Twenty Years Later, From the Ashes of Xanga
Well, how the heck did we get here? In 2013, the millennial-supported blogging website Xanga.com closed down, which took with it millions of pages of millennial youth culture. To be fair, like some of our musical and fashion tastes, a lot of it is worth vanishing into the electronic ethers. JNCO jeans, Xanga posts about how our moms were unfair, and screaming emo music should make any millennial shudder. On the other hand, for millennial youth who were emotionally neurotic and enjoyed writing like myself, Xanga was where we sharpened our verbal spears. Through formless, countless rants, we expressed the inner worlds of being a teenager or a young adult. It also very quietly planted the seeds for my future in journalism, twenty years and two career changes later. Twenty years after starting my blog on Xanga, I'm nostalgic for those posts. Did my posts foretell my future? Have I grown beyond being reflective and passive into a dynamic go-getter?