“Who are the MySpace Generation and how can they be represented in a work of fiction?” Name: Alasdair Duncan, BA School: Faculty of Creative Industries, QUT Submitted for: Master of Arts (Creative Writing) Year of completion: 2008 1 Keywords: Social networking, MySpace, online ethnography, young adult novel, Schoolies Week, Australian Abstract: This document contains a creative work – the text of a young adult novel, The girl and the sea – and an exegesis examining the MySpace Generation through the methodological prisms of online ethnography and literature review 2 Table of Contents Statement of original authorship...................................................................................................... 4 Section 1: Creative work.................................................................................................................. 5 ‘The girl and the sea’ .......................................................................................................... 5 Section 2: Exegesis ..................................................................................................................... 149 1.0 A personal introduction............................................................................................. 149 2.0 Preliminary questions ............................................................................................... 150 2.1 How many users are on MySpace ........................................................... 151 2.2 How does MySpace function?.................................................................. 153 2.3 Why discuss MySpace? A personal perspective ..................................... 154 3.0 Methodological approaches to studying MySpace................................................... 155 4.0 Literature review ....................................................................................................... 157 4.1 Constructing identities on MySpace......................................................... 157 4.2 The hyper-connectivity of the MySpace generation................................. 159 4.3 The use of abbreviated language forms .................................................. 160 4.4 Building and maintaining friendship groups online................................... 162 4.5 Forming romantic relationships online ..................................................... 164 5.0 Online ethnography .................................................................................................. 165 5.1 Choosing a MySpace user ....................................................................... 166 5.2 Who is Jason?.......................................................................................... 169 5.3 Analysing Jason ....................................................................................... 170 6.0 Representing MySpace users in my own creative practice...................................... 175 7.0 Conclusion................................................................................................................ 178 8.0 Bibliography.............................................................................................................. 179 3 Statement of original authorship: The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for an award in this or any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made. Signature Date 4 The girl and the sea: a novel Alasdair Duncan 5 Drinking by the pool on Friday afternoon … all seems well, but that’s kind of how these stories always start Okay, so that group of guys sitting around by the empty pool in the backyard of that sprawling suburban palace? Those are my friends, and the house belongs to my family. We moved in a few months ago – my parents were concerned that it might be a disruption to my final year of school, but I guess they weren’t too concerned. City-wide water restrictions meant that we were never able to fill the pool, so at the moment, it’s just sitting there, an empty expanse of concrete. I guess that’s annoying for my parents. It’s good for the guys, though, because they can come around and try out new moves in there without having to embarrass themselves in front of the other people in more public arenas. About my friends … we might look like a bunch of overly entitled, private-school douchebags to you, but hey, first impressions are not always entirely inaccurate. So we might all have straight teeth, and those of us whose parents will allow us to drive might have pretty nice cars, but don’t hold that against us. You’ve probably noticed that I’m still in my uniform – my tie’s undone, my socks are all bunched up around my ankles, and my shirt, which used to be white, is now covered in marker pen from where people have signed their names and drawn pictures and written various in-jokes that only we would understand, but none of this stuff matters, because as of about three hours ago, we’re finished with school forever. We’re graduates. We’re young men. Doesn’t that just scare the shit out of you? I guess at this point in the story, it’s probably going to be useful for me to introduce you to my friends. Zach is the English guy with the cheeky grin and all-around air of superiority who has just attempted to pull a sweet aerial trick in the bottom of the empty pool but has stacked it and fallen face-down on the concrete instead. Dean had laughed at the time and called Zach a fag, even though he himself had stacked it worse not five minutes before, and they both kind of had a homosexual air about them to begin with. Dean and Zach spend most of their time referring to each other as fags, queerdogs, homos, Brokebacks, but 6 thanks to Zach’s English accent, phrases like fudge-packer and cock-smoker sound way more erudite and sophisticated coming from him. Speaking of Dean, he’s the skinny guy with the moderate-to-heavy Fall Out Boy issues – upturned collar, hair parted in an amazingly specific way, unshakeable air of boy next door-ishness – leaning against the side of the pool and talking on his phone. He’s deep in conversation with his girlfriend Callie – I know this because he’s speaking in hushed tones and apologising every five seconds, thinking we can’t hear him. He and Callie are going to be staying apart from each other this week and, if the frequency of these phone calls is any indicator, she’s already suffering a heavy case of separation anxiety. I’m sitting by the side of the pool with my feet dangling over the edge, drinking one of the beers we stole from my brother and thinking deep thoughts, my laptop sitting open on the concrete nearby. Luke is the tall, handsome, built-like-a-tank dude next to me, turning his beer bottle upside down to see if there’s any left inside. You wouldn’t think that Luke, with his irresistible-to-chicks brown eyes, his big cheesy grin and his puppy-dog charm would end up being the bad guy in this story, but there you go. 7 Some much-needed authorial interjection About what I’ve just said … I should probably explain that a lot of this story is actually going to be told that way, with annoying moments where the author (who would be me) drops in to comment on what’s happening. If you don’t think you’re going to be able to tolerate that as a literary device, then I guess you should probably thinking about bailing out now, because it’s only going to get more infuriating from here. I guess I’ve always liked to write, but I never thought about doing it seriously until early in my final year of school. I broke my arm (skating accident … don’t ask), which wasn’t the end of the world – I got a lot of sympathy from girls and whatnot, especially form this one girl at Luke’s party – but it also sucked because it meant that while I was healing, I couldn’t go to swimming practice anymore, so I needed another extra-curricular activity to fill in the time after school. My parents suggested creative writing, and I’d always done well enough in English class and whatnot, so I figured I might a well give it a try. The classes happened every Wednesday after school – our teacher was a comic- book nerdy type who looked a bit Seth Cohen-ish but was actually a uni student called Jason, who’d graduated from our very institution a few years earlier and was now the editor of a literary magazine I’d never heard of before, but after finding a copy in the library, realised was actually pretty good. Those classes turned out to be okay. I would spend most of them just stuffing around on my laptop and reading out bits of my writing for the express purpose of trying to impress the one or two girls who would ever turn up, but I guess some pretty useful stuff rubbed off. Jason was always telling us how if we’re stuck for something to write, we should draw on our own experiences – things that have greatly influenced us or transformed us as people. I guess that’s why I’m writing about the week that directly followed the end of school … it’s probably what you’d call a formative time. I don’t know that you’d really be able to pin my friends down to any kind of traditional high school stereotype; in fact, in spite of what the accepted wisdom (and the plot of every high school-themed movie and TV show ever) might suggest, there were really no clearly- defined social groups. Most of the boys, in fact, just did their own thing and got along. Almost 8 everyone, even the nerdy guys, would