Purpose

Would you like to know why I switched blogs? The short answer is this; I'm done with writing a "public diary." I'm interested in blogging, but I want to do it right. New blog, new purpose. Now, here's the long answer.

You might have guessed it was the influx of "ur hott lolz coment me bak kthx propz" comments due to the disproportionate amount of 14-year-olds to which Xanga was playing host. That's not it.

Nor was it the fact that their RSS support was terrible, or that it took them until November 2005 (!) to add something as simple as titles to their posting software. No, features weren't really the culprit either, although it's a good reason to jump ship, because Blogger is a very developer-friendly service, while maintaining simplicity.

My switch wasn't even motivated by Xanga's constant attempts to get me to pay for their craptastic services. I sure got tired of them saying "wow, geez, you haven't paid us yet," but I learned to deal with the unbearable guilt of not paying for something advertised as a free service.

Sadly, the real reason I switched was because of that god-awful buzzword, community. I'm tired of having a personal journal, and I'm tired of reading other people's journals. Sure, it's great to keep in touch with people, but I'm interested in prosumerism. Let's keep up with each other in The Age of The Remix. I want to know what you're up to. I also want "what you're up to" to be something worthwhile. I think that spark of creation, the very fire of imagination and innovation, is within all of us, and I see so many sparks going out, so many fires being extinguished. It's time to change. It's time to incite change.

This may be the only post that I'll be able to get my Xanga subscribers to read, so listen up:

We post on our Xangas, our Facebooks, our MySpaces, and that's cool. But all we ever talk about is being bored. Don't you want to do something with your time? With all the time we spend on poking Facebook friends, adopting Bunnyhero Labs animals, and playing Flash games, couldn't we be making something extraordinary?

My concern in life is that I'm going to be a college graduate and have nothing to show for it but 4200 two-degree connections in Facebook, or a treasure chest of Xanga eProps. I'm concerned because I know one thing very well: eProps aren't worth shit in the real world.

I'm not attacking anyone and I know that, in some cases, I'm preaching to the choir but regardless of whether you get what I'm saying or not: Aspire. Be satisfied with your work, but don't slow down. Life hands you a few decades. Don't waste them.

(Hey, F. John, thanks for the nudge in the right direction.)