I have paid for physical beauty.

James is Gone.

Well, what did ya expect?  He was the Grand Diss-er, after all, who finally dis-missed himself.  There once was a majestic personage in Xanga named Jewels who in her time was more popular than anyone in Xanga today, including VeryModern.  She was a very compassionate, loving, yet physically debilitated and hurting woman who revealed in her blogs a splendid panoply of conflicting yet real emotions for the Xanga community to share in, respond to, and learn from.  By the late winter of last year, she had displaced James as the most popular entity in Xanga (top-propped) and it seems that just leading up to his dethroning and shortly thereafter, a Great Flame War started with James taking the offensive and eventually battering Jewels into non-blogging retiring submission.  She returned once shortly after that, but only briefly.  Here’s what James had to say about her *resurrection* then:

Others have gone with a last post message only to rise again in three days like Lazarus from the tomb. With a startling 76 eProps and 37 comments for the swan song. Xanga's all time box office draw for one blog.

Well, then James, I take it you're no Lazarus and that we shouldn’t expect you back for a swan song, right?

What was James’ issue with Jewels??  He considered her an "emotional black hole" and lambasted her both on his blog and as comments on hers accordingly:

Seems we've got two camps. The victims and the legion of helpers who rush to their aid. One can't exist without the other. The emotional black holes suck and the helpers get off on feeling like they're good people because they fed the emotional black holes. There's the marriage from hell! Both get what they want and nothing ever changes.

Actually, the *two camps*--if any--were James with his I-only-want-positve-useful-people-and-not-emotional-black-hole/puddle/sea-of-oatmeal-people attitude and Jewels and her purported *legion of helpers*.  Jewels relinquished Xanga and left James imperial as the most popular blogger for many, many moons.

With the *competition* going…going…gone…we sometimes saw a kinder, gentler James:

And what will I do with all this altitude? Shit, I don't know. I'll keep visiting sites and talking to interesting people and try to give more than I receive, as if that were possible.

Yes, it's true! You have been good to me. You have put up with my pouting and ranting and raving. You have been faithful and kind. You have shown me one person can make a difference. You have inspired me to write and bare my soul. We have laughed and whined together.

The way I see it we're all in this together. Thanks for being such fine people. Thanks for returning what I feel for you.

Now this, I feel, would have been a great parting self-epitaph for James.  It would have left us all feeling good about our interaction with him.  Years hence, when we would have reflected nostalgically back upon the the early Xanga trailblazers, we would have sighed: *...yes, James, he was mysteriously sweet and amazing.*  But James always hated and would have hated such syrupy sentiment.  That’s why instead he left us with this:

I'm thinking about quitting. This is one of my only remaining links with obtuse people and it's getting to be a drain. It appears there has been a shift somewhere and my desire to interact is waning.

I seem to be out of sync with the people of xanga these days. It's not that I mind people misunderstanding what I write here. It seems to be spreading to the comments I leave on their sites. People misunderstand for a number of valid reasons. It's becoming a bit pointless for me though. I don't seem to have the desire to wade through the sea of oatmeal to get to the possible clarity on the other side.

There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who know and those who don't. I've not been enjoying reading the blogs of others for a while now. At first I thought it would pass, but it isn't going away. I'm thinking perhaps this experiment is completed.

Completed experiments are usually discarded.  Here something failed.  Was it the experiment or the experimenter?

By the way, since I’m digging up Xanga history, according to my memory (if I’m wrong O Xangarelics, help me out!), the earliest pretender to the eProp Popularity Throne was poptardis with Bluemoo, celeste, and agrochick78 all close upon the threshold (not that they had any desire to be popular—they just were!  Am I leaving anyone out?).  The first avatar to truly and distinguishably attain the throne (early Jan 2001) was holly_green who apparently intentionally decreased her blogging thereby allowing James to ascend thereto for a short time.  But James would soon fall into the shadow of Jewels (Feb 2001), the first, foremost angelically-themed blogger (angel ornaments galore) to Xanga.  That’s  about when the Great Flame War commenced and Jewels, both on account of the flames and her growing ill-health, left.  James reigned until an unlikely black knight-type renegade called notforprophet (early summer 2001) simply outperformed him (eProp-wise).  (Damn those prophets—they’re always a thorn in one’s side.)  But the prophet knew his days were numbered with his very first glimpse of the very prop-hungry, very beautiful, and very talented VeryModern.  Yet he wasn’t saddened.  In fact, he gave VeryModern (summer 2001) the very two props to push her over the top!  And, if you haven’t checked lately, VeryModern is in a league of her own with over 30,000 such props.  ha ha ha.

Who’s up and coming? Among others, fairestc, quite naturally, getting rewarded for the excellence of her incessant energy!

Quite interestingly, of all those who were once *most popular*, I’m the only one remaining that’s blogging regularly nonetheless.  Perhaps, because I really never cared too much a-dang about it.  Perhaps because I reflect upon how Ramses the Great, with his once ancient world-renowned popularity, is now only remembered anymore when slipping a condom on.  And Do I really want to be like Mike?

For me, popularity was always as strange as wearing a tie—which I suppose they’ll next hang around my neck when I die.

Now don’t nobdody get no ideas like two birds with one stone and strangling me with a tie neither.

Surveys suck. Statistically speaking. The first major disadvantage is that response rate is usually rather low. The second major problem is that the response itself may be self-selecting, i.e., peeps who face providing a true but socially-judged undesirable response may opt not to respond at all leaving those participating with a true and socially-judged desirable response over-represented. Finally, some respondents do not provide accurate answers. Many inaccurate responses are due to people swayed by social desirability, that is, they tend to give answers they think are socially preferable even if untrue. Another major source of intentionally inaccurate responses are survey gremlins-peeps who purposely give outrageously wrong responses just to screw the survey's accuracy and reliability. Given all that, why bother? Because the information is generally easy to gather and tabulate, economical to collect, and immediately informative.

notforprophet's passively collected
Age of Xangaroo Member Survey:

(Keep in mind that this is only one sample of the Xangan population as described in the Source info down below.)

 

Age	13-17	18-24	25-34	35-44	45-54	55-64	65-74	75-84	85-94	95+
#	343	530	119	34	17	2	0	1	4	13

 

So it can be seen that about 50% of those Xangans reporting their ages are in the (18-24) age group and females in this same age group (data not shown) represent about 28% of all Xangans. Also, about 82% of all peeps report an age of less than 25.

 

So what sucks more: surveys or breast-feeding babies (=peeps less than age 25? ) ?