‘Still Your Friend’: Tom From MySpace Reveals He Is Waiting Online For Millennials To Come Back

LOS ANGELES – Tom Anderson, the smiling co-founder of MySpace who automatically became everyone's first friend in 2005, confirmed in a brief profile update that he is "pretty much everybody's last one too" after millions of exhausted millennials began quietly returning to his page during 1:00 a.m. life audits.

Former users say the nostalgia started as a joke, then curdled into something more sincere once they realized Tom remains the only social media figure who never tried to sell them crypto, ruin their uncle, livestream an apology, or make them watch a seven-part reel about cortisol.

"He just wanted me to rank my favorite Taking Back Sunday songs and maybe learn basic HTML," said 36-year-old Melissa Grant, staring at Tom's original profile picture from her apartment in Phoenix. "Now every app wants me to optimize my side hustle while an influencer explains why oat milk is destroying testosterone."

Grant reportedly spent nearly three hours on a fan recreation of MySpace listening to Dashboard Confessional and crying over a glitter GIF that read RAWR XD.

Friends say she has not looked directly into another person's eyes since.

Internet historians now describe Tom as the final harmless man of the pre-collapse web, a guy who taught America how to upload blurry party photos and then got out before every homepage became a slot machine with push notifications.

"Tom had incredible exit instincts," said NYU media professor Alicia Moreno. "He watched millions of people add HIM videos to their profiles, saw a generation learning HTML through LiveJournal injuries, and correctly decided to become a photographer before the brain poison arrived."

Unlike modern platforms, MySpace allowed users to express individuality through profile songs, unreadable layouts, and a Top 8 ranking system that destroyed friendships with the efficiency of a small claims court.

Experts say the site's primitive design accidentally prevented several later internet disasters.

"There was no infinite algorithmic feed," Moreno explained. "If somebody posted something insane, you usually knew them from marching band, youth group, or a Warped Tour parking lot. That made the shame local and easier to manage."

Former users have also noted that MySpace Tom may be the only tech founder people remember without immediately fantasizing about throwing soup at him during a keynote.

"He never made me watch an ad for a mattress company pretending to care about burnout," said 39-year-old warehouse supervisor Darren Pike. "He just sat there smiling while I embedded a HIM video and posted lyrics about razorblade kisses or whatever."

Pike said he recently tried explaining MySpace to his 14-year-old son before stopping halfway through and quietly saying, "You had to be there, buddy. The internet still had skin back then."

Tom himself has remained largely quiet for years, occasionally posting travel photography while the rest of the internet dissolved into LinkedIn hustle sermons, AI spam, and videos titled THINGS FEMINISTS DON'T WANT MEN TO EAT.

Sources close to Anderson say he knows millennials have started treating him less like a founder and more like a lighthouse they can stare at after realizing they have spent 18 years letting apps rearrange their nervous systems.

"He understands what people project onto him," said former MySpace employee Kara Lin. "For a lot of users, Tom represents a moment when logging on meant hearing a Fall Out Boy song blast out of someone's page instead of being asked to monetize their healing journey."

Lin said Tom was especially moved after seeing thousands of posts describing him as "the only friend who never disappointed them."

"He laughed at first," she said. "Then he got quiet for a while and took another picture of a mountain."

Several tech companies are already trying to capitalize on the Tom revival. Meta is reportedly testing a feature that automatically adds Tom to a user's Friends list after three consecutive nights spent searching "how to start over at 38."

TikTok has launched a nostalgia mode that replaces the For You Page with a static JPEG of a smiling man holding a dry erase board for 14 seconds before returning users to a teenager explaining seed oils in a gas station bathroom.

LinkedIn, meanwhile, announced a premium networking tier called MySpace For Adults, where unemployed marketing managers can rearrange their Top 8 former coworkers before posting about resilience.

Late one night, Tom reportedly logged into an old archival server and noticed thousands of dormant accounts active again.

Profile songs loaded slowly across the country.

Somewhere, a 37-year-old man with a mortgage and lower back pain changed his mood status to "confused."