by Joe Buffaloe
Daily Lobo
Oh, MySpace.com, let me count the ways I loathe thee.
You exploit the most melodramatic, superficial elements of our society for a profit, providing a space for everyone from preteens to 50-year-old child molesters to vent all the ways "Garden State" makes them sad. You give anyone a public forum in which he or she can display 10 lifetimes worth of self-indulgence and self-absorption. You're a sellout Web site owned by a major corporation lying through its teeth whenever it talks about freedom of expression or how much it values individuals. And Tom sucks. I think we all agree on that. What a douche.
But more than anything, I hate you for taking up space at the Lobo Lab in the SUB.
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If I had a roll of duct tape for every minute I've waited in that room for a computer - generally desperate to print out an assignment at the last minute - while half the screens are shining idiotically with MySpace profiles, I'm sure I could somehow use that duct tape to build a giant robot and take over Belgium. Unfortunately, I don't get a roll of duct tape each time, and I'm not the emperor of Belgium - yet. Instead, I've showed up late to class a few times, and a good portion of my life has been stolen because of this Web site.
Listen, everybody: Computer labs at UNM are for people like me, who carry a genetic trait which makes computer-destroying pheromones emit from our pores. This condition doesn't stop me from owning a computer - it just means that about a week after I spend money on it, it quits working. So, I have to use the computer lab pretty often for schoolwork that needs to be done.
I know this may be difficult to follow after reading nothing but teenagers' opinions of indie bands for the past week, but it's the main point you need to grasp if you're one of those people looking at MySpace in the Lobo Lab. Some people actually do work there. They pay money to attend college, and they use computers provided by the University to do their work when they don't have one of their own. They use the lab because they need it, not because they have time to kill.
Yes, computers and the new-fangled World Wide Web can be pretty fun. I use my computer at my job to go to AskaNinja.com and TheOnion.com when I have a break, and sometimes, I even pass along funny e-mails. But no one needs my computer at work except me. You see, when multiple people need to use the same thing, you have to participate in a process called sharing. And if you take forever with that thing while doing no work that needs to be done, you become what's known as inconsiderate.
The selfish use of computers for social purposes shouldn't be surprising. It's symbolic of everything MySpace stands for - wasting time, staying indifferent to three-dimensional people and thinking of only oneself. The MySpace generation is one of the most uninformed, apathetic and spoiled groups of people in the history of the world, and its rude use of public computers goes a long way to prove it.
I should say that nothing is necessarily wrong with you if you participate in MySpace. I even have a friend with a profile. In fact, I don't care if you spend every waking moment when you're out of my sight on MySpace - it's a free country, I guess. But please, be considerate of others if you do.
