Meta’s lack of creative development continues to stretch to new levels, with the company taking more inspiration from the original social network as it seeks to prompt new forms of engagement.

As you can see in these images, posted by app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi, Instagram is currently testing a new ‘Top 3’ sticker option for Stories, which would enable people to highlight their top 3 favorite accounts, tracks, places, etc.

Which immediately reminded me of this:

Yes, for those old enough to remember, this is the notorious MySpace ‘Top 8’, which became a point of contention for many users in selecting your favorite friends to display in your top listing.

The Top 8 was a cause for much angst and argument – and now, a whole new generation will get to experience the same, when they start posting their top 3 friends on IG, and angering everyone who’s not included in the showcase.

Which should spark engagement, which is probably what Meta wants, and again – it’s interesting to see Zuck and Co. continue to mine existing and previous trends for new inspiration and options.

I mean, it’s not exactly the same, and it’s a pretty basic option. But still, you can see it leading to disputes among teen users, which will have parents recalling the days of Tom and his MySpace empire.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. And slowly, bit by bit, through songs on profiles, Top 3 displays – slowly, the best/worst elements of MySpace are gradually coming back.

Everything old is new again, even if the old stuff wasn’t that great.

No word from IG as to whether this will actually be tested, or it’s just an internal prototype at this stage.