With my new cell phone, we captured a really cute video of Kelly singing “Jingle Bells.” As doting parents in the internet age, of course our first thought was “we must put this up on the web!” And we thought it would be really cute if Kelly had her own MySpace page.
It turned out to be a bit more difficult than I anticipated. Most importantly, MySpace rules require you to be at least 13 years old in order to have a page. I finally decided I’d lie and put in a birthday that made Kelly 13, not 3. But then when it came to putting in all the cute elements, such as pictures and videos, I realized anyone seeing the page would see that Kelly was obviously underage for MySpace. Horror gripped me. I don’t even let my kids see PG-13 movies, what in the world was I doing posting my 3-year-old to a site for teenagers and those who love them?
I abandoned the project, but left the page in place. The next day I returned, intending to erase all record of her, and found out she already had a “friend” named Tom. In his picture, he looked way too old to be friends with a 13-year-old, not to mention a 3-year-old pretending to be a 13-year-old. What a perv!
I updated the page with my information. The page would be naked without a picture, but I also didn’t want to the world looking at me. No worries–I’m savvy enough about the web to know that more often than not people put in pictures of their pet, fetish objects, or movie stills in place of a photo. I found a jpeg of Julie Christie in Doctor Zhivago (big poofy 60s hair and all) and put it in the photo place. It sure would harsh Tom’s buzz to find out his new friend was a middle-aged mother, not a 3-year-old, er, 13-year-old girl.
I then “befriended” some bands I like. Don’t worry–it’s not like I’ll be invited backstage with the band at the next concert. Bands use MySpace as a marketing tool, and their MySpace friend count is part of that. For instance, Fallout Boy has over 1,500,000 MySpace friends, and I’m not one of them. I did, however, add one to Everclear’s 37,000+ fans.
The next day, I saw that Tom had sent me a message. What did that perv want now? A playdate with my daughter? I opened it. It was a “Welcome to MySpace!” message with a few simply-worded tips on using MySpace. Tom is merely the sacrificial first friend for everyone. Even if you have no MySpace friends and no hope of ever getting one, Tom will be your friend. I removed Tom from my “friends” list. I’ll stick to being a cyber-groupie, thank you.
So Kelly doesn’t have a MySpace page, but I do now. And as I found out the next day while reading a women’s magazine, apparently, everyone knew who Tom was, except me.