Debate: MySpace vs. Facebook

By Jake & Glenn 

The great product debates of the modern era are over. Pepsi vs. Coke, Ford vs. GM and Bush v Gore have all been decided. The one that remains literally affects every aspect of our day to day lives. We are living in the golden age of social networking sites and any schlub loitering in front of a liquor store can tell you that MySpace and Facebook are the most popular. What Facebook lacks in customization it makes up for in clean design and uniformity. While they may share many of the same features and applications, they are two vastly different beasts, much in the same way that a tiger and a lion are both felines but are hardly the same animal.

Jake: I feel compelled to argue that MySpace is the greater of the two wildly popular social networking sites. Nobody has gotten famous off of Facebook yet, but MySpace has produced at least two huge celebrities: 1)Tila Tequilla and 2) that girl who committed suicide because people were making fun of her on MySpace. Some may debate that the suicide girl isn't famous because she's dead. To that I have this to say: William Shakespeare is dead but he's as famous as he ever was, maybe even more so. Add to that the level of customization that MySpace offers and I think we can all agree that I've already won this debate.

Glenn: Dead teenagers aside, arguing that MySpace is better than Facebook is like arguing that the So, You Think You Can Dance is better than that other dancing show. The point is - both suck and are ruining American society. But Facebook is absolutely the best social networking site, besides Friendster, because it allows you to search for people by name. I can remember Irene Knapp's name from high school because she was the first person I ever dated, and can thus search for her on Facebook. I'd have to know the kind of person she's become in the past ten years to find out her MySpace username if I wanted to find her account. irene420? sexygirl309? conservative_mom_316? A quick check of those three names reveal none are her, but all reveal the vapid nature of MySpace. There are plenty of other reasons MySpace is worse than Facebook, but I shall wait to hear Jake's response.

Jake: Just because you can't find Irene Knapp doesn't prove that MySpace is inferior. Obviously Facebook is organized in a much more logical and cleaner way than MySpace, but you're ripping out the heart of what makes a social networking site so great: making music play when somebody loads your page. Facebook offers the ability to "like" things like the McRib sandwich, but is that really so great? Not the McRib, that is obviously great. I can smell the onions of McRibs past in my memory. On Facebook you rarely visit profiles unless it's to find some choice bikini pics of girls that wouldn't talk to you in high school or of guys with their shirts off. On MySpace you have to visit profiles constantly. I couldn't tell you any TV shows that Glenn likes because I never visit his Facebook profile. I know that he likes that one other dancing show that isn't So, You Think You Can Dance, but that's because of this debate. If you're not visiting profiles then you're not seeing what blogs your friends are writing.

Glenn: Even though I haven't used MySpace since 2007 when Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, I know it has adopted the Facebook "newsfeed" style approach. So why are people visiting people's MySpace profile pages except for the reasons Jake describes above? I don't think that is a huge difference between the two sites anymore, though I will admit I'm personally hurt that Jake doesn't visit my profile. I change my favorite quotes and about me section once a month! Speaking of profiles, remember all the dumb shit MySpace had on theirs - like body type, zodiac sign and penis/vagina size? MySpace is the coarser, immature version of Facebook, which is why teens and preadolescents are so into it. Jake can act like Richard Nixon and rage against the Facebook "elites" of a site that used to be only open to college students. Now Facebook is open to everyone except those who worked in the Nixon/Ford administrations.

Jake: I think you're wrong about the reason teens like MySpace so much. Teens will avoid any type of book if they can, even a Facebook. They'd rather be occupying a space than reading a novel or even a communist pamphlet. It has nothing to do with site design, just branding. Think about it, do you think your parents would have Blackberries if they were called Queefberries? They'd be the same machine except nobody would want one. This is why MySpace is better. They understand what a teen wants, whether it be the illusion of not reading or being teased into suicide. Facebook is like visiting a hospital: sterile, cold, white, poorly lit and filled with ghosts.

Glenn: When I log onto Facebook at the beginning of my day (usually somewhere around noon), I am so happy. I can see what my friends have been doing and how my Farmville application is proceeding. With giant corporations like Con Agra killing family farms, Farmville is the only way for people to stay true to the earth, with harvesting and whatnot. When I log into MySpace, I see 50 friend requests from what are obviously spambots. People's MySpace accounts get hacked all the time! That place has worse security than Times Square or Arizona before SB 1070. Facebook was built like a fortress and Mark Zuckerberg is its king. If my child came home from school one day and asked me what MySpace was I would feel more uncomfortable than if it asked me what sex was or if the Tea Party is the American Interahamwe. But like a good parent, I would turn on the computer and show my son or daughter the beauty of Facebook and the ugliness of the Rwandan genocide as we prepare for our own version. Let's take a stand against genocide and against MySpace - the two worst things to come out of the 1990's.