Huh. So she is an even bigger idiot than I thought. I’m still not going to interfere because, if her prospective employer finds her semi-literate Myspace page and decides not to hire her, I think that’s fair play. Also, I don’t know her at all. I might mention it to her boyfriend, though I don’t really want to get into it with him either because I’m afraid I won’t be able to hide my overall impression of her if I get into a big convo with him about it.
I’m assuming that your friend has seen her myspace page. If he referred you to it to “see what she’s like”, then *he * must feel it’s an accurate representation of her personality. And he’s apparently okay with that. Whether that’s because he sees it in a different light due to actually knowing her, *or * because he’s into shallow dingbats, is the question. And either way, in my experience, it’s best to just smile, nod, and say “s/he seems nice” when asked your opinion of your friends’ love interests.
Rubystreak, how do you seem to get into these situations where you have to warn your friends about the person they’re dating not being good for them? First there was your friend who’s dating the man who was apparently lying about being a spy. Now there’s your friend who’s dating a prospective teacher with little grasp of grammar or spelling. Perhaps it’s not worth your time to worry about such things. The woman in the other thread might be in some trouble from that lying guy, so there’s some excuse for interfering in that case. The guy in this thread is in no danger except for being disappointed in the woman he’s dating. Maybe it’s better to back off and let your friends make their own mistakes.
Hey, I don’t know if this girl isn’t good for him. She might be a perfectly nice girl for all I know. Her Myspace page is annoying as fuck, which is the sum of what I know about her, plus the fact that he really likes her. I’m going to trust that she is at least a good person, if linguistically impaired.
Yeah, maybe too many people I know have terrible dating lives. But if the SDMB is any evidence, the world is full of those people, so it’s no surprise that I know several of them, is it?
Back off? I have said nothing to him except that I’m happy for him. I’ve avoided further conversation with him about the topic and definitely have not addressed my concerns about her Myspace page, because really, I don’t give a crap if she can’t spell, though on a more theoretical level, it bugs me when my fellow teachers are morons. If I ever meet her, it’ll be interesting to see how close her Myspace page comes to her reality, and was wondering if Dopers had any insight into that. Not asking for personal advice or anything.
The deal with the lawsuit was that someone saw the photo on Ms. Snyder’s MySpace page and questioned her professionalism despite her earning high grades throughout her college career. She wasn’t allowed to complete her student teaching because of the photo.
My point is that there are parents out there who make it a point to Google their kids’ teachers to find out more about them. Seeing a page with questionable photos and bad grammar would raise red flags for some of them. The lawsuit I linked to was simply an example of someone who acted on the basis of a MySpace page.
Robin
The case of the lawsuit seems unfair. If I were friends with this girl, I’d tell her about this, since she discusses her impending certification right on the Myspace page. Since I don’t know her, I think it’d be creepy of me to tell her anything. I could tell her boyfriend, but I don’t really want to get involved. Kinda not my problem, and Wendell seems to think I need to back off, so… 
I think you’re jumping the gun Ruby. MySpace makes idiots out of everyone. One of my friends (and the smartest person I ever met before I met my wife) has an annoying MySpace page full of fancy graphics, bad music and way too many pictures (it bogs down every PC I try to view it with).
As for the “bad music,” isn’t it more likely just music that’s not to your taste?
And as for the spelling, some people can’t spell very well if they don’t have the Spell Check net hanging below their keyboard. It’s just the way some people are wired and when they read back over what they’ve written, their mind fills in the correct spelling. By George, they think they’ve got it.
And for what it’s worth, the best teachers I had in college couldn’t spell for shit.
I’d definitely put your biases aside and meet this girl before you think less of her.
This person may be bright, but does he have questionable taste? What is with the urge to crap up your Myspace page? Maybe I just don’t get Myspace, that could be.
Oh, very likely. I also just find it reflexively annoying when people have music on their Myspace page at all, so again, we come back to my Myspace issues.
Normally, I’d agree with you here. One of my best friends is a highly intelligent person who cannot spell worth a damn. However, she is not going into elementary education, so it doesn’t matter much. I guess I feel strongly that teachers who have to teach English should be able to spell and punctuate. This girl is advertising that she’s going to teach elem. ed, so it makes it especially bothersome that her page reads like it was written by a teenager.
I’ll try not to mock her about spending $500/month on TransAm payments when she can’t make her rent every month. LOL.
According to my wife, he has better taste than me in a lot of things. I really think it’s just the MySpace mentality infecting people’s brains. It’s like a virus. A virus on computers! A computer virus! Sorry…
And I’ve never come across a MySpace page without music, so I guess I’m a little lost on your objection to her music choice. What was the song by the way?
The first one was by Chevelle, and now she has one by Three Days Grace. Both are that annoying radio rock crap that I hate ala Nickelback, Linkin Park, etc. YMMV, and probably does. That music feature is the single most annoying one of Myspace. I despise it. You could have Van Morrison on there and it would still piss me off. So yeah, again, she just hit some of my buttons incidentally here, which is probably as much about me as it is about her.
I actually really like Chevelle. They seemed more inspired by the mid-90s rock of my teen years than other similar bands.
Although I agree with you about Three Days Grace, I can’t stand them.
I’ve had a page for years and never had music. Most of my friends (who are on Myspace) do not have music either.
I agree - I hate pages that have music… they are lame and annoying.
For the 1,000th time: for those of you complaining about music on MySpace, you can go into your personal settings and set it so when you go to a page, music will NOT automatically start. Voila! Problem solved.
My Myspace is certainly over the top- it’s all pink flamingos of silliness. I’ve got obnoxious rap music. Hell, I openly flaunt my love of celebrity gossip. All-in-all, I’m a 21 year old girl with a 21 year old girl’s MySpace. The flamingo layout may be a little hard core, but everyone has said that it’s so me (which, frankly, I’ve to decide whether or not that’s a good thing!).
I’ve got two photo albums: one that is open and one that only my friends can see. Even the ‘private’ one doesn’t really have anything particularly scandalous, mostly either pictures where I look slightly more slutty or pictures of my friends’ kids (nice combo I’ve got there, right?) that the world doesn’t necessarily need access to.
Anywho (and this is where I get to the OP), I usually don’t add people unless I know them (so, if anyone is so inclined to ever add me, just let me know you’re from the Dope). I do also look at the pages of people that want to add me and if there are spelling or grammar errors (HUGE ones), I usually wont add them. If they have a pot leaf next to a picture of some chick’s ass, I wont add them.
So, I certainly do judge people on their profiles, but I would say give the girl a chance until you’ve actually met her. After all, she’s not just some random person on the internet. Plus, hell, I’m sure some folks would look at my pink flamingo layout and think of me as an idiot. In reality, there are a million better reasons to think I’m an idiot than that 
.
I just did that with mine, and it didn’t work. Friends’ pages are still playing music, as loud and obnoxious as ever. What am I doing wrong?
You know, I’m not sure. Did you uncheck the boxes and click “Save All Changes”? Mine doesn’t play when I go to anyone else’s or even mine.
The lousy grammar is really bad if she’s going to be a teacher. And I try to curb the use of LOL to situations where I’m IMing with someone who I’m pretty certain doesn’t get me.
Other than that, I think your friend digs this kind of chick. Oh well…it takes all kinds.
This may be the thousandth time you’ve said it, but it’s the first time I’ve been aware of it. I did what you said and it still plays the music, though. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I did Save Changes, and the box about automatically playing music is definitely not clicked. 
Why pink flamingos? Is it a John Waters reference? Are you really into pink flamingos ornithologically? Is there a statement being made? Maybe not, to you, and your friends get it, but someone who doesn’t know you and was seeing that page as their first impression of you might think you’re trying to be cheesy on purpose. Not trying to insult you, as my impression of it was of deliberate camp… nothing warrants a send up more than Myspace, though I did think of Divine, which might not have been your intention.
Despite my retinas retaining a hue of pink after looking at your page, I can tell that you are obviously a clever person with a mastery of your mother tongue. I can forgive a lot of stylistic differences if I think the person in question is intelligent and articulate.
Also, what is with people who communicate with their closest friends and family members via Myspace comments? This girl has messages to and from her brother making dinner dates, telling friends about her last break up (this is from months ago, before she started dating my friend but… cheesy!) I just don’t get it. Is e-mail out of style? Or the phone?
She pretty much is just some random person on the internet to me right now. I hardly ever see this friend in real life, so unless this girl really works out for him, I’ll likely never meet her. Seeing her page just made me ponder the possible disparities and correlations between people’s representations of themselves on such places and how they actually are. I sorta hope I do get to meet her to see if I’m way off here or what.
Myspace gave everybody the chance to design their own web page, and most people stepped up and proved that they have no design sensibility whatsoever.
Forget music. The worse part of Myspace is the godawful non-scrolling picture-laden animated backgrounds. It’s fucking impossible to read anything with all that crap in the background.
This brings up the idea of an interesting corollary question: How much can you tell about somebody based on how judgmental they are about trivial minutiae?
the second