First, let me say I admire the successful effort to revive a piece of the 2000s web and wish the project the best. Having said that, I am of the right age to have been on MySpace, and exploring Spacehey gave me a better understanding of why I wasn't on MySpace.
The focus of the site is on you and who you are. It's about presenting your many overlapping identities with style. Your interests and creative output are secondary. Interests serve as more of a way to categorize yourself along standard dimensions (favorite movies, books, etc.). I don't think I want this! It's okay if you do, but it really isn't for me. It seems so optimized for legibility, in the late James C. Scott sense. I feel like all the CSS in the world won't help if this is how you must present yourself. Let me hide in my shell [1] and put forth my work. You'll get a better idea of who I am when I write something or if we talk.
GeoCities, LiveJournal, DeviantArt, and Tumblr all seemed less like this, though I also wasn't active on any of them in their heyday. People may think Tumblr is about the user's identity, but identity isn't at the core of the site design. The site design is about tagged posts. Where you might want to push for legibility is on a dating site. I am sure MySpace served as one for quite a few people. :-)
[1] I have realized this is a pun because I like pubnixes.
The focus of the site is on you and who you are. It's about presenting your many overlapping identities with style. Your interests and creative output are secondary. Interests serve as more of a way to categorize yourself along standard dimensions (favorite movies, books, etc.). I don't think I want this! It's okay if you do, but it really isn't for me. It seems so optimized for legibility, in the late James C. Scott sense. I feel like all the CSS in the world won't help if this is how you must present yourself. Let me hide in my shell [1] and put forth my work. You'll get a better idea of who I am when I write something or if we talk.
GeoCities, LiveJournal, DeviantArt, and Tumblr all seemed less like this, though I also wasn't active on any of them in their heyday. People may think Tumblr is about the user's identity, but identity isn't at the core of the site design. The site design is about tagged posts. Where you might want to push for legibility is on a dating site. I am sure MySpace served as one for quite a few people. :-)
[1] I have realized this is a pun because I like pubnixes.