I Rebuilt
MySpace (Kind Of)
A love letter to the internet of 2006. Complete with auto-playing music, Top 8 friends, and questionable CSS choices.
The Story
I Miss MySpace. There, I Said It.
Look, I know we're supposed to have moved on. Facebook won, Instagram happened, TikTok exists now. But somewhere in the transition from "thanks for the add!" to "please accept our cookie policy," we lost something beautiful.
MySpace was weird. It was personal. You could make your profile page look like a GeoCities fever dream, and that was the whole point. Your page was yours. You picked the song that auto-played when someone visited. You ranked your friends in order of importance. You learned CSS just to make your background sparkle.
So I built BriSpace — a MySpace clone that used to live at brianstever.com. It started as a joke, a weekend project to see if I could recreate that early-internet magic. Turns out, I couldn't stop adding features. Top 8? Obviously. Auto-playing music? Absolutely. Dark mode? Okay, that one's new — even nostalgia has to be accessible.
Now brianstever.com redirects here, but BriSpace lives on as a reminder that the internet used to be fun. No algorithms, no engagement metrics, just pure self-expression and really bad color choices.
The Vibes
Peak Internet Aesthetics
Live Preview
A Taste of the Experience
Here's what it actually looks like. Click to enlarge and bask in the nostalgia. Yes, that's a real auto-playing music player. No, I'm not sorry.
Why This Exists
- Because I genuinely miss the old internet
- To prove I can still write CSS that sparkles
- As a playground to experiment with new React patterns
- Nobody can stop me
Recent Updates
- Dark Mode — Because I'm not a monster
- Music Player — With actual play/pause controls this time
- More Sparkles — Obviously
Features
Everything You Remember (And Miss)
Top 8 Friends
The feature that destroyed friendships. Rank your besties for everyone to see.
Auto-Playing Music
Assault visitors with your questionable taste in music the moment they load your page.
Custom CSS
Neon colors, sparkly backgrounds, cursor trails — if it blinks, it's allowed.
Dark Mode
Because even nostalgia needs to be easy on the eyes at 2 AM.
Comment Wall
Leave comments on your friends' profiles. PC4PC? Thanks for the add!
Photo Albums
Mirror selfies and concert pics with that classic 2006 quality.
Under the Hood
Modern Tech, Retro Vibes
Here's the thing about building a nostalgia project: you can use modern tools to make the old stuff actually work well. No more waiting 30 seconds for a profile to load over dial-up. BriSpace is built with Next.js and React, styled with Tailwind CSS, and deploys instantly on Vercel.
The irony isn't lost on me — using cutting-edge web technology to recreate something from 2006. But that's kind of the point. What if MySpace had survived? What if it evolved? BriSpace is my answer to that question, one sparkly gradient at a time.
The Point
Why I Keep Tinkering With This
BriSpace isn't trying to be a real product. It's not going to "disrupt" anything. It's just... fun. And sometimes that's enough.
I come back to this project whenever I want to experiment with something new — a CSS technique, a React pattern, an animation library. It's low stakes. Nobody's production environment depends on BriSpace working. If I break something, the only consequence is that my fake MySpace profile looks weird for a bit.
Plus, every time I work on it, I get to relive a little bit of that 2006 energy. Before social media became a job. Before engagement metrics. When your online presence was just a page you made because you wanted to, not because you had to.
Thanks for the add. ✌️
Brian Stever