The Salute

Every so often I go on a cleansing binge, which usually consists of tossing out old junk. It's a habit one gets into after living under tables. Yep, I lived under a table for a while back in my early 20s. Long story.

Organize and purge. That's the creed as of late. The music collection, thanks to TuneUp, is now nice and tidy. Delicious Library has allowed be to digitally catalog all of our books and DVDs. The laptop has gotten a lot of long overdue maintenance. Order, post-move, is starting to be restored.

I also went around and tried to clean up my online presence. From email opt-outs to account cancelations I've been doing all that I can to nix all the clutter. For the most part, it's been a simple process. Enter MySpace.

I swore up and down that I'd never join MySpace, but quickly caved to peer pressure. I joined up years ago, back when it was trendy thing to do. For the most part I've never been much for social networking sites -- I try, but I'm never very active on them.

MySpace lasted a couple of weeks. Then it just sat, and friends started to give my crap about how I never logged in.

Now everybody's jumped ship over to Facebook and Twitter. I've yet to join Twitter, but I'm actually doing OK with Facebook. MySpace is just a lost cause, so I figured I'd cancel it. Easy enough, right? Yeah, no.

While trying to cancel, I learned about the stupidest validation process ever: the "Salute." Ever heard of this crap? The normal cancelation process is, in theory, pretty straightforward. You click the cancel button, verify that yes, you do want to cancel (Yes, I'm really sure -- they try to talk you out if it repeatably) then they shoot you a confirmation email that you have to respond to. MySpace won't send me emails for some reason, so I can't complete the process. Switch email addresses, you say? Again, you have to confirm this with your old address.

This leaves me with option number three, the MySpace Salute.

The requirements for this "important matter of privacy and security":

1. Take a picture of yourself holding a piece of paper with MySpace information on it.
2. The "salute" must be hand-written.
3. They have to see your hands holding the handwritten piece of paper.
4. You must send it through the internal contact system (which is incredibly hard to find).

I've never had to jump through such elaborate hoops to do anything online. My online banking is easier than this. Yeah, I know MySpace is geared toward high school kids, but seriously? Is there really a need for all this? Just close the damn thing and be done with it.

After finishing the draconian process I had a thought about a second salute, but I don't think they'd find it as entertaining as I do.