[Lancaster] Fwd: myspace: murdoch's tool

[Ken Walton]

On 8/30/06, mp <mp at aktivix.org> wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-08-30 at 15:57 +0100, Ken Walton wrote:
> > So the middle-aged people who *are* joining, are
> > doing it *despite* what is says in the news, rather than because of
> > it.
>
> It is funny that you should use the term middle-aged, since it seems
> only reasonable to suggest that people who are "middle-aged" would be
> interested in what youthful people find hip.

Yes, but they're using the site to interact with each other, not with
the school-kids.

>
> > News of it passes by word of mouth, because the people using it
> > find it genuinely useful.
>
> Or "Because I am worth it"?

No, really genuinely useful. I take it that's some advertising slogan
I've missed.
>
> This is twisting the facts a bit, init? A better analogy, IMO, would be
> somnething like you was sat in a corner of the pub telling mates that
> the landlord was lying to his customers to cover over his and his
> friends activities, over charging for the beers, and using his profits
> to manipulate in cahoots with dark forces exploiting little children in
> Africa, Asia and elsewhere etc etc. - and then the landlord would throw
> you out because he had people employed to monitor the conversation on
> every table via microphones. Would you go to that pub (again/ever?)?
>
OK, fair enough, that's a better analogy than mine. :-)

> >  That doesn't stop it being a
> > valuable social space for certain kinds of interaction.
>
> It is in the word "certain" that the real issue is buried. Where is the
> public space for interaction? All spaces, whether in cyberspace or
> elsewhere, or becoming privatised and as such subject to the whim of
> capital/profit interest.
>
> To say there is nothing wrong with MySpace is to say that there is
> nothing wrong with the fact that social relations, relations between
> human beings, are increasingly controlled by the "logics" of capital and
> that the disappearance of public space is just fine.

I didn't actually say there was nothing wrong with MySpace. I said it
was a way of communicating that people found useful, but that would be
better if it was independent and not sensored, and that Andy's idea
was a good one. At least, that's what I thought I strongly implied.
>
> > I got a job last week via contacts on LJ, from someone I've never met,
> > and probably never will. I also met someone on MS and we're planning
> > to meet up in real life fairly soon. Sites like MySpace and
> > LiveJournal do perform a useful social function. It's a sad but true
> > fact that most people don't want to spend their time talking about
> > radical politics. They want to talk about movies and music and cats
> > and books and health problems and kids' birthdays and...
>
> And why is that? Does the egg or the chicken come first?

I don't think there's an answer to that. LJ doesn't get politically
sensored (though it does for porn, and definitions of what is and
isn't porn cause arguements), and we do indeed, talk about radical
politics at times. But mostly we don't. Though I'm sure some people
do.

>
> >  But there's
> > no reason they shouldn't be able to share the same space with those
> > talking about radical politics.
>
> Of course there is: it is not good for business.

I meant no technical reason.
>
> And that is why MySpace is shit: it perpetuates control and increases
> limitation/destruction of the public (spaces).

Ok, enough! :-)
-- 
Ken Walton