Good riddance?

Yesterday I was able to download my Friendster profile before the site closed today. Friendster is the first social network site I ever signed up for, and my stay there was probably the longest to date. I reckon that having an FS account is considered to be low-class during the last few years, and I myself had decided that it’s time to go when I couldn’t take how low-brow everything in the site seemed to be.

I signed up in 2005 when I was in high school, and the first message I received was from a former classmate in grade school. If that was not a good reason for joining, I don’t know what was. Friendster enabled me to get in touch with people I hadn’t seen in ages. It’s such a cliché, but I think we all have to start somewhere.

Some time after, Friendster’s system allowed the users to create and modify the designs of their respective profiles. The way every profile looked, which used to be uniform, therefore became as varied (and as crazy) as the personality of their owners. Some had their layout in all-black, some had huge glittery images as design, some had their font colors changed into neon shades. Most of these profiles then, if not all, became eyesore to me. People can be as wonky as their Friendster profiles and I cringed.

Then there’s the testimonials, statements given by “friends” posted on one’s profile describing the user. It was a good interaction activity then, in an ego-boosting sort of way. It enabled one to know how others perceive him/her, and posting testimonials was like a correspondence. Friendster then changed the purpose of the “testi,” and changed the term to “comments.” It was therefore not necessary to say something about the profile owner when one posts. Anything and everything was acceptable. It got on my nerve when people demanded testimonials/comments just so their profiles would have more posts. In the end, it became a popularity contest.

Like most of my online social networking phases (there would probably be around three), I joined because of my offline friends, and stayed because it benefitted me in more ways than one. Looking back then at the way the people typed, in sticky caps filled with unnecessary punctuations, at the fake profile accounts that sprouted, at the predominant attitude of the users trying to get noticed (through the bulletins, shoutouts, and poorly edited display pictures), the elitist in me regarded the site in disdain—much like what almost everybody did.

The reason that I stayed longer than I should have was because of the private group created for our high school class. The group served as a forum where we were able to talk and discuss under various topics—from the lamest ones such as counting to 100, 000 to asking the next poster questions about anything that tickled our fancy.

If you’ve just graduated from high school and parted ways with people you’ve been with for the past four emotional years of your life, you’d understand that virtual presence would mean so much more than just trying to “get in touch.”

Okay, what I’m really trying to say here is that Friendster probably meant more memories to me than what I care to admit. My profile was worth saving because it enables me to look back at those silly teenage years and know what were the things that made me tick during those days, or know who bothered to say hello and ask how I was.

The closest friend I had to date during college was a blockmate from my previous program. We rarely see each other now because I have moved colleges. With a certain pang of longing and nostalgia, I read her posts on my downloaded profile years after. And I then remember how fun being friends with her was, or how we agree on many things, or how we bother ourselves with the tiniest details of each other’s lives, or how we say we miss each other during sem breaks.

Does she long for those days, too? Was she able to save her profile as well? I definitely hope so.

It was such a pity I never got the chance to save the discussions in the private group for our high school class. It would have contained more memories we had let go since we all decided to leave Friendster for good, simply because it was an archive of how we communicated when we were still together and after we have parted ways. We most probably shared more stupid jokes and philosophical ponderings in it than we could ever realize. What’s more, there were photos in there, if I remember correctly. Such ridiculous and youthful acts, which I dare say are worth remembering both for fun and contemplation, were all contained inside a virtual place—a place we wouldn’t have the chance to visit anymore.

So I guess Friendster was considerate enough to allow users to obtain their profiles before shutting down. At least parts and parcels of memories were saved from the depths of oblivion.


EDIT: HAHAHAHA. Nagdrama pa ko, hanggang June 27 pa naman pala. I'd be sure to save the private group, then. :)

My summer in a nut shell (sort of)

These past weeks had been interesting but not as much as I though it would be. For our internship, my classmate and I decided to apply at a digital media company, where one of our professors is Editor-in-Chief, because we hadn't heard from the other media companies we applied for online.

It is interesting because I got to go to a new place, meet a few new people. Furthermore, I finally got to travel by the train. On a daily basis. Even. During. The. Rush. Hour.

I also got to learn how the site's frontpage works. We were taught and made to package these stories that appear on the page. We were provided with laptops to use at the office. I even got to use a corporate email address. (I don't know if it's only me, but after I sent that mail containing interview questions, I was thrilled. There some sort of a sense of responsibilty and accountability because that mail contains not only my name but the company's as well.)

On the whole, I wished there had been more challenges. Sure, I got to be behind the scenes of the site's most prominent feature, but that was about it. I was expecting more legworks because the course I took under the company's EIC was one of the most challenging I've had as a journalism major, wherein we really had to go out and interview people, research intensively, and undergo some "workshop" in class as we presented our papers. If only he was the one to handle us trainees, things would have been different.

I wanted to see my name in the byline after genuinely pursuing a story, to be blunt about it. I got the chance to do the latter, but our names were not in the byline for some unknown reason. Either way, the event about which we wrote the story was the best experience I've had from this internship. We got to cover the press launch of the Jose Rizal Heritage Trail tourism campaign of the DOT. In celebration of the hero's 150th birthday on June 19, the DOT promotes the places in the country Rizal had been to. At the launch, which began at 8 a.m., I got to see (and pseudo-interview) the Tourism secretary.

We toured around the Rizal Park, Intramuros, and Paco Park. I think the best part was the special buffet where the guests were treated to the favorite dishes of Rizal, such as tuyo, tinola, pancit miki, adobo, and the famous tsokolate e. I think it's obvious that tsokolate e was my absolute favorite. Afterwards, we had to hurry back to the office to write the story because it will be uploaded that same afternoon. I'm so glad my co-intern and I decided to go. It was a taste of what real practice of reporting is, I think.

That's what my summer was about, more or less. And a few new films I watched, here and there. I am frustrated that I haven't got to read new books at all though.

And oh, before I forget--belated happy birthday to my ultimate favorite J-actress in the whole wide world no matter what my officemate says: Juri! <33