I first fell into online social networking in July 2007 with a Meridian 360º MySpace profile.

A lot of newspapers were connecting some of their sections not only to their own Web sites, but to these more laid back profiles for readers, fans, and people with the same interests.

There’s 534 friends on that space, about half of them bands from all over the world who have found the space.

I keep it updated with some of the news we’ve had most every week in our arts and entertainment section, as well as a concert calendar and references to some of the best current music, movies, etc.

In January my wife Leigh decided she would start a MySpace profile ’cause “she wanted to see what I was up to.” We’ve always had a trusting relationship, like that.

In April I started my own MySpace profile to show my art and express personal views on things.

There are 333 friends there. About half of them are between the ages of 18 and 40, the other half are over 40.

Now, you have to realize not everybody uses their real age on these things. The legendary stripper Tempest Storm is a MySpace friend, and she really is 80 like it says on her profile, but I also have friends who are very young who have an age of 99 posted on their space. And some people who claim to be under 30, definitely are not.

Leigh seems to think I have some unusual friends, just because so many of them are artists and witches, or both, and I play this game where I’m now a Level 27 Vampire with a clan of 54 goth-like chicks to back me up … big deal.

My vampire name is Christopher Lee, like the actor who played Dracula in so many of those Hammer film productions in the 1950s-1970s. Hammer horror movies had the best, reddest blood and the most buxom lady vampires, so don’t try to tell me this has nothing to do with reality.

Now this month I joined Facebook after I’d run into a guy recently in Birmingham, Ala., affiliated with the Southern Newspaper Professionals Association, who went to the same high school as me. He’s a few years older, but we knew a lot of the same people. He was new to Facebook and said he’d found a few people we used to hang out with there.

They call it Facebook because you can still put your foot in your mouth while typing instead of talking. I found a classmate I hadn’t seen in 25 years, one of my old partners in crime, you know? I wrote on his wall: “Great to see you again, how the Hell are you?”

Then he writes back he’s fine, and mentions he’s a Baptist minister up in Maine now.

It’s fun to get requests from the women who don’t include their maiden names, so you have to hunt for pictures of them or some reference to their past that will let you know who they were in a previous lifetime. Then you figure it out … “Oh yeah, that’s the girl that had really big ankles. She used to sit in front of me in Spanish class!”

And then, it’s amazing that some people really don’t ever change. You don’t usually find this posted on their profile, but you can figure it out … “Still stoned and living with my parents” would be a good status for some of them.

I liked getting this response: “Steve, it’s so good to know you’re still alive! What have you been up to since 1982 (in three sentences or less)? BTW (that means by the way) I never knew you were gay!”

What!? Huh!?

I guess my old friend saw from my Facebook profile that I’m a member of the group called One Million Strong for Marriage Equality. With more than 58,000 members, I hardly think I’m the only heterosexual who is a member. I’m also a member of the Everything I Need to Know I Learned From David Sedaris group. It has a little over 2,000 members and I might very well be the only non-gay member there, I just don’t know, don’t care.

But that’s the great thing about Facebook and all these online social networking sites. If someone is too stupid, or ever gets out of line, all you have to do is pull the plug. Delete them and never look back … no fuss, no mess.

I never was big on attending reunions, and that’s an advantage with Facebook, too. When a jerk from the past requests your friendship, you simply click “deny.” No need to pretend to have any interest in them, like when you’re face-to-face.

Now social science researchers are looking into this whole networking thing pretty seriously, along with its impact on society. It’ll be interesting to see how damaging they think it is. In the meantime I’ll keep in touch with old friends and new ones I’ve never even met in person, and I’ll work on pretending about the things that really matter, like climbing the vampire ladder of success with my clan members: Wolfdragon; October Moon; Bloodthirstymaniac; Nibbles; Razorblade Kisses and many more.



Steve Gillespie is managing editor of The Meridian Star. E-mail him at

sgillespie@themeridianstar.com.