The Impotence of One

Well, door #2 had it. The account must’ve expired. For those of you who didn’t read the previous post, here it is.

The demeaning, sexist, and misogynistic myspace ads are back – I mean the worst ones from match.com. Maybe I’m getting a little too ticked about this to sustain loyal readers but I’ll risk it. Partially because I had a talk with a friend last night and realize even more how much this stuff really hurts women.

Here’s my second intolerant response:

Myspace –

Apparently your last message about having removed the “It’s not OK to stare” ads was temporary or untrue.

About one in three women are sexually assaulted in this country. When I as a man see ads that feature women as objects, it tempts me to dehumanize them. This ad is very bad for the self-esteem and safety of women. Can your marketing team understand that?

I could apologize for the intolerant tone of this email, but I won’t. I’m not “tolerant” of these demeaning ads. Please forward this email up your chain of command until someone who has loved ones such as a wife, mother, or daughter can stop your site from selling out to match.com.

I am not pleased with your lack of honesty in informing me that this content has been removed when it has not been.

Thank you very much.
Nathan / Rock Prophetic

If this  letter resonates with you, I dare you to copy the other letter in this post and send it from your myspace account. To do this, you need to click the “report inappropriate content” link from the inbox. Or perhaps you are just more tolerant than I am.

Online Dating Week – Match.com / Open Letter to Myspace

This post updated here.

One of myspace.com’s sponsors is Match.com . And yes, that IS “Dr. Phil” on the graphic. He is the “Neil Clark Warren” of Match.com.

Match.com can find you plenty of interesting people right down the street from you as soon as you want. That is a bit disconcerting after you have spent 3 months on eH being scientifically tested for 29 dimentions of compatibility. Too much too soon in my view!

But match.com get hook you in. Unfortunately I don’t appreciate their “It’s Not OK to Stare” web ad campaign on myspace.com and other places. This features a video starting off in an off-limits part of female anatomy and then zooming out to a “tsk tsk” tongue in cheek scolding flirty girl whose self esteem is so low that she takes this as flattery.

Imagine the implications for your little sister or daughter in such a culture as this 5 or 10 years from now. It is not acceptable.

So today I sent the marketing team at myspace another “Inappropriate Content” notice. This is what it said. There’s no copyright on this by the way, you can do the same. Or are you “tolerant” of this?

Dear Myspace:

This is another complaint about one of your sponsor ads, match.com, specifically their “it’s not OK to stare” ads.

Although I fit the match.com demographic as a single man, I don’t want their service – because of this campaign. It is demeaning to women to show them as objects by having videos starting off focusing on their breasts, up their skirts, and other parts of their body. Those on the myspace.com team who have daughters might relate to the disgust I have about this.

Please don’t think that I am preaching or moralizing here. The temptation is an effective distraction for me, and even more so for younger men (I am in my 30’s). I’m just not very “tolerant” when it comes to exploiting women in this way, and yes, this is exploitation.

Please pass this note on to your marketing/advertising team and encourage them to find sponsors that do not make money off of disrespecting women.

Thank you,
Nathan aka Ironworks Piano

More MySpace Politicians

Barack Obama has been joined on myspace by the likes of:

• Hillary
• Tommy Thompson
• John Edwards
• Rudy
• Dennis Kucinich
• Sam Brownback
• John McCain
• Bill Richardson
• Joe Biden
• Chris Dodd
• Mitt Romney

Who’s missing?

MySpace part Deux

Under the “Missing The Memo” Category

I made the mistake of “devil’s advocating” myspace as an extremely imperfect means of staying connected with friends, in a previous post. For this stance, myself and another commenter on another blog (an outstanding blog) were rather vigorously challenged for our worldly-sounding stance by the majority of that blog’s commenters (mostly like-minded prayer missionaries).

The episode ended when my myspace password was hacked by a pornographer who sent porn spam bulletins from my account to All my “friends”, including former pastors, long time worship leader heroes, some of which I had just met. Some of my heroes actually wrote me to warn me of what was happening, which was mortifying! I felt so bad!

I figured that’s what I get for advocating such a smut-friendly site, and backed off the issue. Actually I changed my stance on it from one of tolerance to basically cursing the day Myspace was born and calling it the “spawn of satan” in my meta-tag for the post.

Fast forward to yesterday, when I got my Joseph Company / IHOP newsletter, inviting me to visit their myspace page. Lo and behold, not only is there a JoCo page, but also an (official?) IHOP page, and even their emerging Forerunner ministry school/seminary has a myspace page, which is probably the first seminary to have a myspace (cool/not cool?!?).

Was I the only one trying not to pay attention to the Victoria’s Secret ads that consumed about 92% of the banner time last week? Needless to say, I didn’t get the memo.

For the record, I think the decision to venture onto turf where millions of people already are is shrewd, despite my unforgiveness toward myspace. Use what people are using, and hopefully change the system in the process – would it be so hard for the millions of myspace believers to give “Tom” some better marketing ideas for our niche community?

However one caveat: ministry myspace administrators, a word of advice – DON’T GET HACKED! Have a damage control plan in place when this happens!

…but Deliver Us from MySpace

– THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED… HERE –

I have been forced to cancel my Myspace account due to someone hacking into my account and spamming everyone – current rock heroes, former pastors, friends of up to 10 years of history – with porn spam, about 2 dozen of them.

Not very happy about this and I let “Tom”, the friendly founder of myspace, know about it as I cancelled. As great as it was to watch my list of “friends” grow, and even better to get requests from people who wanted to be my friend, it was lame to see that number go way down as people justifyably blocked me as a means of shielding themselves from the spam.

This myspace business seems to be unavoidable if you want to be connected to people, and I stuck my neck out to that end on a certain Blog frequented by fellow Prayer Addicts, many of whom questioned why anyone would subject themselves to the waste of time and soft porn ads that must be endured in order to interact with your friends on the site.

Well after being violated, it’s definitely not worth it. (Shawn, you tried to warn me, but I didn’t listen!) You can view the post and the thread in which I do a poor job of devil’s advocating why myspace might possibly be useful here.

Have you a gripe with myspace? Leave a horror story comment, or a second-hand one!