MySpace Posts Blackface Picture of NOFX

Today I logged onto MySpace and look what I found:


That's the punk band known as NOFX decked out in blackface makeup from the tip of their nose down to their surfboard.

So these jackasses took an ignorant picture of themselves... they're not the only ones. But for MySpace to post the picture as an advertisement for the band? That's a whole other story.

Was the band trying to be ironic? Maybe. But their irony is in bad taste considering the fact that people still threateningly hang nooses around African-American co-workers on a regular basis.

Who knows what the real story is. Maybe the band is trying to attract attention, and maybe I'm playing right into it. Or maybe I happen to have caught MySpace in the act of posting an ad in extremely poor taste that never should have been posted in the first place.

UPDATE 1: Logged in the day after and the picture is still up.

Confessions of a Social Network Early Adopter

UPDATE 4: I joined hi5 and orkut. Check out my hi5 profile. I would tell you to check out my orkut profile, but I can't figure out how link directly to my profile.

UPDATE 3: Who's going to invite me to ASMALLWORLD, an elite social network? According to their website, ASMALLWORLD is "...a private online community for like-minded individuals..." with "...trusted members who have existing social networks of quality in the real world..." Obviously, that's the place for me.

UPDATE 2: I decided to get into social bookmarking and I just joined Digg, which creates social network style profiles for all of its users.

UPDATE 1: A new network just launched called Yahoo! Kickstart. It's a cross between old-school Facebook and LinkedIn.

I guess I was always one. I don’t know how many of you remember Make Out Club, but I joined back in the day. It sucked. But thanks to me joining Make Out Club, I met a crazy girl over AOL Instant Messenger and she brought her best friend to one of my rock shows. Afterwards they hung out with our band. My drummer fell hard for her best friend and now they’re married. I wasn’t even invited to the wedding.

Then there was Friendster. That was fun for a short while. I deleted my account at some point, but I recently rejoined Friendster as a test. Next up was MySpace. It was amazing at first. Then we fell out and I deleted my original account there too. But the music hosting abilities brought me back. A couple years earlier, Mp3.com got bought out and stopped free hosting for independent musicians. I lost a lot of great music accounts that way.

As college neared its end, I joined Facebook. It was getting hot in mid-2004 and I was just in time for the bizarre ride. Somewhere around that time I joined WAYN and proceeded to forget about it. It was a real dud. But it’s still around.

I also joined PTMarion, an Oakland neighborhood Pittsburgh, PA site for finding parties. It was the first purely local social network I’d ever joined. It was also my first time as a true early adopter. When I joined PTMarion, the only get-togethers listed were online gaming parties – you know the kind where a bunch of video gamers get together and play the same online game. I proceeded to forget about this one too. Years later, it was an Oakland social behemoth, spreading word of wild college parties far and wide.

I cooled for awhile after that and worked on expanding my own personal MySpace empire. I grew from one or two music pages into eight (I think eight… I lost track!). The music hosting was fantastic in a time before I could build my own website. I also used Facebook and MySpace to reconnect with friends from old places that I’d lived. Interesting enough, my best friend from middle school and my best friend from high school were among only a handful of people who were also on the same sites I was on.

Then social networking exploded in 2005. I still just cooled on the bigger sites and let my knowledge of them expand. The first new social network I joined was ComicSpace, mostly because it was tailored to my specific interest in comic books. That was in early 2007. I networked the hell out of that site.

I finally joined deviantART and I was extremely underwhelmed. I tried LinkedIn and hated it. I started a Ning account on the Rawkus Network for one of my music projects and forgot about it. I went back and I had over 100 friend requests. Huh wha?

Not long ago, I got a taste for finding more obscure social networking sites. That’s when I found my El Dorado of weird networks: FaceSpace. It’s both hilarious and interesting. After that, I joined Bebo just see what it was like.

Recently I learned about Yuwie, the first social networking site to supposedly give users a cut of its massive advertising revenue. Is it true? I’ll say it like this: I’m skeptical, but I still joined up just incase. That was about a week ago. I forgot about Yuwie until today, when I returned to find 25 new friend requests.

So what’s next? Email me or leave a comment and let me know where I should join. My friend suggested FriendSpaceBook. I think it’s a good place to start.