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Web pages open up lives like a diary

More than 70-million people log onto MySpace.com and often exchange intimate details of their lives.

By ABHI RAGHUNATHAN
Published April 28, 2006

	[Handout photo]
	William Hawkins, 25, of Tampa puts his photos on MySpace. "People want an outlet," he says.

Within hours of his death, Pvt. Dylan Meyer's Web page at MySpace.com became a place of mourning for his friends. Now his public death is opening a window into the world of MySpace, an Internet site with more than 70-million members.

A day after posting a goodbye note to the world Monday, Meyer was found dead in his barracks at Fort Gordon, Georgia. The Army is still investigating, but friends of the 20-year-old former Gibbs High student read his last words on MySpace as his suicide note.

While his apparent suicide was shocking, many MySpace users say, Meyer's public farewell was not. Millions of members share intimate, sometimes painful details of their lives on their MySpace pages.

Many MySpace members who, like Meyer, are coping with the transitions of young adulthood see their personal Web pages as a way to keep in touch with old friends and meet new ones. They gripe about bad dates and bad days at work. They talk about parties, insomnia, auditions, vacations, sex and love.

"People want people to be interested in them," said William Hawkins, 25, a software consultant and photographer in Tampa who's been on MySpace for 21/2 years. "People want an outlet, and people want attention. I want people to see things and comment on them or be attracted to them or create controversy."

He has written about his travels and listed his favorite movies on his MySpace site. But Hawkins has also mentioned very personal matters like his sleep paralysis, which any visitor to his page can see.

"The vultures pay no mind as I lumber past their feast and the night seems to not notice that I have joined it," Hawkins wrote in one blog entry. "I walk back to my room and lay my burden down, hoping for a sudden arousal from sleep which will simultaneously bring me awake & aware, just out of reach of the stiffening and nearly debilitating state that I just escaped for the thousandth time."

The intensely personal nature of MySpace doesn't surprise Michael Kearl, a sociology professor at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, who has studied the Internet and mourning.

"When you think about how many cyber identities we have, that is the new medium here," he said. "It helps give people meaning. It's an immortality of a sort."

Perhaps an even bigger hallmark of MySpace's influence is how it's become just part of everyday life for millions of members.

"It's a real venting thing," said Ashley Carson, 20, a sophomore at Eckerd College.

"It's a good way to spend time when you're bored and don't want to do your homework," she said. "It gives you a chance every day to talk to people you didn't think you'd be able to talk to."

More than 70-million people have registered with MySpace since its launch three years ago. Even people with little computer experience can easily upload photos and videos, keep online diaries and chat with other users.

Use of those Web sites is so prevalent among today's students, raised on laptops and iPods, that the University of Florida and Florida State now include discussions of them in freshman orientation.

Some critics say the Web site doesn't have enough safeguards against criminals looking to prey on underage children.

MySpace, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, says it prohibits content it deems offensive, illegal or threatening and dedicates a third of its work force to monitoring the site. It recently hired a former federal prosecutor as its chief security officer; he starts next week.

So what prompts millions of people to spill the details of their personal lives on their MySpace sites? Members say it's the chance to connect with people who can understand their interests, needs and problems.

The more details you share on MySpace, the more kindred souls you'll meet.

"There are friends of mine that can honestly relate to how my day is," said Melody Hadsock, 19, a freshman at the University of South Florida. "And if somebody's feeling bad, I can relate to them, and see what they've done with their day."

Reading the journal that MySpace users keep is like skimming through a stack of diaries. In December, Hadsock mused about her upbringing. "I know that my parents have tried their hardest to prevent me from growing up by retaining me with so many rules, so many restrictions," she wrote. "But what they didn't realize is all those restrictions and rules have caused me to realize that is what adult life is."

Meyer's friends have kept his memory alive on his MySpace page, and others have written about Meyer on their pages. One high school buddy wrote a searing personal essay entitled "Where do we go from here?" Another friend shared her memories of Meyer from a date.

A woman who identified herself as Meyer's mother wrote a note on his site Thursday saying the military wanted her son's death forgotten and urged people to contact her with more information.

Times staff writers Kevin Graham and Shannon Colavecchio-Van Sickler contributed to this report. Abhi Raghunathan can be reached at araghunathan@sptimes.com or 727 893-8472.

[Last modified April 28, 2006, 02:25:22]