Sometimes the future looks a lot like the past. Last weekend, I was having a conversation with one of my closest friends about social media, and I told him that I genuinely believe Myspace is going to make a comeback. I was not saying it because I am stuck in the early 2000s or because I simply miss profile songs and Top 8 lists. I said it because I have been paying attention to what social media has become, and I believe people are eventually going to start looking for something that feels more personal, creative, and community-centered again. Today’s social media networks ain’t givin’….
When algorithms, livestreaming, monetization, and creator programs became a major part of social media, the entire atmosphere changed. I want to be clear that I do not have an issue with people making money from their content. Get the bag. Creators deserve to be compensated for what they produce, especially when social media companies are profiting from their work. The problem is that once money and visibility became the main goals, everything started to feel different. It no longer felt like people were simply sharing their thoughts, music, photographs, jokes, or pieces of their lives. Everything became content, and everything started looking like it had been planned around an audience.
Even the outrage feels curated now. Every few days, there is another subject people are expected to argue about, another person everyone is supposed to hate, or another disturbing video circulating because the algorithm knows anger will keep people watching and engaged. Social media has become increasingly toxic, and it does not seem to matter how often you click “not interested,” block certain pages, or try to train your algorithm. Certain subjects and agendas continue to be pushed into your feed because they create reactions. One thing I have personally noticed is the constant stream of content involving Black women, discrimination, humiliation, and domestic violence. It begins to feel less like awareness and more like emotional exploitation.
It is also becoming harder to have real conversations online. You have to think about which words might get your post hidden, which subjects might trigger a warning, and whether something you say will be misunderstood by an automated moderation system. People have started spelling words incorrectly or using coded language just to discuss serious issues. We are living in a time when social media platforms encourage people to broadcast every detail of their lives, but those same platforms often make it difficult to speak honestly about what is happening in those lives.
That is part of why I keep thinking about Myspace. Myspace felt social in a way that many current platforms do not. It felt like a community rather than a nonstop marketplace or public performance. People used it to discover music, meet other creative people, share their personalities, and build spaces that actually felt like their own. Your profile was not identical to everyone else’s profile. You could choose your colors, add backgrounds, play music, rearrange your page, and make it reflect who you were.
I also appreciate how many people became interested in coding because of Myspace. A lot of us learned pieces of HTML and CSS without ever thinking of ourselves as programmers. We learned because we wanted to change the color of our text, move something on our page, add a background image, or make our profiles look completely different from everyone else’s. Myspace gave people the freedom to turn a profile into a small personal website that existed inside a larger network. It encouraged individuality instead of forcing everyone into the same layout and rewarding only the content that performed well.
Of course, Myspace had its drama. People took the Top 8 personally, friendships were tested over profile rankings, and there were plenty of questionable layouts that probably gave people headaches. Still, there was something organic about it. The platform was imperfect, but it did not feel as calculated. You could log in without immediately feeling as though someone was trying to sell you a lifestyle, provoke you, or convince you that your life was inadequate.
After I had this conversation with my friend, I decided to go ahead and reserve my names on Myspace. I created a page for BlaqKharma and another for Flowers N Flames because I did not want to wait until everyone else started thinking about returning. I assumed that if Myspace does experience some kind of resurgence, it would probably happen quietly at first. I imagined artists, musicians, independent brands, and celebrities creating pages without immediately announcing them. It would begin as something that felt almost exclusive, with people gradually migrating back before the general public realized anything was happening.
What made the timing so interesting was that only a few days after that conversation, I began seeing news about a Myspace documentary and talk about the platform being reintroduced to a new generation. I had already created my pages before I saw any of this. I am not claiming that I predicted the future. I think that I recognized a feeling before it became a headline. Sometimes you can feel a shift happening long before everyone starts talking about it. Social media has reached a point where users are exhausted by constant performance, constant conflict, and algorithms that seem determined to keep everyone emotionally activated.
I do believe there is an opportunity for Myspace, but the website needs work. When I created my pages, I immediately ran into a couple of technical issues and had to switch browsers just to change the name on one of my profiles. The current platform also seems more heavily focused on music, entertainment, and the arts than the Myspace many of us remember. That may work in its favor because artists and creative communities could be the ones who bring it back to life, but the site will need to become easier to use if it expects people to stay.
Whether Myspace itself becomes popular again or another platform appears with a similar spirit, I believe the tide is changing. I don’t think I’m the only one who has become burnt out on social media. Folks are tired of chasing algorithms, watching staged authenticity, and being force-fed outrage. I think people will eventually want smaller communities, more control over what they see, and more freedom to express themselves without turning every thought into a performance.
That is why I believe Myspace has another opportunity. It represents a version of social media that felt more like a place and less like a machine. It gave people their own corner of the internet while still allowing them to be part of something larger. There was creativity, community, foolishness, music, drama, and personality, but there was also a sense that you were interacting with actual people rather than competing with them for visibility.
I may be wrong about Myspace becoming the platform that fills this void, but I do not believe I am wrong about the void itself. People are looking for something different, even if they cannot fully explain what they are missing yet. Maybe that ‘something different’ is Myspace. Maybe it isn’t. What I do know is that people are searching for a social media experience that feels social again. They want social media to feel social again. If Myspace can modernize without destroying the qualities that made people love it in the first place, I believe it could have a real chance.
Would you go back to Myspace if it returned as a functional, creative, and community-driven platform, or do you think those days are gone for good? Let me know in the comments.