The Myspace Selfie
Myspace Founded
Soon after the popularization of social media networks like LiveJournal and Friendster, Chris DeWolfe, Brad Greenspan, Josh Berman, and Tom Anderson launch MySpace in August 2006 (Stenovec 2011). From 2006 to 2009, the term “MySpace pic” is coined and describes an “amateurish, flash-blinded self-portrait, often taken in front of a bathroom mirror. Self-portraits shot with cell phones" (Losse 2013, 182). The MySpace pic, also called the selfie, was deeply rooted in "MySpace"-ness and became a sign of cheap, bad taste (Losse 2013). MySpace would soon face competition from Facebook . While Facebook had a “highbrow aura” and was seen as “mature, mainstream, safe, and clean”, Myspace was “hyper-sexual, bling-bling, ghetto, unsafe”; soon there was a clear ethnic and social-economic differentiation between the two (Leurs 2015).
Hayes, Jasmine. "Over Saturated MySpace Selfie, Holla! #twofingas #cantfitfulllengthintoasquareframe #orasquarepegintoaroundhole." Flickr. Accessed December 09, 2015. https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanajoy/9655390085.
Imnotbeyonce. "Make-up: Black Girls Killin It Selfie Gorgeous." Wheretoget. November 2014. Accessed December 16, 2015. http://wheretoget.it/look/1131605.
Leurs, Koen. “Selfies and Hypertextual Selves on Social Networking Sites”. 2015. “Selfies and Hypertextual Selves on Social Networking Sites”. In Digital Passages: Migrant Youth 2.0: Diaspora, Gender and Youth Cultural Intersections, 173–214. Amsterdam University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt16d69vg.8.
Losse, Kate. "The Return of the Selfie." The New Yorker. May 31, 2013. Accessed December 02, 2015. http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-return-of-the-selfie.
Stenovec, Timothy. "Myspace History: A Timeline Of The Social Network's Biggest Moments." The Huffington Post. June 29, 2011. Accessed December 02, 2015. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/29/myspace-history-timeline_n_887059.html.
