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260 Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko ItoAlthough most youth did rely on others for help in creating their profiles,we did find some youth who were able to figure things out withoutthe help of a more knowledgeable peer. For example, Federico, a seventeenyear-oldMexican American high-school senior from the East Bay area ofnorthern California (Perkel, MySpace Profile Production), stated:I was like going through websites trying to look for backgrounds and stuff. Oh, howdo I put this, and where do I put it? And how do I copy it and stuff? Because I prettymuch didn’t know nothing about computers. But then after that I was like . . . Istarted clicking buttons and looking at stuff. I’m like—okay, remember this placeand site. And then I keep messing up and it looks all weird. Then after that dayswent by and then I started learning little by little how to do it. But it was hard.What people ended up putting on their profiles was usually not the resultof planning and careful consideration, but of whatever they happened tosee while making or revisiting their profiles. In many cases, teens mayinitially work on a profile and largely leave it as is except for some minormodifications later. For instance, danah boyd (Teen Sociality in NetworkedPublics) spoke with Shean, a seventeen-year-old black male from LosAngeles, who said, “I’m not a big fan of changing my background and allthat. I would change mine probably every four months or three months.As long as I keep in touch with my friends or whatever, I don’t really careabout how it looks as long as it’s, like, there.” In some cases, boyd alsoobserved, teens created a MySpace profile as a way to relieve boredom.This approach toward tinkering and messing around is typical of theprocess through which profiles are made and modified. Some of the peoplewe interviewed talked about just putting up on their profiles material thatwas humorous. Carlos described his profile almost in terms of a collectionof images and things he had found. Pointing at the various images on thescreen, he noted: “I got Six Flags and the fat little kid. Got this dude andthat girl. Got Itchy and Scratch [from The Simpsons].” When Dan Perkel(MySpace Profile Production) asked him to describe his process of findingthings and deciding to put them on his profile, Carlos corrected him:I pretty much don’t . . . I just go to a certain website and if it looks like it has alot of funny stuff I just go through that whole page and if I find something I likeI just copy, paste it, and put it there. And I won’t save it or nothing; I’ll just keepon going through the website and copy and paste until I got anything I want. Andfrom there I just save it. And if it looks good, it looks good. If it doesn’t, I still keepit the same.