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.
I suspect the world would be a bit better, or at least a bit less toxic, social media kept that primary focus on open expressions of identity rather than only the highlights from a person's work or art or daily life.
Not to downplay my personal importance (=make an ostentatious display of humility, lol) I can work on art and projects to express the importance of other things in the world that aren't myself.
But it's still your expression, or put another way an expression of you.
Imagine art critics studying your art - they would be asking what was your history, context, what happened to you and what was going through your head that made you do this. It's always about you, even - maybe especially, considering that defeating one's ego is still noteworthy - if you don't want it to be about you.
Making art that's not about the artist is reserved to LLM... At least for now.
First, humility is an under-appreciated virtue in today's world.
Second, the idea of "your work and art are an expression of you" is dangerously self-centered, in that it can limit your growth by pushing you conform to acceptance over aspiration.
No, I am extremely self-centered. The fact that I can create great things only adds to my own greatness as a person, but I recognize that my personal greatness will always be eclipsed by the greatness of my works.
They are and at the same time they overcome me, they are more than just "me." And that is why the possibility for greatness lies in the artwork, and not the person.
I wasn't really on MySpace either, but I think it's exactly where your complaint lies that drew such a huge demographic. When I think MySpace, I think teenagers who are still discovering their identity—not seasoned creators with a catalog of work to show off.
The masses were given a means to make a page that encapsulated their identity and connect it with others, during a time where it was suddenly made possible for everyone to express themselves, but still difficult to produce meaningful online content. I think Tumblr eventually ended up capturing a lot of that, but I also feel that there is a sense of pressure around having a space where the purpose is to publish content (even if just reblogging). It was really meaningful to a lot of people that they could have a simple space to express themselves through custom mouse cursors, cringey quotes, and autoplaying emo music.
Nowadays, this expression of identity for younger audiences seems to be driven by being a part of online communities with common interests, expressing oneself through content (now that it's so easy to make and share). But I think MySpace was there for people at the right time.
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.