TechFold - Bold tech & web commentary

Bold tech & web commentary

TechFold is technology discussion, commentary, reviews, and opinions from well outside the valley. There's no koolaid to drink here, and TechFold is not in SL, or on Twitter.

MySpace: Resistance is Futile

One of the sad things about our modern consumer economy is its ability to absorb & digest subcultures and regurgitate them as marketable, profitable, consumable lifestyle options. Witness skateboarding, surfing, snowboarding, and the whole “extreme-sports” culture: marginalized activities, practiced by renegades, are now mass-merchandized, sponsored, made-in-sweatshop profit machines for big corporate interests. The spirit of their genesis is lost.

Like all things business, the Internet provides a means to accelerate the process of borg-esque absorption, with MySpace as the stated poster boy:

The move reflects MySpace’s strategy of identifying the communities of interest that have grown organically and the building official member communities around them, turning once-grassroots groups into content platforms for old-media companies and consumer brands. [from Business Week]

Steve O’Hear at ZDNet adds more:

We’re also seeing a trend where MySpace is attempting to mix more and more professionally-produced content — from big media and major brands — with user-generated offerings, and at the same time blurring the lines between the two. In doing so, marketers and News Corp. are trying to find out how much professional brands/content and UGC can live alongside and benefit each other. [from ZDNet]

Sigh. I don’t have much to say about this, other than (a) it sounds like an effective business strategy, and (b) its sad to see an explicitly stated strategy predicated on harnessing the “organic” passion of users to sell them crap.

Yeah, yeah, I know it happens everywhere all the time, and that the Internet has been commercialized since 1996.

3 Responses to “MySpace: Resistance is Futile”

Nav | August 28th, 2007 at 10:31 pm

I dunno - I think you’re right to say that everything is commodified etc etc. - but I still think (or hope) there’s value in pointing it out. I think we may be on the verge of a generation who won’t ever become disillusioned about movements ’selling out’ because, to them, everything was always commodified.

I also think that until (or, more realistically, if) we can come up with something better than democratic-capitalism, these are just the rules of the game.
Kejda Gjermani | August 31st, 2007 at 4:39 pm

You sound like such a typical Canadian communist. What a bitter sense of life you must have: everything is spoiled, commercialized, for profit, and now even MySpace falls short of “organic”.
Rod | August 31st, 2007 at 5:02 pm

Hah! And you sound like a typical corporate flag waving capitalist swine. What an empty sense of life you must have, where everything and everyone is for sale. Hang your head in shame, you empty hearted consumption machine.