Cyworld has changed and my heart is broken.

Cyworld, a Korean social media platform which was like the Facebook of the day back in the early to mid-2000s, has recently drastically changed its layout and now it's just so strange and unfamiliar and not what it used to be. Which I believe is pointless because nobody in Korea bothers to use Cyworld anymore; we've all moved on to Facebook and Instagram and all the American stuff.  I mean, I know changes and updates are necessary in an ever-changing and fast paced world, especially on the internet. But seriously, do they think changing the layout will attract people back when it's already nearly dead?

The reason I feel so indignant is that I'm one of the very few people who still bother to update Cyworld - sporadically, true, but regularly even so. Since 2007 I've been uploading the movie poster image of every single movie I've watched. Every single one. The album now contains hundreds of movie posters and from time to time I enjoy scrolling through the album and looking back on all the films, many of which I can't even remember. This morning I logged on to Cyworld to upload a new movie I watched yesterday, and was appalled to discover that I can't upload to a specific album anymore! The old pictures and albums are still there for me to look at, but I can't edit or add to it. Instead, everything I upload is just posted in a microblog format, like a fucking mash-up of Facebook and tumblr and Instagram. 

And my diary. There used to be a separate section where you could write diary entries, and I've been updating that for several years too. Usually, people who wrote diary entries on Cyworld wrote really stupid, cringe inducing posts that were deleted soon after. You know, things like "nobody understands me, if only you knew how I felt" without any explanation as to why... then they'd come across that post months later and have no idea what they were thinking at the time it was written. My Cyworld diary, on the other hand, was an actual diary. I wrote about events that happened that day, I commented on things that interested me, emotions I felt, family issues, secrets and weird dreams and fantasies I couldn't dare tell to even my best friend. Even my first kiss, and other secret excursions I took with a boyfriend years ago (after lying to my mother for the first time ever), is documented on that thing, the details of which I have never revealed to anyone. I would be so devastated if I couldn't continue my diary, or my movie poster album. I mean... Cyworld says that the album and diary function will be back soon, and it BETTER be, because otherwise I might go into a state of depression.

I don't even care about all the other features that might get lost forever in Cyworld, though I do miss them a bit. There was a bunch of other things about Cyworld that, when mentioned, could make people feel all nostalgic: the guestbook, the diary stickers, the "퍼가요~♡" scrap function, the background music and miniroom that could be decorated by purchasing "acorns," the obsession over how many people visited your Cyworld that day... it was definitely fun, creating a small "home" online that you could decorate and call your own, accentuating your individuality and style. I can't see why they couldn't keep all that and just simplify the design to make it more fit for modern days? Why do they have to make everything all easy? People are so against putting in that extra effort to share things online - everything has to be all ready to upload in an instant. It's a bit sad, really.

Old Cyworld layout of 이준기 (actor)