MySpace’s Call for Nostalgia, According to Nosy Gen Z
Finally, it’s your turn to turn on the family desktop. It takes forever to download. (You’re killing time by raping across the bridge in Evanescence’s “Bring Me To Life,” which sounds faint from your iPod nano.) You’re finally online. Which site do you visit first to express your emo music taste, change the hierarchy of friends, create alarm statuses to grab the attention of a loved one, and stay on top of your school’s factions and hobbies? Not Facebook. Neither Twitter nor Tumblr. You only have one choice: MySpace .
The last time you heard of MySpace was probably when the site accidentally deleted 50 million songs during a server migration in 2018. But after the past five-plus years shook the world dome in social networks appeared MySpace thematic platform SpaceHey. A “retro social network” that claims to be privacy-oriented and customizable, but also sweet, sweet nostalgia. It is currently making headlines , attracting a recent surge of 200,000 new users. But can this “new” network offer anything to users who were too young to experience, uh, the heyday of the site that inspired it? Here’s 411 about SpaceHey’s appeal – from the point of view of Gen Z regular Lifehacker contributor ( cusp! ).
What is SpaceHey?
SpaceHey is a functional social network and a stylistically nostalgic project. It looks and feels a lot like MySpace did during its peak in the mid-2000s, although SpaceHey makes it clear that it has no official connection to MySpace. In fact, the German software student behind the new network, Anu (who is known simply by his name on the web) was only a few years old at the height of MySpace’s popularity.
When I first clicked on the site, I had to contend with the feeling that I was visiting a long-defunct holdover from an earlier era of social media, before the days of continuous data mining. On that note …
Confidentiality? So retro!
While you can take some precautions to make Facebook (a little) less evil and invasive , there is nothing you can do about the fact that it was designed to extract all its worth from your data. But SpaceHey still has the future for almighty algorithms. Instead, your feed is chronological, and the user interface doesn’t seem designed to make you scroll endlessly. The biggest advantage of SpaceHey may be that it doesn’t bombard you with targeted ads, invite friends from your acquaintances, or promote content directly. Vintage!
Express yourself
The Fast Company profile indicates that one of the features of MySpace that Anya was particularly attracted to was the idea of customization: if Twitter and Facebook profiles are the same suburban areas of the Internet, one identical profile after another, SpaceHey encourages users to personalize their pages. Get ready to stretch your traditional HTML muscles and add bold text, random italics, and unnecessary blinking text. You can even use inline CSS to try out custom fonts and background images. Just like the old days .
How to register with SpaceHey
Registering is predictably simple; all you need is an active email address to register your account. YouTube users likethis one can take a journey by discovering (or re-discovering) what it means to personalize a profile with basic coding tips and tricks.
When you sign up, keep in mind that in order to actually replicate the OG MySpace experience, you will probably need the magic of having friends log in at the same time as you. SpaceHey boasts 300,000 users, but don’t you want to rush to meet this special person via instant message? If you’re going to recreate the simplicity of early social media, you need to do your best to get your friends (and nemesis) to follow you.
One last note from me, voice of a generation
My thoughts on SpaceHey as a post-MySpace digital product: I’m not sure if nostalgia alone is strong enough to get me to squeeze SpaceHey into the stranglehold that Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram have in every waking moment.
My user experience of browsing the site / social network was quite interesting, but I also visit the history museum. As a writer and comedian, I use social media as a tool to stay on top of trends rather than returning to the magic of an easier time. I’m rooting for SpaceHey’s success, I’m only for the sake of my elders, but I don’t think Gen Z will flock to this site for anything more than a curiosity walk. Prove that I’m wrong guys .