Why hasn’t Jessie Jackson been screeching about this? Will there be a cyber marches on Facebook’s server farms? “I have a dream…”
Abandon your MySpace account for Facebook? You might just be a racist.
At a keynote speech during New York’s Democracy forum at Lincoln Center, Danah Boyd spoke of the racial disparity and possible reasons for mass abandonment of MySpace for the “more cultured” and “less cheesy” social networking site Facebook. Boyd, a social media researcher for Microsoft and fellow of the Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet and Society, stated:
“We might as well face an uncomfortable reality … what happened was modern day ‘white flight’.”
Boyd also observed that:
“The fact that digital migration is revealing the same social patterns as urban white flight should send warning signals to all of us. It should scare the hell out of us.”
Referring to MySpace as the “ghetto of the digital landscape,” Boyd indicated that MySpace users are more likely to be “brown or black” and espouse a different set of ideals in conflict with those espoused by the teens she surveyed over four years. She said that patterns in migration across social networking sites echoed those of a white exodus from cities in the past. Boyd also said that teens who use Facebook are more likely to condescend their MySpace-favoring peers.
“Any high school student who has a Facebook page will tell you MySpace users are more likely to be barely educated and obnoxious… like Peet’s is more cultured than Starbucks and jazz is more cultured than bubblegum pop. And Macs are more cultured than PCs.”
its race huh? Not culture? I thought both were trumped by twitter but nonetheless why any movement at all as “your” page is for “your” use and those you let in. Seems both services would self segregate and operate with lots of like minded ghettos getting along by having little contact with one another.
How do the dynamics of these services work to avoid that?
“It should scare the hell out of us”
I’m terrified.
How about, MySpace kind of sucks and FaceBook sucks less?
Once again, correlation does not imply causality. For example, people who are taller tend to have a higher IQ score. Does height cause a better IQ score? Nyet.
So hes saying barely educated and obnoxious correlates to people of color?
I think this says more about the racism of the author than of Facebook users.
Uh… wow. That’s kind of ignoring the whole “up until six months ago you needed to have a .edu email to be in Facebook” thing. And I don’t think it’s a surprise that the majority of people in the United States who proceed with higher education are white… not because of any *racial* difference, mind, but because of economic and cultural differences.
Putting that aside.
Myspace is the ghetto of the digital world because it’s skanky, not because of the people that populate it. It’s poorly designed, has a horrible UI, and for, fuck’s sakes, LOUD, TACKY, and lets anyone build a webpage that is equally LOUD and TACKY. Simple fact: people don’t know how to build good web pages. This is not a skill we have evolved.
For the record, I’m *not* white, did *not* grow up in mainland US, and currently live in the city with the highest percentage population of latinos/Puerto Ricans outside of Puerto Rico. And I won’t go anywhere *near* Myspace.
#3–qb==seems to me the taller person can see over the shoulder of the person sitting in front of them and can see their answers.
While I agree with your statement, your example is perfectly wrong. You could have said “taller doesn’t mean higher IQ’s” but you went for “scores” which is totally different.
and while true, any correlation is certainly consistent with causation or concomitance and should be the first area looked at.
Its called common sense. Not proof. Just common sense.
#6 bobbo my old friend
I was very particular about specifying higher IQ scores but I’m not going to quibble about that – it’s just an old habit. But I will quibble about “taller doesn’t mean higher IQ’s”.
In the general population, if you’re taller then you will score higher on an IQ test. There is definitely a strong, positive correlation.
I always avoided MySpace because the websites had little that I was interested in, except for my 20-something daughter’s old website. That site’s gone now…
I think Floyd said it all right there. He should have been the speaker at this forum.
Here where I live, the police actually busted several idiots on Myspace for having pictures of themselves with their big ass pistols. These were black and Mexican gangbanger creeps. They were also morons, of course. No. I don’t think I want to be on the same social level as assholes….
Interesting comments on some things being “more cultured.” I heard two high school students in a big box store talking about Windows computers. They were what poor people used to steal music, software, and to surf porn…they were “Ghetto Computers.”
As for Myspace, just look at one of their web pages. Once Murdock took over it became a mass of ads and in your face junk. I know people that left as they were calling it “Adspace.”
I don’t think it’s racist to leave Myspace, I think people are leaving for one of the same reasons they are leaving print newspapers. They stopped being a medium for delivering news, and became a medium for delivering ads.
People are looking for information and things of interest and you get too much “cognitive dissonance” having to sort though all of the crap thrown at you.
wow, misleading title. boyd doesn’t say anything in the linked articles about being a racist if you leave myspace for facebook.
I’ve read boyd’s work (and her name is legally dana boyd with no caps. That’s the name her parents gave her. My parents also gave me an unusual name that has been butchered my whole life, so I’m a bit sensitive about it. It isn’t our fault our parents gave us screwy names.) and it mostly deals with social class. The earlier stuff of hers that has dealt with facebook vs. myspace has mostly dealt with a class divide. I see this current emphasis on race as being an obvious extension of that work.
Really, I must ask the question.
What is wrong for preferring your own race?
The Chinese are totally racist. Seclusionists.
The Blacks are racist. The only ones who can say “Nigger”, apparently.
The Mexicans fly the Mexican flag here in the US.
Why can’t white people prefer white people?
Oh, because it’s “racist”. Of course.
Go ahead, Sluggos. Accuse me of it.
So fn what
Myspace is the Detroit of social networking.
it’s not me it’s my netbook is a racist! it crashes every time i go to one of those memory intensive pages.
Myspace is a trashy cheap-looking nightmare of bad design, Facebook is slow and buggy but cleaner.
If you assume that nonwhites like trashy bad design, and that racists therefore moved to Facebook, then I guess we’re BOTH racists. Welcome to the club. Pick up your sheet and hood at the door, and stop listening to that R&B.
I had a Myspace page I logged into ONCE. The whole experience was poor and I did not see the need to make use of the site, when I have my own domain(s).
I started in at Facebook due to my job, but being that I was RIFFED Tuesday, I have no need of that thing either.
I am not a racist though….I hate everyone equally.
Silly knee grows!
#19 – Dennis, the priests love you and would like to bury a bone in your backyard, so to speak. You obviously had it once this week from your job.
The Mexicans fly the Mexican flag here in the US.
Yes and no white people in the usa fly flags or have entire holidays devoted to celebrating the country they come from…
And flying the flag of another country is totally a sign that you only like people from that country…
wow….just….wow
Well lucky me, I joined Facebook without even knowing anything about MySpace and im not even white. ;P
What passes as “research” these days…and this person represents Harvard?! Stunning…
Man I must be getting old. I have looked at Facebook and My Space and fail to see any value at all. That being said twitter is even worse. I spent an hour or so looking around and did not see one thing worth the time.
“And Macs are more cultured than PCs.” She just says that because most graphic designers are gay.
Is it any wonder that Microsoft still dosn’t get social media? Oh I forgot, the next version will fix evrything.
MySpace is like Geocities and Facebook like Tripod.
Both of those old sites were for people that:
A) Did not know how to buy a domain
B) Too cheap to buy a domain
C) Poorly skilled to code a page
D) all of the above.
Cursor_
So the fact that MySpace sucks donkey d**ks has nothing to do with it? Some people see conspiracies in everything.
According to many politically correct assholes, every white person is racist or potential racist – simply because they’re white 😀
Facebook is (was?) most popular among college/university students. OBVIOUSLY majority of these students are white – not because whites are smarter than blacks (that too – and sure call me racist, hahaha) but simply because majority of the population is still white, regardless of how many preferences Blacks get in many Unis 😉