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256 Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko Itoto both watch the process of profile creation, sometimes through thecourse of several weeks or months, and also discuss the profile-creationprocess with teenagers, many of whom created profiles on MySpace. Theseobservations provide a window onto how youth engage with profilecreation as a form of creative production embedded in their everydaysocial relations.Perkel (2008) describes the importance of copying and pasting code inthe process of MySpace profile creation, a practice in which youth willappropriate media and code from other sites to create their individualprofiles. He characterizes MySpace profile creation as a process of “copyand paste” literacy, in which youth appropriate media and code fromother sites to create their individual profiles. Although this form of creativeproduction may appear purely derivative, young people see their profilesas expressions of their personal identities. Some youth described howone of the main draws of MySpace was not just that this was the site thattheir friends were already using, but that the site seemed to allow a greatdeal more customization than other sites. Carlos, a seventeen-year-oldLatino high-school senior from a low-income neighborhood in northernCalifornia, for example, described how his cousins sold him on thesite because it was a site where he could put up “all your pictures, changethe background, and customize it and do all that.” This chance to notjust go online and be social but also to make something excited Jacob,a seventeen-year-old African-American high-school senior, who noted,“It was tight. I was like—this is real. It’s the only website where youcan actually come up with your own stuff” (Perkel, MySpace ProfileProduction).This ability to customize gives youth freedom in defining layout, media,colors, music, and the like, but this also involves a certain amount oftechnical complexity. For most of the cases that we documented, at leastone other person was almost always directly involved in creating kids’profiles. When asked about this, common responses were that a sibling, acousin, or a friend showed them how to do it. In their research, JuddAntin, Christo Sims, and Dan Perkel (The Social Dynamics of MediaProduction) watched in one after-school program as people would call outasking for help and others would come around doing it for them (literallytaking the mouse and pushing the buttons) or guiding them through theprocess. In an interview at a different site, Carlos told Perkel that he had