Danielle Human is a 22-year-old telephone operator. She is also a self-proclaimed Internet junkie. When she comes home to North Phoenix from working in a Tempe office, she makes a beeline to her computer to catch up on what she missed in cyberspace. She spends most of her time reading blogs.
A few months ago, while combing through blogs, Human stumbled upon the unusual music-based interactive Web site, Songs To Wear Pants To, which can be found at http://songstowearpantsto.com. Such interactive-entertainment Web sites are part of an important cultural revolution in cyberspace driven by a generation of young adults who grew up with the Internet.
Andrew Pants, 20, a third-year music composition major at York University in Toronto, Canada, created Songs to Wear Pants To in April. Internet users send e-mails to the site and Pants converts the e-mails into songs.
Human, for instance, has had two song requests -- "Tee El Eh" and "Dani Human Drops the Needle" -- posted on the Web site.
Pants posts an average of 11 updates per month. The updates consist of free songs that are composed from the e-mails sent in by the Web site visitors. Pants also sells personalized songs, averaging $45 each.
Pants says he receives upwards of 110 e-mails a week containing requests for short songs.
Pants says that a favorite selection of Songs To Wear Pants To fans is "ABCDFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ," a rap song in which none of the lyrics contain the letter 'e'.
"Half the fun is just sitting there listening to this, trying to see if the letter 'e' actually shows up," says Minnesota disc jockey Tim Lind. "You listen to the songs and they're all so catchy and they capture the essence of the e-mail no matter how bizarre it is."
Lind says he commissioned a personalized song from Pants. Lind's song, entitled "Shuffle Function Theme," is a two-minute rock ditty about sleeping in on a workday and is a theme for his radio show.
But Pants says that most songs are requested for more personal reasons.
"There was one person who wanted a song to play while stripping for her boyfriend," he says.
Before he thought of selling songs on the Internet, Pants says he had no significant source of income. Having failed to find employment in record stores, movie theaters, or bookstores, Pants says he had the idea to auction a customized song on the Internet. When the song sold for $60, Pants figured he was on to something.
Five days later, Songs To Wear Pants To was born. Pants would not specify how much he makes selling the personalized songs, but notes that his Internet song business "pays the bills."
Pants says his inspiration for the Web site comes from the other interactive entertainment Web sites. He was inspired by ExplodingDog.com, where pictures are drawn based on people's e-mail-suggested titles, and Emotion Eric.com, where the site administrator takes pictures of himself emoting to the fans' suggestions.
ASU finance student Bently Hanish, an expert in web design and the Internet, sees Songs To Wear Pants To as part of a growing trend on the Internet -- interactive entertainment Web sites.
"There's a whole cultural revolution that's going on in the Internet," says Hanish.
Hanish says the revolution is due to the fact that the first generation to be raised on the Internet is now creating Internet content through blogs and interactive Web sites.
"It's definitely a youth movement. This is a trend that is being carried by people as young as 16," he says "They grew up with the Internet and have integrated it into their social lives, making it a means of expression"
People like Danielle Human, who defends her Internet fixation, pointing out that she has met most of her friends in the Valley through the Internet. She said that she sees the Internet as a supplement for real life, not a replacement.
"Anybody who doesn't spend much time on the Internet just thinks of all Internet people and all Internet sites as being some sort of creepy, anti-social thing that you do instead of real life," Human said.
"It's still social, it's just a different kind of social."
Reach the reporter at brent.selmins@asu.edu.
