#makeoutclub

makeoutclub was an early online social networking website, with the first beta version being launched in 1999. It seemed to find its home in the alternative/indie online scene, and was famous for its homepage allowing you to browse through "girls" or "boys" profiles - which ultimately lead to this site being heavily linked to hookup and dating culture.

The first definition on urban dictionary for this website was posted 8th April 2003; A website where desperate, shy emo boys can find large numbers of insecure loose scenester punk and emo girls to easily hook up with. abbreviated "moc". "I IMed 20 girls off of makeoutclub and hung out with 10 of them."

Looking at the MOC livejournal community - it went from having one post per month, every few months from its inception in 1999, to July 2001, having 5, 10 posts daily. By December 2001, the journal community was posting 20 times a day.

Taking into consideration how the Internet Archive Wayback Machine capture density seems to correlate with a websites popularity, the captures for MOC peaked in 2004, and again in 2008. The first capture was in August 2000.

Captured on the MOC website, mentions in the news and zines;

(Muffy Zine 2001^)

(The Diamondback Campus paper, Feb 8th, 2001^)

(Mean Street, CA^)

(The Mercury, Portland, 2nd Week July^)

I stumbled upon this angelfire page with a mention of MOC; "I walked past Heath, the guitarist for Midtown and he knows me from other shows and I said hi. He then said "hey I saw you on makeoutclub". I almost died. I found it very funny."

a quote from Frank Iero seems to capture the same energy, "I remember super early on going to a Makeoutclub party in Boston, and I think we played a show for that, and for me it was like, “Oh, this is for people that just want to fuck each other.” (x)

does the embarrassment come from being caught on a site that has been assimilated to hook-up culture? or how the website wears that fact on its sleeve?

MOC 2002 -

the site also featured a webcam page; [captured 2001]

link to four videos I was able to download from the archived MOC Film page

makeoutclub closed in 2016, but its reputation is carried down by mentions in livejournals, angelfire pages, devinatart post descriptions.

Posted March 30th, 2020

Frank’s quotes:

1. The good thing about Myspace is it was super user-friendly. It seemed foolproof, and I was definitely a fool when it came to that kind of stuff. But I remember the things right before all of that. I remember super early on going to a Makeoutclub party in Boston, and I think we played a show for that, and for me it was like, “Oh, this is for people that just want to fuck each other.”

2. I think the first time we really recognized the power of social media was right around the time Thursday was being signed, Midtown was signed. Basically, all our friends from Jersey and Long Island were getting record deals. And My Chem had really just started. We recorded one song because that’s all we had the money for at that point. And we put it up on Myspace immediately and were like, “Hey listen, we’re gonna do a record soon once we get the money. But this is like a sneak preview kind of thing,” and once we put that up, there were literally major label A&Rs calling the practice studio. How they got the number for the practice studio, I have no idea.

3. I never, ever, in my life had a conversation with another band like, “Oh, what’s your social media presence like?” You’d sound like a fuckin’ narc.

4. That’s the thing, every band that put their songs up on Myspace didn’t end up doing great career things. So, it didn’t happen for everyone.