It's Just Abbey

Everyone has them. Annoyances. More specifically, internet annoyances. It could be old standbys like pEoPlE wHo TyPe LiKe ThIs or p30pl3 wh0 t4lk l1k3 th1s. It could be as small as grammar problems or something more complex like anyone bitching about how much they hate children. My biggest issue is very site specific and just boils my blood. I will try to be calm and mature about this rant. Bear with me.

I will be the first to admit that I am a MySpace freak. I love that damn site and I, for the life of me, cannot even begin to understand it. I enjoy it because it is a site that lets you design your own personalized page while keeping you under certain restrictions. It is all up to you with layouts, blurbs, music, etc. It is far more personal than Facebook’s white page and no nonsense information outlet. You can know nothing about HTML or site design and be at ease. On the flipside, someone who knows what they are doing with web design can still feel free to play around. It is an ingenious site that allows the everyman to have their own site at their fingertips.

Therein lies the problem. If I stumble upon one more MySpace page that makes my eyes burn and cause epileptic fits I am going to scream, or fall to the ground twitching.

First: when it comes to backgrounds and colors, they should be easy to read. Pink background on pink text may seem adorable and fabulous but when I see that I can’t even read anything. I scrunch my nose in disgust for a moment and then come to the conclusion that whoever that person is must be a complete idiot. You cannot have light colors on light colors and you cannot have dark on dark. It is an issue with clarity. It is impossible to read and makes me wonder if it is even worth it.

When I have to highlight your text to read it, you are doing it wrong.
Along with that, busy backgrounds that make it equally impossible to read the text, no matter the colors. We get it guys, you love the new Mustang but do you really need a big, repeating picture of it tiled behind your blogs and text? Tone it down. You cannot tell me that people are incompetent enough not realize how annoying and frustrating busy pages are! Do people even look at these before they finish them? Is it just a copy and paste frenzy ended with a click and save? Come on people. Have a little pride in your site.

Second: Glitter graphics. I cannot stomach one more page with 4 or more blinking and sparkling text boxes. You really don’t need every Marilyn Monroe quote and every text that explains how different you are. Here’s the dirty little secret: You are on MySpace. You are just as bad as the rest of us attention craving cam whores. Shopping at www.glitter-graphics.com is like shopping at Hot Topic. How different can you think you are with all this mass produced crap? That many graphics causes a ridiculous load time for your page and hard to even look directly at. I have a fast connection but these pages make me remember what dial-up was like. I don’t have time to wait for five minutes for everything I will never read to load. I’m a busy woman.

These people were the kids in middle school that made us sit through their Power Point presentations cluttered with clip art and that damned typewriter animation for every word.

I have to question the logic behind some of these cluttered and frivolous pages. It is a site that reflects who you are and what you are. When someone looks at it, they are looking at you. Slutty pictures, drunken images and ranting blogs aside, this is the face value I am talking about. You really cannot judge a book by its cover, but I really believe you can judge a person by their MySpace page.