White Flight from MySpace to Facebook

Heh.  One of the commenters notes that Facebook already made the "Stuff 
White People Like" list over two years ago.

- - -

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2010/11/white-flight-from-myspace-to-facebook.html

by Steve Sailer
Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Here's a scholarly article by danah boyd (e.e. cumming-like lack of 
capitalization intentional) called White Flight in Networked Publics? How 
Race and Class Shaped American Teen Engagement with MySpace and Facebook. 
It's based on a lot of interviews with teens. For example, one white boy 
pointed out that MySpace's tools for customization to bling up their sites 
drove off more cultured teens:

     "These tools gave MySpacers the freedom to annoy as much as they 
pleased. Facebook was nice because it stymied such annoyance, by limiting 
individuality. ... The MySpace crowd felt caged and held back because they 
weren't able to make their page unique."

Unfortunately, it's one of those academic articles which could be about 
50% shorter if danah didn't have to constantly puff up the possibility 
that the universally perceived differences on average between the races 
might just be one giant mass delusion. We're not talking about reality, 
you see, just perceptions of reality and perceptions of perceptions of 
reality.

Like the lack of bling on Facebook, that kind of Occam's Butterknife talk 
is a marker of respectable academic discourse about race: No, we don't 
find race interesting, we find our perceptions of other people's 
perceptions about race interesting. We try to make our interest in it as 
uninteresting as possible by padding our writing out with endless 
meta-ness. (We wouldn't want any MySpacers reading our articles, now would 
we?)

- - -

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/07/31/106-facebook/

#106 Facebook

July 31, 2008 by clander

Social Networking sites have been embraced by white people since their 
inception. Because these sites use profile pages, white people can more 
efficiently judge friends and future friends on their taste in film, 
books, music, and inspirational quotes. Advanced level white people, 
fearful of being judged on their tastes from last week, will often only 
list one or two ironic things as their favorites. For example under music 
they would simply list "P.M. Dawn" or under films they would choose only 
Armageddon. In both cases these ironic answers serve as protective shields 
from the harsh gaze of other white people.

However, it is important to remember that the "where" is often as 
important as the "who" when it comes to social networking. As noted in 
earlier posts, white people are obsessed with being in the right 
neighborhood and the Internet is no exception.

In the early days, white people joined a social networking service called 
Friendster where they could connect with old friends and make new ones. 
Eventually, white people started to notice more and more of their friends 
on MySpace, so they closed their Friendster accounts and migrated to the 
new service. It was like living in a neighborhood that was pretty good but 
kind of far away, so you might have to miss out on a few parties. Needless 
to say, this was unacceptable.

For a brief period of time, MySpace was the site where everyone kept their 
profile and managed their friendships. But soon, the service began to 
attract fake profiles, the wrong kind of white people, and struggling 
musicians. In real world terms, these three developments would be 
equivalent to a check cashing store, a TGIFridays, and a housing project. 
All which strike fear in the hearts of white people.

White people were nervous but had nowhere else to go. Then Facebook came 
along and offered advanced privacy settings, closed networks, and a clean 
interface. In respective real world terms, these features are analogous to 
an apartment or house with a security system/doorman, an alumni dinner, 
and a homeowners association that protects the aesthetics of the 
neighborhood. In spite of these advances, some white people still clung to 
their old MySpace accounts. That was until they learned that Facebook 
started, like so many things beloved by white people, at Harvard.

Within a matter of months, MySpace had gone from a virtual utopia to 
Digital Detroit, where only minorities and indie bands remain.

If you plan on befriending white people, it is essential that you join 
them in the digital suburbs and open a Facebook account immediately. It's 
also a good idea to make up a story about how someone from high school 
sent you a friend request and after accepting you discovered that they 
were fat and unsuccessful. White people love these stories.

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