recently one of my close friends decided to play a little practical joke on me by creating a fake myspace page — complete with a ridiculous soundtrack, numerous porn stars as my closest friends and a proclamation of my bisexuality. oddly enough, details such as these didn’t tip off the vast majority of my friends and family (which i can only hope is a testament to the well-crafted mix of fact and fiction). i discovered the covert operation only after another friend and co-worker stormed into my office to inquire as to why i had not yet invited her to be my “friend.”

i must admit that initially i was pretty upset. (this was by design one of the worst-looking myspace pages ever for the record.) i mean hey… i had always carefully managed and crafted my online presence. from my defunct designops blog to more recent projects to my job, i kept somewhat behind the curtain for numerous reasons… never feeling completely comfortable with sharing my thoughts and ideas online, whether personal or industry-specific. i have a poorly-maintained linkedin profile and have been tagged on flickr here and there… so who am i kidding? where was my sense of humor? each of us… like it or not, can be found online in certain and imperfect detail.

while the entertaining imposter page is now deleted (i’ll have to save my unproductive and depressing adventure with myspace’s customer service for another time), the whole thing got me thinking about my lack of participation and mixed feelings. i have learned to revel in the fact that many folks now think i enjoy right said fred’s “i’m too sexy” in that ironic hipster kinda way.

in short, crisis equals opportunity. i’ve decided to resuscitate shawnokeefe.com — knowing from this experience that if you don’t contribute to your identity online, someone else surely will.

thanks to adrienne, noah, eric and lya for the inspiration to get back on my virtual feet.

and special thanks to my pal kirk of course. i must give props where they are due for pulling off such a good prank. just don’t forget… on the web, turnabout is fair play old friend.

3 Comments

  • You haven’t made it until someone’s made a MySpace page which burns you in effigy…all in good fun!

    By the way…weird question…but did you go to Space Camp?

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