April 11, 2002

  • 2 ~~ The Second Great Trap of Xanga ~~ 2


     


    Things that count  in Xanga don’t count for much.  The number ( # ) of eProps, Comments, Subscriptions, Site Meter visitors, blogs that you’ve written,  times atop the Featured Content List,  #s, #s, etc.   Are you susceptible to amassing numbers?  Then Xanga will suck you in.


     


    Better to have written one brilliant post and received one equally brilliant comment than to become effusively entrained in the mediocrity of #s and even by #s do well.


     


    Oh, the things that count do count for something .  Just not much.  eProps, for instance, are a type of Fool’s Gold.  Fool’s Gold, the mineral, is a commodity worth something. There is a real economic market for it.  Pieces are almost always included in *sampler* rock collections just to contrast it with real gold.  There’s just not much a demand for it in relation to its supply.  Hence, it’s economic value is rather low.


     


    There’s an economic market for eProps, too.  A market that Xanga itself creates.  “Wait”, you say, “there’s no market—I can’t trade them in for anything!”  True.  But they can, by automated triggering, “buy” you positioning in the Featured Content list.  They can also “buy” you, in a murkier way,  a perception of popularity—a stab at becoming a “xangadu god”—in the estimation of some.  And to the extent that any blogger is motivated to write for a higher count of eProps ( a degree which can range from 0% to 100% ), there is an eProp cost: the opportunity of time spent which might otherwise have netted alternative value (this is the economic concept of *opportunity cost*).  So there is a potential cost and a potential return.  But, in my estimation, it isn’t much of a market.  Fool’s Gold “buys" Fool’s Goods.


     


    Hence, I have evaluated the potential return to me as unrewardingly low and have subsequently decided to opt-out, at least in one regard, of “spending” my eProps. 


     


    How so?  By posting multiple times a day. 


     


    I have discovered that *multiple posts* spread out throughout the night and day defuse the concentration of eProps sufficiently to keep any one  post rather low, if not off of, the Featured Content list.  I used to almost always be in the *Top Ten* of that list, sometimes even at the top.  But not recently—and I would imagine never again—not since I’ve embraced a strategy of staggered multiplicity.  And, the great thing is, since I’ve fallen off that list, I don’t even track it regularly anymore.  More freedom to me.  Amen.   Not that I should have even ever tracked it in the first place—it was, for me, one of these #s—one of these traps.  But since “my eProps” were thus being “spent”, the curiosity was irresistible.  Yet by opting-out of that market and discarding it as a concern, I now find I have the opportunity to focus my energy more rewardingly. 


     


    Not everyone falls into the Xanga #s trap.  For some, it’s pure fun.  Funny money all the way. Finding uncipherable intellectual, social, and creative rewards amidst the amusing trappings of the Xanga Glitter Game.  Laughing, or at least benefiting, whether they’re heading toward the Xanga Bank or the Xanga Poorhouse.  One word for all such who can avoid this trap altogether and reap a soulful harvest:  Hurray!

Comments (248)

Comments are closed.

Post a Comment

notforprophet

Recent Posts

Categories

The End of Days