Why do people use Xanga? My current theory is it’s because they don’t know any better.

Xanga describes itself as a weblog community. Most Xanga blogs contain posts to the effect of the following pastoral remarks:

Then this chick comes up to me and she’s all, like,
“Hey, aren’t you that dude?”
And I’m, like, “yeah, whatever!”

So later I’m at the pool hall
And this girl comes up
And she’s, like, “awww”
And I’m, like, “yeah, whatever!”

Actually, I may have been thinking of something else, but you get the idea. Xanga tends to be populated by the type of people who don’t stoop to capitalize correctly (and I’m not talking about e e cummings) as well as people who post such ingenius insights as “Type your first post here, then click “Submit” to publish it to your Xanga Site”. I’ll leave you to ponder the wisdom behind that one.. I believe I have discovered one or two worthwhile Xanga sites. By my estimation, those are the worthwhile ones.

My other theory is that people start using Xanga when they don’t know anything about web sites. It looks fun, and they have friends on it, so they join. Then as they post and learn, the limitations may become clear. However, they won’t leave, because Xanga doesn’t let you link to sites that aren’t on Xanga unless you know considerable HTML. Aside from being idiotic and exclusive, it defeats the purpose of the entire web.

So, a web site that is antithetical to the web. Hmm, let’s think about that: no.