Aloha! and goodbye to xanga!

And just as passengers arrive at a Hawaii airport to be wreathed in leis and warm smiles, Progressiveu.org welcomes me too with a friendly and informative email. This isn't the first time I've written a blog entry; I've had a xanga and occasionally post some random squibble on facebook or myspace. But even then I spent less time on writing posts and more time finding new html and layouts and applications to accessorize my profiles. Neither did my friends. To us, blogs were another form of decoration: we used blogs to make ourselves seem more beautiful, deep, poetic, mysterious. And though the blog might seem like a passport to one's soul, it's just as superficial and false as the background behind it.

I signed up for xanga later than the rest of my friends, and after I'd set up a basic domain I went exploring on my friends' xangas. Except for the profile picture, I would have no idea that these xangas were written by my friends. Some xangas were decked out in bright colors and patterns with cute mouse icons that changed the text font when hovering above certain, emphatic words. Other posts were littered with essay-like posts. Every other week, I'd tour the xanga posts after updating what I had done that day or week. I had no significant events other than going to school or getting good grades and I had expected my friends to post similar reports; I couldn't be more wrong. My friends were writing about dreams, family issues, fights, gossip - they were revealing lives that I (their friend!) had never known to exist. And these reports were all available to everyone on the world wide web.

So I followed suit: I dressed up my boring xanga posts with some drama. First I indulged in writing odes to my friends, and though I received some warm responses and compliments, the shtick soon ran dry. Then, when my friends stopped commenting "Thanks!" and "You're so sweet!" to my odes, I felt sad and soon tapped into a darker side. I started to write mock suicide-notes laced heavily with depression, and minutes after, comments concerning my health ("Are you ok?" and "DON'T KILL YOURSELF") soon flooded my domain. I often compared how many comments I got with how many comments others had; I also learned that I couldn't get comments without commenting others. Somehow, xanga had morphed into a sick competition-reciprocity seen only in the popularity contests at school. While some kids were playing online games or chatting with their friends to avoid the pressures of school, Xanga trapped me in the school environment in which only queen bees and plastics ruled.

I'm glad i've deleted my xanga. I was sick of writing posts just to garner attention and writing sycophantish comments to others just to get a "Thank you!" or a "You're so sweet!" response comment. But then again, it's hard to escape school in the real world, and even harder in the world wide web.