The seven things you forgot about MySpace.

If you go to your MySpace profile now, it probably looks something like this:

The grandeur is... gone.

No longer does a violently intrusive song play as soon as people see a picture of your face, to really establish your personal ~vibe~. No longer do we feel the need to trawl through pimpmyprofile.com for hours on end to find the right background, or literally learn advanced HTML in order to have the 'coolest' layout (note: flashing graphics are not fun, they're an assault to the human eye).

No longer do we have lengthy About Me sections with profound song lyrics and erratically clashing fonts, or eight top friends, ranked specifically in order of how 'close' you were that week.

And the world is a much sadder place for it.

It's been 10 years since we were officially and tragically addicted to MySpace. It was the best of times, it was the lamest of times.

The kids of today will never know the pain of being bumped down two places in your mates' top friends, or the work — and we mean work — that went into creating the perfect profile.

They'll never understand the rapid dopamine hit we got from logging in and seeing this.

You see, it happened overnight. Not literally, but kind of literally.

One day MySpace was there, and we were all about our ugly profiles, our emo music, and our creative usernames (♥{[JEssI ♥'z JEssIE MCcarTney]}♥) and then all of a sudden, on a Tuesday in '08, everyone was using Facebook and we felt, well, lame. 

But now it's time to take a scroll through memory lane, and shine a BIG SPARKLY FLASHING LIGHT on the things we miss most about the social network that taught us not everyone should be a graphic designer.

There was a secret language.

Hey, ASL?

PC4PC? (That's picture comment for picture comment, obviously).

While certain cringy acronyms defined the MySpace period, there were also social norms you just prescribed to. Like always, always, saying 'Thnx 4 tha add :).'

If you didn't say thank you, you were f**king rude.

There were no 'filters' for pics. You had one option, and one option only.

Your only choice was to lighten a photo SO MUCH that you no longer HAD A FACE.

There was none of this 'Valencia' or 'Rise' nonsense.

A girl had to make do. 

Also, everyone...everyone had a side fringe and over plucked eyebrows. No, no, everyone. 

You had to TRADEMARK your terrible username so no one would steal it.

Guys, we're just going to come out and say it. You know that trademarked username you had in '06? It... it wasn't really trademarked. People could still use it if they wanted to, but they didn't, and they still don't.

NO ONE EVER NEEDED TO TRADEMARK THIS:

¿✻ Clîε ßÃß姙 ✻¿

But seriously, don't steal it, it took me ages.

The bulletin board.

At first, you may not remember this. But if you're ever wondering what's wrong with millennials, it's that they spent a significant portion of their adolescence filling out chain mail surveys about themselves and sending them to their friends.

That's what pretty much made up the MySpace bulletin board - the archaic equivalent of the Facebook newsfeed. Oh, and much later on you could share important statuses like 'k goin up da coast 4 holidayz, lol.'

How people made it through school with this level of distraction we do not know.

Kids literally knew HTML.

We both learned more about HTML from building MySpace profiles than we have from working at an online publication.

It was so clever. There is no greater imperative to learn how to code than having your social status depend on it.

As you got better at it, you could get really, really sneaky. If someone was hiding an aspect of their profile, or you wanted to read private messages (WTF, what's wrong with you), you could copy a code and paste in a person's profile ID.

That's actually super problematic.

WHY DIDN'T WE USE OUR BRAINS FOR GOOD. IF WE USED THOSE SKILLS ELSEWHERE THE WORLD MIGHT BE A BETTER PLACE.

Top friends broke people. 

There were eight. There could only be eight. And there was only one number one spot. Was it your best friend? Your sister? Your boyfriend? Your girlfriend?

You'd better be able to justify it, because with every top friend 'shuffle,' you could expect a message from someone asking: "Y am I not in ur top friends? ;) lol."

There was a reciprocal relationship between your top friends and your real-life friendships. Putting someone in your top friends could legitimately make that friendship stronger, and leaving them out could result in a passive aggressive bulletin. And you didn't want that. Oh, no.

We watched two girls become best friends at school, and to this day we believe it's because one of them randomly made the other her top friend by accident. But she felt so honoured/blessed/grateful that lifelong loyalty was the only way to repay the debt.

Just... photobucket.

One could not simply 'upload' a picture to MySpace. You had to upload to photobucket, and then there were other steps involved because it was 2007 and we couldn't use the Internet at the same time as mum was on the phone OKAY.

And one did not upload 'one photo' ever. You uploaded an entire album, always.

The process actually made going to parties stressful, because you knew a) you had to bring a camera (phones had Snake II, not cameras) b) you had to email photos to everyone who was there (in several emails, they wouldn't all fit in one), c) upload them SEPARATELY to PHOTOBUCKET, then d) put them on MySpace, somehow.

Oh, and then someone would comment saying "ew, you look like a chihuahua," because that's a thing that actually happened.

LOOK, BITCH. THIS MYSPACE PAGE IS A FULL-TIME JOB FOR ME, AND I WON'T TAKE YOUR CRAP.

Again, it was the best of times, it was the lamest of times.

And don't even get us started on MSN.