The Rise and Fall of a Social Network

"Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage."


It was just four years ago.  There we were.  You and I.  Them.  Millions of people.  All of us. 

The place was called Myspace.  It was a great land.  It was simply known as "the place for friends".  In the world of social networking, it was all I knew.  I felt welcome.  I felt free.

FREE.

We were all free; free to use any pseudonym we chose to.  I chose Hurl.  Free to have as many profiles as we chose to.  Free to be whoever we wanted to be.  No one asked for ID.  No one regulated our every thought nor did anyone attempt to define our motivations.We were simply free to roam that place as any person we chose to be.

We were free to write; to write these fancy little floating thoughts in our head.  They were called Blogs.  Many of us wrote blogs.  Some of us were talented.  Some of us were mediocre.  Some of us were silly.  Some of us were melancholy.  But we all had a voice.  We were all equals.

We were free to speak our minds.  Certainly, that place was not perfect.  It was not void of strife or drama.  Of course, not everyone got along.

But still.... we were one social network under Tom.  Tom was the president.  He was that goofy looking white guy that sat in a chair wearing a t-shirt.  He was everyone's first friend when you entered its harbor.

The best thing about Tom was once he became your friend, you never heard from him again.  He wasn't making new rules and regulations every few days trying to appease his colleagues.  He wasn't passing Myspace laws that infringed on our freedoms as Myspace bloggers or trying to force his extreme ideas onto us.  Tom just left us alone.

Maybe, we became a little spoiled.  Maybe, we became so complacent in our freedom there that we started to take the place for granted.  We whined a little bit.  We became bored.  For some of us, this freedom went to our heads.  We became bullies.  We had entitlement issues.  We were own our worst enemies.

Roughly four years ago, Tom left his office as President of Myspace.  A new administration replaced him. This administration came into power promising an even better Myspace.  Hope and Change was their mantra.  We myspace citizens believed every word.  Sure, some were skeptical and maybe even a little worried.  But no one entertained the thought that we could or would lose our freedoms as bloggers and as individuals.

The new president comforted those of us who were concerned.  He promised change but change that would make Myspace better.  He was articulate and almost Christ-like as he promised hope.  We swallowed every word despite a gnawing feeling in our gut that this new administration was full of charlatans and con artists.  In our complacency, we blindly followed them even as their vision of a new Myspace became more clearer.

It didn't take long for the new changes to take place.  It was called Myspace 2.0.

"OMG!", we bloggers exclaimed.  Blogging was now difficult.  New rules and regulations were now suffocating our need to freely express ourselves.  Corporations had moved in and planted their logos and advertisements all over our personal pages.

Our freedoms were gone.

Myspace was once the land everyone wanted to come to.  In a blink of an eye, it became the place everyone wanted to leave.

And we did.  And they did.  Millions did.  All of us left.

We came here... to a land called Facebook.  A place that wants to know everything about us.  Our real names must be used.  They will monitor what pictures we post.  They will tell us how many profiles we can have.  They want to know if we prefer Pepsi or Coke.   They demand that we are truthful.

In the land of Facebook, they claim it is imperative that we are truthful all in the name of security.  The homeland security department of this social network will grope us if they choose to because they want to protect us from bad guys; those same bad guys that ruined the land of Myspace.... if bad guys were actually the reason Myspace failed; which we all know was not the case.

Here, blogging is not encouraged.  Blogging is a way of expressing yourself and this place is not geared for critical thinking nor is it intended to cultivate the individual.  We are merely products.  We are slaves to the corporations.

Freedom is a rumor here.  It is something some of us who existed in the original land of social networking called Myspace like to reminisce about.  For those who never experienced that place, they cannot fathom what real freedom is.... they can only listen to us and nod their heads in agreement and pretend they understand.

One day, this place will fall.  Then, it will be replaced with a new social network.  One that claims to be better.  One that will claim to be listening to us.  One that will make promises....

Promises of Hope and Change.

And like always, in our complacency, we will believe that new place really cares about us.

But it won't.

And we won't be free.

Ever again.