Before TikTok algorithms and Instagram Stories, there was MySpace. It was the digital Wild West—a place where you could slap glittery GIFs on your profile, autoplay whatever Panic! at the Disco song you wanted people to associate with your soul, and design an HTML Frankenstein of teenage angst. But the crown jewel of MySpace wasn’t your profile song or your “About Me” section; it was your Top 8—an eight-slot ranking system that turned your friendships into a blood sport.
The Top 8 was revolutionary in its simplicity. At first glance, it seemed harmless—just a neat little feature where you could highlight your closest friends. But this wasn’t some warm, fuzzy kumbaya of social networking. No, this was war. The Top 8 forced you to pick favorites and made sure everyone could see exactly where they stood in your personal hierarchy of relevance. It was like ranking your wedding party every day, for fun, and then posting the results on a billboard.
What made it truly sinister, though, was the transparency. Everyone on MySpace could see if they were on your list, and where they ranked. This wasn’t some Instagram “Close Friends” situation where you could quietly adjust your settings without consequence. If someone dropped from #3 to #6, it was obvious. If you got bumped off entirely, it was social Siberia. People didn’t even need to explain their choices because the change itself was the message: You’ve been downgraded.
Naturally, this led to chaos. Arguments about the Top 8 weren’t just common—they were inevitable. Couples fought about it, best friends questioned their bond, and casual acquaintances got big heads when they saw themselves promoted. “Why is Sarah your #1 now? I thought we were best friends.” “Why is your boyfriend not in your Top 8? Are you two fighting?” “Why is Tom still there? Are you really that lazy?”
And yes, Tom. The original MySpace friend. The ultimate social buffer. Slotting Tom into your Top 8 was like playing a diplomatic immunity card. You could push your seventh-best friend to #9 without igniting a feud, just by saying, Oh, Tom’s always been there. You know, the founder. Gotta show respect. But deep down, even Tom knew he was just a human shield for your passive aggression.
The Top 8 didn’t just disrupt relationships; it gamified them. Suddenly, maintaining friendships wasn’t about shared experiences or mutual understanding—it was about optics. Who would boost your social clout by being in your Top 8? Who would lose their mind if they got bumped? Who deserved the honor of #1, and who wouldn’t notice if they quietly slid to #5? You weren’t just curating a list; you were managing a social PR campaign.
In hindsight, the Top 8 was the canary in the coal mine for everything we’d eventually hate about social media. It made us hyperaware of where we stood in the social pecking order. It trained us to measure friendships in likes, follows, and DMs long before those metrics existed. It wasn’t the cause of our collective insecurity, but it gave it a stage and a microphone.
By the time Facebook arrived, promising a cleaner, friendlier version of social networking, the Top 8 was already a relic of the early internet—a digital Darwinian experiment that exposed just how fragile and competitive our relationships could be. Facebook let us hide our rankings, pretend we liked everyone equally, and quietly unfollow people without them ever knowing. In other words, it sanitized the chaos.
But here’s the thing: I kind of miss the Top 8. For all its drama, it was honest. Brutally honest. It laid bare the petty, political underbelly of friendships in a way that no other platform has dared to do since. It was a digital Hunger Games, sure, but at least you knew who was winning—and who was losing. And maybe that’s why it’s better left in the past. Because deep down, none of us really want to know where we rank.
We just want to assume we’re #1.