Tom Anderson, Creator of MySpace, in 2007 FilmMagic
They say that social media is a cruel place, where strangers troll your photos out of boredom and one hasty remark on X can cause a lifetime cancellation. But anyone who came of age around 2005 (hello, millennials!) knows it all pales in comparison to the toxic drama that was the MySpace Top 8.
It’s easy to look back at MySpace — the social network and music-sharing site that was founded in 2003, four years before the first iPhone was released — with warmth and nostalgia. The extreme angle selfies taken on an actual camera! The cutesy, colorful, cluttered profile backgrounds! Tom’s reassuring, smiling face! And sure, it was fun — and if you were the sort of person who had an extreme side-part to indicate that you liked alternative music (or at least, you crushed on boys who liked alternative music), joining was a must. But it was also absolutely brutal.
One of MySpace’s flagship features was the Top 8 friends function, which gave you the ability to bookmark the profiles of your chosen besties front and center on your page, so that anyone who stopped by got an instant, flattering impression of who you were and who you hung out with. You could stick with the default, which would put co-founder Tom Anderson in the top slot; but that looked kind of tragic, so nobody did. Instead, you would spend hours curating the perfect friend ranking. Yes, despite most users being years out of middle school, MySpace made you rank your friends in order of how much you liked them. For the love of Tom, what was that all about?
If you were at all insecure – and since MySpace’s core audience was aged between 15 and 25, of course you were insecure — this stuff could be devastating. If you spotted that your so-called best friend had bumped you down a few slots in favor of that girl Laura who she LITERALLY JUST MET, you would cry for days (and then use the ensuing emo mirror selfie as your profile pic). But if you saw that your own profile had made the Top 8 of someone you liked, your self-esteem would skyrocket (no sad selfies required for this triumph)
MySpace.com in 2006 NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images
Of course, at that life stage friendships are so transient. One minute your page was a sea of high school BFFs, all side swept bangs and exaggerated cheekbones, the next they had been traded in for your new college dorm crew, who looked the same, but with more expertly-applied eyeliner. And if you were at the older end of the core demographic (whassuuuuuup geriatric millennials!), office politics would even come into play, with you forced to choose between your “down with the kids” manager (he was, like, 28. Gross) and your actual friends.
But friends were one thing — what if you got into a relationship? Was it stalkerish to put that guy you made out with at a Killers concert straight into your Top 8? Did he need to meet your parents before you bumped off your bestie to appoint him your number 1 human? And if things didn’t work out, who would be the first to notice that you had discreetly swapped him out for your favorite band? (Definitely not The Killers, though, or he might think it meant something.)
When Facebook blew up in 2007, every loyal MySpace addict rolled their eyes. It looked so boring. So blue. So NICE. You didn’t even need to like music that much to be on Facebook, eww. But once you begrudgingly joined and experienced the sweet relief of your friends displaying randomly, you realized that nice was, well, a lot more mature and reasonable, actually.
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Soon, MySpace became a once-a-week pursuit, not a permanent fixture on your Internet Explorer window. And then, you just … stopped. You were too busy poking and tagging and wall-to-walling to even remember your password (hint, it was probably sparklegrrl81). MySpace’s dominance in your life was over, and your Top 8 friends might as well have been a graveyard. You weren’t alone: MySpace rapidly went from being the most-visited website in the US in 2006, with a $12 billion valuation, to a cultural wasteland that, by 2008, was losing millions of users every month.
Those feelings haven’t died though, they have just evolved. You might have experienced them again when picking bridesmaids (or not being picked as one in favor of that girl Laura who she LITERALLY JUST MET). Or when helping your kid decide who to invite to their 6th birthday party (or consoling them about not being invited to Willow’s).
The concept of ranking things wasn’t invented by millennials, but it certainly has a hold on those of Us who were addicted to MySpace and have the rudimentary HTML skills to prove it. Needy, competitive, insecure? Blame Tom! (At least he’s happy though.)
