I'm in a group chat war over whether to delete our old Myspace profiles.
By @wessorta · Nostalgia
A few of us found our old accounts from the mid-2000s and they are deeply embarrassing. I think we should scrub them from the internet forever, but some of my friends are saying they're 'historical documents' we should save.
The full story
We were all at my friend's place on Saturday and somehow went down a rabbit hole of googling our old screen names from AIM and high school. Inevitably, this led us to the digital graveyard of Myspace. Yes, we managed to log in. And it was a horror show. The amount of cringe is almost radioactive. My profile song was a deep cut from some obscure emo band. My 'About Me' was written in alternating capital and lowercase letters and was filled with dramatic, vague poetry about pain. The selfies, taken on a chunky digital camera in my bathroom mirror, were all from that weird high-angle, duckface era. And the Top 8... I had completely forgotten the passive-aggressive drama you could cause by reordering your Top 8. My old best friend was #1, but a guy I had a crush on was #2, which I now remember caused a huge fight. My immediate, logical reaction was: this has to be destroyed. I have a client-facing job. My name is on my work's website. I can't have this digital ghost haunting me, where anyone with basic search skills can see me with bad eyeliner quoting song lyrics. It feels like a professional and personal liability waiting to happen. But a couple of my friends are completely against deleting them. Their argument is that it's a perfect, unfiltered time capsule of who we were. They think it's hilarious and that erasing it is like trying to pretend our teen years didn't happen. One of them is screenshotting everything 'for posterity,' which feels like a violation. They say I'm being uptight and that no one would seriously judge me for a profile I made when I was 15. The group chat is now divided. Is it better to erase the cringe of the past, or preserve it as a part of your story?
How people voted
- Facts — 31% (88 votes)
- Depends — 41% (115 votes)
- No Way — 28% (80 votes)
Readers are split: “Depends” leads with 41% — 283 votes and 4 comments so far.
What people are saying
@benforsure — Screenshotting is a federal crime.
@otis — crying
@benhm — nah keep them its a national treasure
@jaredtbh — soft.