Salient

The MySpace Experiment

By Hannah Cooke and Lisa Lawton | 5 Mar, 2007

Last week, we wound up talking about coolness and celebrity on the internet. It set our minds racing and an experiment was born. It isn’t too ground-breaking, but we decided that it would give us something to write about and the opportunity to include lots of pictures. Our aim: To see if we could become cool on the internet in just over a week.

Our hypothesis: We probably could become pretty cool if we faked it really hard, especially because it’s the internet. In fact, it’s MySpace. And with the right layout and a flatteringly angled photo, anyone can be cool. Or is that a contradiction in terms? In the past, if you used the internet you were a total nerd. So maybe we’re just fooling ourselves. Or you. Who knows? On with the experiment! Method:

Step 1

: Find photos of sceney hot babes on the internet. Our site of choice? www.lastnightsparty.com. It helps to choose a foreign website because not only are the people cooler and hotter, but there’s less chance of being discovered.

Step 2

: Fill in profile with ‘edgy’ and ‘erotic’ details. For example, our interests included Polaroid photography and partying. We said we were a bi-curious swinger called Gwen, an Aucklander just back from New York.

Step 3

: Pick a favourite band for your character, request said band as a ‘friend’ and add their hit song to your profile (we chose CSS). Go through all of your real friends’ profiles to randomly select more lucky people to be your new internet buddies. Don’t be picky - accept all friend requests.

Step 4

: Start off by posting “thanks for the add” comments, but only for one day. From day two, suddenly become too busy to deal with the internet, and stop replying. Everybody knows that the people who really get into MySpace are secretly very geeky and uncool, so you must be nonchalant. Being cool on Myspace is only acceptable if you are ironic.

Step 5

: Sit back and wait for the friend requests to roll in. They increase exponentially, concurrent with your internet popularity. You should now be cool on the internet. Now, await the melancholy realisation that you’re not actually famous – it’s just myspace, not real life. Sorry. To be continued next week. You’ll be amazed (or totally unimpressed) by how popular we get.

DISCLAIMER:This is tongue in cheek. MySpace isn’t really that big a deal. Nobody cares if you like it or not. Or at least, nobody that matters. Also, at this point, we would both like to apologise to all our friends who were victimised by this experiment. Don’t worry, Gwen will be gone soon. We don’t really like her; it’s all a bit Frankenstein-y…