Dear Mike,

Honestly, I don’t know if I’ve said this before or not, but I love hearing from you; and always enjoy your letters to Xangans when you comment. It amazes me that any one person can consistently piece together such long, and coherent responses, and still be captivating. You pull it off with the tact and grace that I wish more “writers” here could absorb and project. I wanted to address your comment here in the similar format because, well, it begs the respect!

Dear Scott,

I’m attempting again to go around and make visits. Just haven’t had the energy to blog lately. (I’m on my 2nd day back at work (in a row). Woot woot.) I’ve been dropping by here but just haven’t commented, and forgive me, but I won’t be commenting on this review, but on the overall impression I’ve got from some of your posts and vblogs.

I totally understand. Considering the amount of surgery you had done; the time it took; and the emotional/physical energy you continuously have to exert lately, I appreciate that you’ve made it here at all. You’re really dedicated to reading and commenting; and posting to this site. Very few, like you said, really are. I do hope you come back at some point and lay down some wisdom on my review, but this comment is great in its own right.

First of all, many hopes that you either can be awarded “editor” status on the Xanga game site, or otherwise be able to exercise your ideas. I could sense the frustration in some of your vblogs about the subject, which obviously is important to you. Have you ever thought of perhaps just setting up your own website? So many people here on Xanga seem so compartmentalized. There’s a whole internet out there, and Xanga is only one of the building blocks. I’m using Hostway for my main site (www.allthingsmike.com) I had great plans for this year, it’s 10th anniversary online, but “real life” (having to physically move me and all my stuff, a lengthy hospital stay and recuperation) sort of got in the way of my plans.

Honestly, I’m not foreseeing becoming an editor anytime soon. I know the staff (or some of them) do like me and the stance I take on Xanga, but I am sure they view me as too “unstable” for the position in terms of objectivity and unbiased approaches. At least now. I really would like to be an editor, if anything because I feel like I could make great contributions to whichever Xister site I’m editing. I also know that my approach would be completely with the userbase in mind; rather than my own gratifications and needs.
I would go it alone, but knowing myself and my fanbase: I would not last much outside Xanga. Unlike ASM, I know I’m not as great as that, and I’m not going to stake my entire reputation just to vacuously try to prove otherwise. I’m still awaiting letters of rejection from two other e-zines for my Flash Fiction as it is! -laughs-
Although I have a secret project in the works, so shhhhhh -smirks-

Some of your entries deal with traffic. I find I rarely even go to the front pages of Xanga that much anymore. (I will tend to pay attention if one of my entries is “featured” but that happens only rarely, and usually if I’m writing about Xanga itself, which, if you’ll forgive me, I find a somewhat tired subject. Some of my websites, even the ones which I created as “standalones” without updating, are still top of the search charts for those subjects. (Robots, The Betty Boop Pages, and Clowns, for instance, are still pretty popular among the search engines.) I’ve tried to use my Xanga to promote my main site, but for the most part, as with all the internet, I find that I collect certain forms of traffic to certain sites and blog entries. If I “know” someone on Xanga, then chances are I’ll “know” them in this forum, and if they leave for another forum, I’ll “lose” them. I don’t know about the “Xangafamous” who “branch out” and create their own forums, but I’ll surmise that they don’t get as much traffic, or at least as much interaction, on their own URLs unless their sites are really fantastic. I speak as one who started with his own site (which I believe is one of the better personal sites on the internet) and still tries to maintain a good deal of traffic. I’ve put comments features on my “non Xanga” pages, to replace the old “guest books” and while I will get the occasional comment, I still find that for the most part, my “audience” remains on Xanga. I think this will prove true for almost anyone who blogs here and then tries to “branch out”.

Honestly, I’m tired of the meta-blogging about Xanga. And I’m more tired with how people are writing “How-To Guides” on gaining traffic. Most of the ideas center around diverting from whom the user really is, and joining a mass collective of attention-whores, friend-whores, and name-droppers. Worse still are the ones who are “popular centrists” that latch onto the “popular” Xangans to leech off their “success” (Paul_Partisan being a perfect example). For me to devolve into posting solely on the “popular” events in the world would be to go against who I am. I want traffic based on MY abilities, not the mentioning of others.
I’ve worked hard to build up a reputation of being genuine. And I feel that by focusing my work towards gaining traffic by swimming only with the mainstream would be nothing short of a regression in my writing ability. Granted, I’ll talk about current issues, but not on the terms that others want. As was the case with MJ, or even the fiasco with Perez Hilton.
If everyone else is doing it, why should I? I’d be just a blob within a mass of identicals. And I’d lose who I am in the process.

Ergo, I avoid the popular subjects; or at least wait until there’s space to write about them on my own terms.

Interesting “conversation” between you and Dave in an entry below with the subject of Michael Jackson. Even though I was not actively blogging, I did feel compelled to write a tribute blog because of his originality and overall fame. I have read quite a few entries on Xanga about Jacko’s passing, from reverential, to scathing attacks. The truth is that he is one of the premier celebrities of the past 50 years or so, and his passing was pretty much a shock, as he died pretty young. As a “student of popular culture” I had to write an entry about him, just as I wrote about the passing of other cultural icons. I never for a moment even thought that my entry would be “featured”. Throughout my time on the internet, which could be considered quite a while at over a decade now, I have found that my blogs/sites about popular cultural icons, such as Betty Boop, or Buddy Holly, generate the most traffic, while entries containing my own poetry or videos only attract my own “fanbase” and are not universal. My (own) artisitc videos on YouTube and Xanga do not generate as much traffic as my videos mashing up movie images of Elvis Presley or Betty Boop. This is because people search for Elvis and Betty, and not for “Michael F. Nyiri”. Sad, but true. I went to the Xanga search bar the day after MJ passed away, and typed in “Michael Jackson”. As you mention, I didn’t see any tributes on the “front page”. I don’t know whether this was intentional or not. (And I guess I don’t care.)

He “was” the premiere celebrity -winks-. Bad jokes aside, I recognise his achievements as an artist; but as I said prior in other comments: Michael Jackson died in 1985, when he gave up who he was in favour of a new identity. His music flopped, and his personality digressed into an eccentricity that was almost surreal. In that sense, we should’ve mourned his death a long time ago. Who he was in his last few years of life was not who he was prior. It wasn’t Michael who died last week (to me). Just someone that was no more than an empty vessel of someone once great.

Kudos to you for being an “active” member of the Xanga community, with solid opinions, and with a real need to make improvements. I read a lot of “popular Xangans” who seem to keep blogging about the same things over and over. Heck, I’ve been writing “blogs” even before there was a name for them. (My 2000 “ElectricPoetry Diaries” for instance. ) After a few years, if one does not have a specific “talent” and content to post, then it must be incredibly difficult to keep coming up with ideas to blog about.

I’ve noticed that too, and thank you for the compliment. Although I don’t understand the air-quotes around ‘active’. The “popular” ones now are just the worst. BlackSpiderman, AvenueTotheReal, and even DMV in his more active era were far more interesting than many of the current “pops”. Though I do admit I enjoy VaneDave and BigShow.

One last thought. (I’ve been “away” for a while, and I seem to be “ranting” here, and none of this has anything to do with your entry, apologies again.) I’ve always been interested in how some can create “personalities” which are false and be able to keep up those appearances on message boards, blogs, etc. One of my ideas for an “art project” on the internet was to “create” a dysfunctional family, such as a wirter would outline characters for a novel. Then I’d create blogs for each of them, and develop a “plot” to stoke the blog entries. These “family” members would interact with each other, and develop their own “real” audience. I wouldn’t let the cat out of the bag, until after the blogs had been active for about a year, and hopefully, some of the interaction with other bloggers would create some soap opera itself. One of the ideas I had was that the “father” sexually molested his daughter, and she creates a blog, but he doesn’t know it’s his daughter, and he tries to hit on her again in cyberspace. The possibilities are endless. I never began this experiment, because it would take FAR too much of my time, but I still would like to see some sort of “blog novel” where the characters are not necessarily “real” but fully imagined characters as in a novel. The blogs themselves would be the content of the story.

Creating a personality is just like that: Writing a story. You craft an entire life around it; develop a way of writing/speaking; and a whole religious/philosophical viewpoint for that person. Next comes the attitude and moral standpoints. Pretty much, you craft a persona through which you’ll be speaking and projecting your own thoughts.
Really, I love that idea of a “blog novel”. I’d like to give you a hand in crafting one (a new one since you just gave away your current idea), if you’d be interested–when you’ve recouped of course!

As usual, I had a great visit.

And as usual, I enjoyed your visit!

Michael F. Nyiri, poet, philosopher, fool

Scott C. Christian, demi-god, writer, grand dictator of everything vulgar