The Death of Xanga

I remember the days when Xanga was a phenomenon, at least amongst my friends.

People who signed onto Xanga had something to say. After years and years of bottling up experiences and wisdom, people had finally found a place to (excuse the term you perverts) ejaculate their thoughts and feelings onto the page to share with others. It came at the perfect time - right when all existing webpages became stale and trite, and before the birth of myspace had occurred. Sure, there were those occasional drunken moments when people let loose on a Friday night, but this was done under an alcohol induced haze of pent up feelings and frustration with loud music thumping in the background and other loud conversations obscuring the message. Oftentimes the clarity and the eloquence of what the speaker wanted to say increased with the amount of alcohol consumed, which led to an ironic result of the speaker not remembering if anything was said at all. If anything, what was most important, the speaker's desire to be heard was not fully sated.

And then came Xanga. Xanga became an extension of peoples' personalities. You had the people who recapped daily events in a droll monotone; the abstract dreamers who pontificated about God-knows-what; the sarcastic smartasses who'd write quick one liners making fun of everyone including themselves for posting on Xanga; and the ones who actually used Xanga as it was probably meant to be used, as a place to vent and bitch and to share their innermost feelings. In other words, a place to show the world who they really were and what their place was meant to be in it.

Unfortunately, after time, people on Xanga soon discovered something disheartening. People who wrote columns in the paper were paid for a reason - writing something interesting for an extended period of time was extremely difficult. Entries became stale and disjointed, and people began to run out of things to say. They got lazy, and there was a decrease in quality and production across the board.

And then came the Xangalock. From a business standpoint, I suppose it was a great idea. In order to read someone's Xanga, you needed to log into a Xanga account. So Xangalock basically forced those without Xanga accounts to register and log in with Xanga. Not only that, but now the Xanga writer could see who was visiting their page and when they were doing it. "Not busy now are you?" crowed a friend who had "locked" his Xanga. "I can tell." And then they added Friend's List. Now, not only did you have to sign in to read your friend's page, but now you had to request to be added to a list. So now you had to sign in, request to someone that you had to be put on their Friend's List in order to read their page. I'm sure this was just a minor inconvenience for someone wanting to read their real friends' pages, but it now it created an awkward reality for those who enjoyed reading not only their friends but those people on the periphery.

How would you request that? "Uh...I'm a friend of a friend...can you add me to your Friends' List?" Now imagine that you got denied. Yes, you can now be rejected on Xanga. How stupid would that feel? When I asked someone about why they had all these options activated on Xanga, they replied "I don't feel like being stalked." YES, YOU MORON, THE GUY STALKING YOU GETS OFF KNOWING THAT YOU ATE ICE CREAM ON SATURDAY. How many people put their real name, address on their xanga? The sad reality is that most of you would probably bore the crap out of your stalker if he had to read your entries every day. Besides, if this guy really wanted to stalk you, I'm sure there are better options than reading your stupid Xanga entries.

Yes, I'm aware that this blog probably isn't that great as well. But the access here is free and open, and I don't require people to go through an awkward pain in the ass process to read my crap. I guess the real point is this - if you're going to make someone go through all that crap to read your Xanga entries, it better be something worth putting a lock on. But the sad situation is, most of you are putting a Masterlock on a dish of dogshit.