MySpace Rollercoaster

I had become fascinated with all the zany, novelty profiles on myspace--everything from John Tesh and Kris-Kross, to William Howard Taft and Chairman Mao. I came by one for a Lawn Chair that was so funny I got inspired to create an inanimate object profile of my own.

One of the coolest things about myspace is how copyright infringement and libel goes basically unchecked. Fake celebrity profiles routinely make wild claims of their subjects drug use, violence, and sexual orientation. So, to put this lack of constraint to the test I decided to make a "Can of Coke" profile, knowing that two copyrights you don't ever fuck with are Coca-Cola and Mickey Mouse. I downloaded a picture of a shiny can of coke from google and set to work. I made my can of coke a twenty year-old knuckle-head from San Diego who was unaware of anything existing outside of the advertising and entertainment world. I made him have a secret crush on Jared from Subway and a homicidal hatred of Shrek. He laments the passing of his pet dog Pizza Hut. His favorite books werere The Davinci Code and "all the Harry Potters!". To try and attract some real attention I added in some mentions about coke's shady history of using child labor and how coke has been linked to osteo perosis.

I imagined cease and desist letters from Coke's lawyers, and maybe a book deal after my long and triumphant legal battle--of course, nothing happened for weeks. But one day I clicked on, and there was a friend request from a shiny can of Cherry Flavored Pepsi. Awesome, I thought, somebody else had the same idea as me and now they want to have a mock cola war! I accepted the friend request and clicked right over to check out Cherry Pepsi's profile.

I didn't know what to make of it at first. There were moving banners and all kinds of links. It looked like someone had spent money on it. I read the profile details (personality, music, hobbies...). It was all written in a twenty something, male voice but with an undeniable allegiance to Pepsi. To my shock and disgust I realized that this had to be a Pepsi sponsored site. I quickly left a very sober comment, "You have a lot of nerve...Pepsi has no right to free advertising...boycott this site". Then Cherry Pepsi Left me a comment, something to the affect of, "You're messing with Cherry Pepsi now dude! The one with more flavor. It's on!"

I was bugging. Pretty soon five or six other corporate sponsored soft drink profiles were requesting to be my friend. I tried messaging them privately, to speak frankly, person-to-person, about the situation. But all I got back was thinly veiled youth-market jargon with pop up ads included. It was chilling in a way. So I gave up and decided to purge the whole thing by removing all text and putting up a peaceful collage of roller coasters. That's when I got that strange and beautiful email from AMERICAN WE STAND.

American We Stand is the title of a profile of a kid in the mid-west who, I'm guessing, is autistic or has some sort of pathology going on. His entire profile consists of roller coasters and garish patriotic banners that don't really make sense. He writes in all caps and uses almost no punctuation. Makes for bizzarre reading.

I thought it was cool how, after the obnoxious episode with the soda companies, I was able to have this pure exchange with a kid who contacted me because we shared an interest in roller coasters. It sort of exemplified the best of myspace and the internet in general.