Does a Myspace Page Play Music When There’s No One There To Hear It?

Last night, as I was going to bed, I imagined a time, strangely with excitement, when I won’t be around. None of us will be. Well, maybe we all will be.

I imagined a time when our lost fragments of identity, each slightly changed from the last, formed over the years, would be uncovered. Somewhere deep in the dark, on some forgotten server, lie the fragmented echoes of my life.

We were the first ones. I was born in 1993, and the internet, as we know it today, is the same age as I am.

Lego.com might have been my first account; I might have been 3 years old then. Do they have a record of that account somewhere? I had to use my dad’s Sympatico email, which he’s had since before I was born. He still uses the same one.

My Neopets are dead. My Piczo websites sit unopened, their animations flashing for no one. Somewhere, there is a MySpace page that has been playing Sum 41, Atreyu or The Unseen on repeat for no one for almost two decades. Does that music still play if no one has the page open to hear it?

I’ve had multiple Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts, some of which I never used. I have a YouTube Channel that captured two years of my life.

Now, I am writing here.

I’m not saying I will be remembered, but if I am, will someone keep digging through the ancient ruins of our digital landscape, trying to find all the fragments and imprints of me, my life?

Would they ever be able to find them all?

Technological archeologists will dig up memories lost to those who made them even today.

I think about my MySpace page and wonder: What does a room feel like when it’s freshly painted, only for the lights to be turned off indefinitely, leaving it in darkness?
 
 I’m curious about how many profiles and fake people I made up as a child that I will never remember. The internet used to feel so big. We used to visit hundreds of websites. Where did we find them? Does anyone remember?

Today, the internet feels small. Most of us only visit a handful of websites. Everyone is there. The internet is reality. We used to step into it. Now, it’s hard to step out.

When my time comes, and I die, I hope when my life flashes before my eyes, my life on the internet is a part of that in its entirety.

Growing up on the internet back then was wild. Those days are gone, but they shaped a generation. The world has gotten a hold of the internet. The world ruins things.

I wish I knew what my last display name was on MSN. My tagline. My favourite emojis. Do I still get emails, even spam, on the email address I made in 2001 when your email address was your identity?

I wish I could hear the song playing on my Myspace page one more time, to know what song I picked for the last time.

This story was originally published at https://medium.com/@ramseynolds/does-a-myspace-page-play-music-when-theres-no-one-there-to-hear-it-9043d61e2707