“I have a feeling I’ve seen this before,” Shakira captioned her post
Credit: Shakira/instagram
NEED TO KNOW
- Shakira shared a nostalgic meme seemingly referencing MySpace’s planned reboot
- MySpace co-owners Chris and Tim Vanderhook opened up about their intention to relaunch the site
- A new documentary explores MySpace’s history and its cultural impact before Facebook and Instagram dominated social media
Shakira is joining in on the nostalgic fun.
On Tuesday, Aug. 3, soon after MySpace announced plans to bring the social networking site back, the “Whenever, Wherever” singer, 49, seemingly voiced support for the reboot.
“I have a feeling I’ve seen this before,” she captioned an Instagram photo of herself sitting at a desk, adding, “#letscreatetogether.”
Credit: Shakira/instagram
Her photo was almost identical to one taken decades earlier that showed her in the same pose, seated at a desk as she typed at a computer and smiled for the camera. The photo has since become a nostalgic meme. One Instagram page captioned the photo “Https don’t lie,” a playful take on her 2005 hit “Hips Don’t Lie.”
The original photo was reportedly taken in 1997 at the newsroom facilities of the newspaper El Heraldo in Barranquilla, Colombia, near the beginning of Shakira’s rise to fame.
While MySpace didn’t launch until Aug. 1, 2003, many memes have spawned of the singer arranging her “Top 8,” customizing her profile song, checking messages, or other fun features specific to the popular site.
“Love, thanks for updating the meme 🫶🐺,” one fan commented. Another wrote, “HAHAHAHA THE BEST MEME OF ALL TIME.”
Brothers Chris Vanderhook and Tim Vanderhook are the current owners of MySpace after acquiring it from News Corp in 2011. They appear in filmmaker Tommy Avallone’s new documentary, Myspace, which debuted at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in Toronto on April 27.
“We heard that News Corp was going to sell it and we started to strategize how we got in there, because they weren’t calling us and they did not want to let us in. We knew we had to have a different angle to get their attention,” Chris explained in the documentary.
“For us, it was all about the artist community that was the heartbeat that we saw, that we wanted to resuscitate,” Tim added.
Credit: Martin Keene/PA Images via Getty
Elsewhere in the documentary, the siblings shared that they became the fifth owners of MySpace after the ones before them tried unsuccessfully to bring back the social site that dominated the internet a year before Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok were launched.
Myspace co-founder Aber Whitcomb, who is also featured in the documentary, opened up on why he thinks MySpace had a huge initial impact.
“With Myspace, they may have spent that time on Myspace — they may have spent a couple of hours on there, but they were usually learning about music or actually socializing,” Whitcomb said.
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“It wasn’t the whole FOMO aspect of life,” he continued. “And I think that that’s really the primary negative. And that’s what’s making people feel poorly and giving some people lower self-esteem on some of the current social media sites.”
Chris also confirmed that he and his brother still had plans for the social networking site that united generations of fans.
“We still own Myspace. We are stewards of the Myspace brand at this point, and we are going to relaunch Myspace,” he said. “We’re just waiting for the right time to do it. And if that one doesn’t work, we’ll do it again.”
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