Flightless Words

Since having started my two week midyear (study) break, all I have been wanting to do is to complete the seven incomplete drafts saved in my blog account.

After looking at each of the drafts, I realized it's going to take more than one hour per post to decipher the individual notes I'd made under each post. This can be attributed to the fact that I've been trying to write two posts at once, which leads to my brain reaching a point where it is unable to brain any further, and to the fact that it's been difficult trying to formulate actual sentences from the notes I've made during study breaks. I mean, what on earth am I supposed to make of 'Atholl Fugard, Miskien, sparse setting'?

In the past two and a half hours, I have jumped from misogyny (I can feel the eye-roll of the internet) to Absurdism, to birthdays, to the cycle of judgment, to franchising and book-burning (eye-rolls from my Twitter and Facebook). On top of that, I've got my mother yelling domestic chores and kitchen duties at me, followed immediately by her doing the actual tasks and then giving me the usual "How-Are-You-Going-To-Run-Your-Own-Household-Your-Children-Will-Starve-Who-Will-Marry-You-Your-Mother-In-Law-Will-Think-I-Didn't-Bring-You-Up-Properly" speech. Followed by the "You-Need-To-Study" closing argument.

Just one question I'd like to ask before the topic becomes stale:

Why has South African Twitter become a burnbook?

Times like these make me yearn for pre-2010 when Twitter was undiscovered and I could Tweet all about Harry Potter without being chirped by my friends about it. People say offensive things on the internet constantly. It appears, though, that those who have raised certain 'Twalebs' to their social media status are now the ones lighting the flame of the Roast. This can all be summed into two, Twitter speech, words: No Chill.

Ironically, by creating hate-induced trending topics, more hype is created, centered around the person. They then actually become famous - i.e.: beyond Twitter - and efforts to reduce their popularity has basically backfired and their social media pages are now doubling in hits.

Find your inner chill, go to their profile and click "Unfollow". Unfollows speak louder than trending topics!

I had so much more to say about my passion for writing, how much I miss Afrikaans, English and Drama and how I plan to make my true theatre debut in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, but my mother just gave me another "How-Will-You-Prepare-Your-Sehris-When-You're-Married" speech and has sent me to go prep for tomorrow morning. Just a few more words without wings, I suppose.

Review: Myspace

So the other day, as I was stalking Taylor Swift's personal social profiles for news (which is perfectly normal behaviour, mind you), I decided to visit her Myspace page. Remember that? Yes, where most new artists start out, adding their music to their profiles, creating a fanbase, etc. The one with quite an ordinary, blue homepage which has the latest news from the music industry, where your own page has a typically NING type of feel with your blog posts, Top Friends, all your top five songs, albums and movies, a comment wall; and, quite blatantly, a certified death wish.

Well, it's gone.

No, not Myspace. Just the ordinarynessness. I didn't take their emails about the change seriously when they had sent them a few months ago, and I'm glad I didn't. It was a wonderful surprise when I did see the change. Apparently Taylor took their emails seriously though; although she didn't add the entire RED album onto her page, she updated her profile picture, cover page (yes, cover page), as well as her bio. Unfortunately it's not the personal message that she usually has up, but pretty much something that would have been written by her agent.

Firstly, Myspace is white! Seriously, the profile pages pretty much have a white palette. I quite like it; the white gives the page a rather... clean finish. The profile set up has also changed completely. And by completely, I mean it's gone 90 degrees anti-clockwise. You now have to scroll to the right to see the entire page (this is for the entire site). There is now a cover page facility and, unlike Facebook, if you choose not to put a cover page, Myspace puts a cover for you, mostly landscapes, which change every time you refresh the page.

When I first signed up for a Myspace account, back in 2008, once you chose a username/url extension, you could never ever NEVEREVEREVEREVEREVER change it and Myspace made that very clear when you chose your username/url extension. It appears that they have changed their policy (probably in an attempt to revive themselves), because I successfully changed my extension from harrypotternutter  to mishfics. Not that I don't like Harry Potter anymore - how dare you even think such a thing - I just needed to streamline all my social networks and using one username makes things easier. I still retain the title of the Harry Potter Nutter.

There are, naturally, a few things I don't like about the new Myspace. Firstly, I had absolutely NO idea how to locate my settings page, library or anything other than my profile page. Everything, as I later learned, is located on the Myspace homepage, which makes profile editing a little frustrating. Another thing, I couldn't figure out how to change my bio or likes, etc, as it wasn't under settings. I eventually managed to edit mine by going to Taylor's bio and looking at the url. But really, I shouldn't have needed to do that. They could have included these things in their introductory video or setup process after logging in. Also, what happened to the blog?

I suppose with regard to anything new and computer related, the best thing to do is to play around and figure out things, which is what I've been doing and it's been fun. Final verdict: I think Myspace is on the right track to becoming one of the social network kings it once was. They just need to... get out there more, I guess.