We Need to MySpace-tify Like, Every Social Platform, Pronto.

There was a brief, glittery moment in internet history where everything just worked. Not technically, obviously. Your page took three minutes to load, your cursor left a sparkle trail, and one autoplay song could absolutely destroy a family desktop. But spiritually? Emotionally? Culturally? The MySpace era was peak internet, and we have been chasing that feeling ever since.

Before algorithms decided what we should care about, before “engagement” became a job requirement, before every platform turned into a marketplace with a comment section, MySpace let people simply exist online. Loudly. Badly. Creatively. Authentically. Sometimes questionably. And honestly, that was the magic.

Let’s be clear. MySpace was not perfect. There was very little regulation, catfishing was rampant, and internet safety was more of a suggestion than a rule. But also, Nev Schulman got a full-time career out of it, so was it all bad? Growth comes in mysterious forms.

What MySpace nailed, and what modern platforms continue to miss, is freedom. You were not boxed into a clean, sterile template designed to keep advertisers comfortable. Your page was yours. Fully yours. Backgrounds, fonts, glitter GIFs, pixelated selfies, dramatic song lyrics, autoplay music that told visitors exactly who you were emotionally at that moment. You did not just have a profile. You had a digital bedroom wall.

Customization was the crown jewel. You could change everything. Layouts, colors, photos, music, even the cursor. Yes, sometimes the cursor was a flaming skull or a blinking star that crashed your computer. That was the risk we took for self-expression. We accepted it willingly.

And the best part? We learned how to do it ourselves. Entire generations accidentally learned HTML and CSS because they wanted their MySpace page to look elite. You did not wait for a platform update to give you a new feature. You copied code from a sketchy website, pasted it into your profile, and prayed it did not break everything. That was empowerment.

Compare that to today, where changing a font feels revolutionary and adding a link requires three workarounds. Creativity has been replaced with conformity. Everyone’s page looks the same, just with different faces selling different versions of the same life.

Then there was Top 8. Messy. Brutal. Iconic.

Top 8 was a social experiment that modern platforms would never dare recreate. It forced you to publicly rank your friends. Not your closest friends, your actual friends. Change one person, and suddenly you were answering questions at school, at work, or in AIM chatrooms until midnight. It was interpersonal conflict in digital form, and somehow we survived it.

Was it toxic? Sometimes. Was it honest? Absolutely. There was no pretending everyone was equal when they clearly were not. Your Top 8 told a story, and everyone read it.

And let’s talk about MySpace celebrities. Finding someone before they blew up felt like discovering buried treasure. Jeffree Star. Tila Tequila. Musicians who later became household names. Scene kids who accidentally influenced an entire aesthetic. You followed them because they were interesting, not because an algorithm decided they would hold your attention for 12 seconds.

The internet felt smaller then, in the best way. You could stumble onto someone’s page at 2 a.m. and feel like you had discovered a secret. There was no pressure to brand yourself. You did not need a content calendar. You were just online, being weird, being loud, being young.

Music was another cornerstone. Your profile song mattered. It set the tone. It told visitors how to feel about you immediately. Sad song? You were going through it. Screamo track? You were not to be messed with. Pop anthem? You were thriving. Music integration today feels like an afterthought, but on MySpace, it was identity.

Modern platforms have stripped personality in favor of optimization. Everything is clean, minimal, and designed to keep you scrolling, not expressing. You are encouraged to fit into trends rather than create them. To polish instead of play. To monetize instead of exist.

Even the messiness of MySpace had value. Pages were ugly. Layouts clashed. Fonts were unreadable. But they were real. They reflected people experimenting with who they were, not curating who they thought they should be.

Today’s internet is hyper-aware. Everything is branded, filtered, optimized, and sold back to us. Even authenticity feels staged. The MySpace era allowed for imperfection without punishment. You could post something cringe and simply move on with your life.

There is also something to be said about community. Comments felt like conversations, not performance. You left messages because you wanted to talk to someone, not because you were hoping to boost reach. The internet felt social, not transactional.

Yes, there were problems. Safety was lacking. Moderation was inconsistent. The internet was the wild west. But instead of learning from the good and fixing the bad, we overcorrected into something sterile and exhausting.

We do not need to bring back every part of MySpace. We do not need the catfishing. We do not need the complete lack of guardrails. But we desperately need the creativity, the customization, the freedom, and the fun.

Imagine a platform where you could design your space again. Where your page reflected your personality instead of a template. Where music, visuals, and layout mattered as much as captions. Where being online felt expressive instead of performative.

The internet used to feel like a playground. Now it feels like a shopping mall with a surveillance system. Somewhere along the way, we traded joy for metrics.

MySpace understood that people do not want to just consume content. They want to make it. Shape it. Live in it. Break it a little.

So yes, we need to MySpace-tify every social platform, immediately. Give people control back. Let them customize. Let them be messy. Let them learn. Let them express themselves without turning everything into a product.

Bring back the glitter cursors. Bring back the terrible color combinations. Bring back pages that take forever to load because they are packed with personality.

The internet was better when it was weird, personal, and unapologetically fun. And MySpace proved that peak internet was not about perfection. It was about freedom.