Hey, Remember 2005?

Back in the day we all blogged on Xanga. Remember that, ladies and gents? That was before I even knew what "blogging" was (I'm still not totally sure, I don't think). I don't know what I even called it, to be honest. Xanga was a fierce addiction to many in my group of friends in college. That was before Facebook. That was back when you had unlimited space to fill people in on your status. And boy did it cause some drama. I loved it. At the time. I haven't the patience for that, now. But then again I'm so much older and, obviously, so much wiser but still with the need to have an uninterrupted space that you will all pay attention to. God bless the ego boost.

On Xanga there were three different kinds of entries: The Recount, The Pensive, and The Jackpot.

The Recount
This sort of blog is really boring. I never read them. If I were to write a Recount blog right now it would read like this, "Got up at 6:30 because my cat was making noise. I watched Good Morning America and learned about the volcano in Iceland. I texted some of my friends even though it was not even 8:00 am. It is my sister's birthday."

The Pensive
Reads something similar to this (no proper grammar--it's about the art, folks), "dampness". The Pensive is irritating as hell and only meant to confuse your readers so deeply that they can only assume that you are some sort of philosophical genius. But, really, all that makes you smarter than everyone else is the fact that you have found a way to manipulate people into admiring you without actually doing anything admirable.

The Jackpot
Since Xanga was the pre-Facebook, this was how we got to know each other without actually having to meet. Jackpots were the best and very hard to come by. They include story telling with personal opinion and a certain level of instruction. They are for sure what I'm always striving for when I write anything. It's impossible to know, for sure, when you sit down to write whether or not it will be a Jackpot. And that's why you rarely get a blog post out of me.
The internet, these days, is often times unintentionally used as sort of a Home Shopping Network for friends and lovers. It was through the Jackpot Post that I decided the people with whom I wanted to be friends. For example, I read this huge post that was written by an acquaintance of mine (I'm saying, it could have easily been a solid three pages, single spaced, or so) about a car that he had in high school and it was right then when I said to myself, "I wanna be friends with this guy." And I made that happen. And we're still friends. And I am occasionally still impressed by his story telling. And that's why you keep the Jackpotters around.

My favorite thing about Xanga, though, was that at the beginning of your post you could tell the world what you were currently listening to or watching on TV or reading. I loved to use this space to tell everyone about the obscure music I listened to or to get people to think that I really was reading Kierkegaard in my down time between classes. Yeah, right. Like that was ever happening. But for the sake of nostalgia, let me tell you that I'm:

Currently Listening: Rosie Thomas, These Friends of Mine

Currently Reading: Anne Lamott, Imperfect Birds

Currently Watching: Rachel Ray