Finding a Positive Within a Negative aka What Is Something Good That Has Come From Social Media

 I'll say it. I owe MySpace a lot. We, as a society, did Tom dirty. All he wanted to do was to connect us and give us a platform that could allow us to express ourselves and our interest to others. Think about that first MySpace page you created if you had one. I realize there are those who don't know what I am talking about, so indulge me. For those kids from 2004-2006, MySpace was everything. It was a status symbol. Facebook is the same layout for everyone. As with all social media sites like it. But not MySpace. It allowed you customize your site for those to visit. Look at what we were making:

We were teaching ourselves how to code without realizing we were doing it. Embedding music from other areas of the internet, or sharing codes with our friends to customize our sites. It was allowing us to put out hands directly in the internet and create what we wanted. The only thing that would get you in trouble is maybe the wrong picture you don't want everyone to see, or the dreaded Top 8 (ranking of your friends, or crushes, that you can change based on how you felt about them). Making or not making someone's Top 8 would dictate how the rest of your week would go.

Now Facebook was around at the same time, but again, it wasn't a public platform at the time. Either you had to go to college, and your college email had to be set up to accept Facebook. Or you had to know someone who could invite you in. Again, Facebook was for the cool kids (see previous blog where I mention cool kids). But MySpace was for the common person. I had it. My gangster cousin who dropped out of high school in the 9th grade had it. If you had the time, you were making a MySpace page. And because is wasn't as simplistic as Facebook, I didn't have to worry about my parents having it.

Speaking of parents, that is where the topic of this blog comes from. Have you ever used Social Media to do something "good"? I use good subjectively because what may be good for you may not be good for everyone. Let me explain and set the story:

My parents met in 1983. My mom was born and raised in a small, country town in South Carolina. My dad was born in Harlem, New York City. He moved with his mom to this same small town when he was 15. Before he left, he had a girlfriend about his age and when they were 14 had a son together. However, due to my dad moving away, he lost all contact with both of them. When my dad and mom got together, he told her about his son and he was trying to look for him and reach out but would always come up short. They tried together for years to find him so he could reconnect with him. Even after I, and later my little brother was born, they would still try to find him. As the years went by, he never gave up. Cut to 2007, my mom, being who she was, decided to try social media to see if we could find him. Apparently, my drop out cousin who I mentioned early posted some "not good for MySpace" things on his page and my family was gossiping about it. But my mom learned that there was a way you could search for people on MySpace. So, being curious, decided to type in his name into the search. It was at this moment that so many lives were about to change.

She calls me while I am in class but leaves a message and says look at this person and tell me who he looks like. I type it in, and this guy looks just like me, my little brother, and of course, my dad. We found him, well at least we think we do. We are not sure yet. Another cousin tries to reach out to him to say they are cousins but he doesn't believe it, rightfully so, and brushes her away. I take a more direct approach and just lay it out to him, letting him know we are brothers and who his dad is. He still doesn't believe me and even asks his mom, who tells him it isn't true. But then I start giving personal information, things he knows I shouldn't know. Then, the truth, like a hammer hits hard for him. His mom confesses that everything I am saying is not only true, but she has been lying to him his entire life. The man who raised him and his younger siblings was not his father, and in fact, my dad is his dad. Apparently, his step dad had been wanted her to tell him the truth for years but she just couldn't, mainly because she didn't know how my dad would have been now. Again with no social media back then, living in South Carolina and New York was the same as living in South Carolina and Japan. She didn't know that my dad got his life together, worked hard, and had his own family. She also didn't know that my dad had spent all of those years looking for him, not realizing with my brother going to the marines at one point, they were in the same state together. The kicker, after he and my dad finally talked, learned that they were currently 2 and half hours away from each other. This even allowed my dad to talk to her again and allowed them to reconnect after almost 30 years of not communicating. My mom and her even talked to each other.

My dad finally got to see his son again that weekend, with his family in tow to meet him as well. My brother did forgive his mom for keeping the truth from him, as well as my dad forgiving her. Turns out, they moved from Harlem to Queens, and with my dad not knowing, he was looking in the wrong place. Social media allowed my family to become bigger and fill in a missing gap that we thought we would never find. Currently, both of my brothers actually share an apartment together in South Carolina, and my dad talks to his son about once a week. And we owe all of this to MySpace. Thank you Tom.