MySpace annoyances (and how to remove them)

If you want to block MySpace styles and not skim this whole post, click here. You'll need Greasemonkey and Firefox. See how much I love you all, saving you the pain of reading my rant?

So I had this conversation last week with this girl, who for all intensive purposes, doesn't really think about anything but herself, and not in that cute narcissistic way that is the foil for my legendary arrogance.

Basically, her point of view is that, I shouldn't be able to remove the styles from her MySpace page in my browser, because she spent so much time copy/pasting those "codes" (a very, very simplistic use of CSS sneaked into style tags in html...their use is really an injection attack per se, because they get onto the pages via a form field designed for simple text) into her profile. Somehow, I should be forced to view her page as she intended.

Here's the basic conversation:

• Me - Ohh...yeah, I don't see any of that crap on [your MySpace]...I use this cool greasemonkey script
• Her - WHAT? You can't do that...I worked really hard on my page.
• Me - Good for you. Your cluttered page annoys me, so I let my browser re-write it on the fly and remove all your junk from it so I can see the information I want.
  
• Her - But...my codes hide things I don't want everyone seeing...like my friends list and my pic comments.
• Me - If you don't want them being seen, don't have a MySpace account.
• Her - Not having a MySpace is social suicide.
• Me - Then accept the ramifications of your actions.
• Her - I don't care...it's wrong to mess with my page. Don't go to it if you don't like it.
• Me - Look. [redacted]. Do you think it's ok to block advertisements in a web page?
• Her - Of course not. The site owner put them there, you should respect their work. Besides, I might want to buy something in the ad.
  

(Now, if she had said something about the ads subsidizing free content, I would have a shred of respect for her point of view...but read on...)

• Me - What about the ads that make you look at a 18 inch cock trying to pitch big-dick-pills at you on sites that have nothing to do with dicks, pills, or even things that happen to be 18 inches long, like a short katana?
• Her - Well that's wrong.
• Me - My point exactly. All that sparkly shit on your page is like a gigantic 18 inch dick in my browser window. I don't want to see it.
• Her - It's not the same!
• Me - Yeah...I'm taking you off my friends list.
• Her - [silent]
  

Here is where I stopped arguing with her. There just wasn't any point. Anyway, it inspired me to spread some knowledge; so here's how to make MySpace bearable again.

1. Download Firefox. Get the latest version. If you're already using it, skip this step. If you aren't sure, you're probably using another browser. If you want to kill yourself constantly, you're probably using Internet Explorer.
2. Get the Greasemonkey add-on and install it.
3. Get this Greasemonkey script and install it.

That's all there is to it. When installed, this script will add a little tab at the top-right corner of the browser that will let you turn off the MySpace style, and see the page as Tom (not me, MySpace Tom) intended.