or a thumbnail of a Windows– desktop photo that came with your computer.

Oh, in said photo, you, yes you, should be clearly visible. If you’re an adventurer and you want to include that picture of you on Machu Picchu don’t make it your main pic, or at least make sure it’s not taken from the base of the Andes.

I think a group photo is fine, if you’re conjoined quintuplets.

You should also not be wearing sunglasses, a cowboy hat or your ski jacket … at least not all at the same time.

If all of your photos are of you out drunk with friends … this is a clue.

Layout and Embedded media:

If you MUST embed an MP3 please leave it in it’s original position so that we can turn it off in a hurry. Not only does your taste in music suck but it slows load times to a crawl … this goes double for your friends who embed videos in your comments section. These people should be roasted alive and served in a light béarnaise sauce.

If you’ve used one of those “Pimp My Totally Rad MySpace Makeover Obscuring Any Possiblity Of It Being Read” applications, please tone it down a bit. You spent all this time telling us about you, how cool your friends are and posting photos of David Hasselhoff and then you put a color tint over everything and flashy shit in the background and WE CAN NO LONGER SEE YOUR PAGE! Do you check back to see how it looks after you’ve applied these changes? I didn’t think so … and that David Hasselhoff is just dreamy. Just because you CAN do a thing doesn’t mean you SHOULD. For example: fat free potato chips, polka music, genetic engineering or digital rights management.

One more little note on layout … ok, two related notes:

If you post a 1000 pixel wide photo in a 500 pixel wide space it’s scrollbar city and half your page is gone, and if that photo is an animated sparkley .gif … well, christ, you’ve got bigger problems than me criticizing your MySpace page.

Screen Names:

Let’s start with the easy ones:

“Big Dog” — frankly, you’re not that big but you probably bark, and now we all know. (Also applies to “Big Dick” and “Baby Sequoia.”)
“Classy Lady” — gold-digger
“Sleepless in (anywhere)” — co-dependant fucking nightmare.
“Hopeful Romantic” or “Looking for my Prince Charming” — see above
“Nice Guy” — gay and in denial.

These: *** *** and these >>> <<< and especially these
(¯`·._.·{ }·._.·´¯) are not actual letters and should not be used in your screen name. They’re not going to make you stand out any more than your lower back slut tattoo.

If you are “Candy,” “Sparkle,” “Fantasia” or cannot post a photo of yourself without pooching out your lip-linered lips and silicone boobs at the camera … well hell, you already know you’re a stripper.

Oh, and if you use that godawful UpPeR aNd LoWeR cAsE typing or think you are “L33t” and everything “sux0rz” … the only thing that sux0rz is you.

If you’ve found offense in these hints or think I’ve singled you out for some reason, well, it was intentional. You own a computer, have at least a portion of an education and should be ashamed of yourself.

Stay tuned for part two in which we discuss Yo’ Momma.