I am truly surprised, in fact, dumbfounded that I have never touched on the behemoth social interaction website MySpace until this very day. Absolutely shocked. But hearing of the news of the servers at MySpace being shut down over a massive heat wave in California, finally awakened something in my mind to ponder the question?

Am I the last person NOT on MySpace?

For someone that is supposedly so up in the latest and greatest things, my knowledge of MySpace is limited at best. People come up to me, and ask my if I have a MySpace page, and they look at me like I have SARS or the West Nile Virus when I say I don’t have a page. I mean, people who peg me for a guy who goes on MySpace pages trolling for college aged girls are usually in for a big disappointment. Don’t these people know that the bar is still the best place to pick up college aged girls at? (Kidding, Just Kidding!)

All joking aside, it amazes me how this site has become the commodity that it is. According to some study in some magazine I probably never read, almost 96 million MySpace pages exist today, whether for a band’s website or some 15 year old girl that wants you to watch a video clip of her making out with her best friend. 96 million! Isn’t that as many people that voted in the last Presidential election?

Case in point, I was pumping up Detroit Buzz to some guy in a local band at OzzFest last week, and he asked me if I had a MySpace page. The guys in the band looked at me like I was I was still using an 8 track player, or handing out flyers to promote myself when I said I didn’t have one. MySpace has definitely become the way to promote yourself from nothing to halfway-something. Look at a comedian like Dane Cook: the guy promoted himself on sites including and similar to MySpace, and the guy has grown into a comedic phenomenon.

Believe me, there are good things about MySpace: Once in a great while, two people of legal age can meet each other, hit it off, and perhaps hang out on the computer all night together, talking in some instant messenger language that looks like a 4 year old is writing. You may also find music from new bands, and bands that let you hear their music are a wonderful thing. It’s a great networking site for bands to get gigs and perhaps find other bands to tour with. I believe this was the original intention of MySpace, before it morphed into what we know today.

But with all of the good things, there are some pitfalls to MySpace. Actual face to face interaction has gone out the window, replaced by staring into the computer screen like you are a zombie from Dawn of the Dead. Also, a lot of really creepy, balding guys hang out on the website, preying on innocent young girls and guys. People that should be doing other, and way more productive things with their lives than to end up on one of those “Dateline: Internet Predator” stories.

Even with the good and the bad, I think I figured out the answer to my earlier questions, as to why I am not on MySpace. Quite frankly, I think I’m way too old to get a MySpace page going, and actually care about it. At 29, I don’t see myself hanging out on the computer for hours a night, hoping some junior in college will add me to her MySpace page as a friend; or some band I really enjoy will add me (believe me, they probably appreciate the 10 dollars I pay for their CD a little more). I don’t have that much time in my life to devote to that. Who wants to see someone pushing 30 trying to think they’re cool, because they have 12,409 friends on their site? Not me…

Even though MySpace has good intentions, I prefer to do my networking the old fashioned way: Getting in my car, and heading out to talk with people. (Oh yeah, email works too.)