Although I’d heard this XOXO pageant can be the final one, many individuals I spoke to appeared to not imagine it. I used to be advised by earlier attendees that pageant organizers Andy Baio and Andy McMillan — affectionately known as “the Andys” — “at all times say that.” However from the pageant’s starting, it additionally appeared clear that the Andys didn’t plan to do that without end.
Anyway, this yr’s XOXO felt like an Irish wake to me. It was like we had all gathered over the physique of a particular interval on the web to pay our respects.
XOXO started in 2012, born on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, the place Baio labored. The fundamental thought was to have fun “disruptive creativity” — that’s, to take all of the artists who make a residing on-line and convey them along with technologists. Kickstarter was a part of this: a spot for folks to fund their inventive initiatives with out having to, say, pitch VCs or impress an A&R man. On the time, the concept was that the web would make it attainable for folks to make a residing with out the compromises made by company tradition. My former colleague Casey Newton attended in 2014 and wrote of the pageant, “It’s a spot the place the concepts are harmful, the place tradition issues, and the place artwork, not commerce, lies on the heart of all the things.”
“There simply grew to become a higher and higher understanding over time that platforms aren’t your pal.”
Ten years after Casey’s go to, I attended for the primary time. The pageant, held at Revolution Corridor in Portland, Oregon, appeared to have been stripped to the minimal viable product. It was shorter than earlier iterations, and the murals, rental drones, rock live shows, and different goodies from a decade in the past have been nowhere to be seen. However then 2024 is a worse time for impartial creators than 2014 was.
“There simply grew to become a higher and higher understanding over time that platforms aren’t your pal,” Baio says, in an interview after the pageant. “They’re your companions however they’re uncomfortable companions, and the extra you depend on them, the extra in danger you’re, that they will change or shift in some uncomfortable manner.”
These shifts affected XOXO, too. The pageant had scaled down as a result of there have been fewer sponsors. The tech firms that had been essential for the creator economic system stopped spending cash on impartial occasions like XOXO. As an alternative, they centered on their very own occasions, which they might management. “Within the final 5 years they’ve minimize their, I assume, advertising budgets,” Baio says. “They’ve tightened their belts.”
Nonetheless, it was mainly a celebration. There have been giant out of doors tents, tabletop video games, two days’ value of programming and hangouts, karaoke — The Verge’s Sarah Jeong did “Enter Sandman” — and loads of food and drinks. Darius Kazemi, an web artist, attended each pageant besides the primary and advised me that this last one was his favourite. “I do suppose smaller occasions are higher, usually,” Kazemi says. “They’re extra productive when it comes to making good dialog and emotional connections with folks, that type of factor.”
XOXO is a gathering of the terminally on-line, lots of whom met one another on Twitter
Plus, the one observe of talks meant that every one attendees have been centered on the identical issues. On Friday, there was an “Indie Media Circus,” that includes talks by 404 Media, Casey, now of Platformer, and Ryan Broderick of Rubbish Day. An “Artwork and Code” part featured the work of indie artists, corresponding to Julia Evans of Wizard Zines, Teresa Ibarra of “Analyzing my textual content messages with my ex-boyfriend,” and Shelby Wilson of The HTML Evaluation.
The evenings featured new and upcoming video video games corresponding to Time Flies — a standout amongst my pals — Despelote, and XOXO custom Johann Sebastian Joust, a no-graphics recreation that entails shifting in time to the Brandenburg Concertos. There was a tabletop night as properly, which I missed as a result of I used to be at a celebration thrown by The Verge, the place, as soon as once more, I acquired drunk with Casey.
If this all appears fairly dorky, that’s proper. XOXO is a gathering of the terminally on-line, lots of whom met one another on Twitter. One recurring punchline all through the 2 days of talks was that at any time when somebody wished to evoke platform degradation, a photograph of Elon Musk would flash up of their slides. “What difficulties have elevated for us within the final 5 years?” says McMillan. “It’s all stuff to do with fucking Elon.”
“Effectively, not all of it,” Baio says.
XOXO initially got here into being as a response to the commodification of festivals that had as soon as been about oddballs
“It actually hasn’t helped issues,” McMillan says.
“It’s so agonizing to have one thing that’s just like the connective thread between a neighborhood go away,” Baio says.
Early on, XOXO was known as a “assembly of the mutuals,” as in individuals who adopted one another on Twitter. However when Musk took over the platform and started shredding it, it meant many customers peeled off to Bluesky, Mastodon, and “darkish social” areas on Slack and Discord.
XOXO initially got here into being as a response to the commodification of festivals that had as soon as been about oddballs — like South By Southwest. Steadily, these occasions had been swamped with advertising sorts, pushing out the weirdos who’d made the festivals attention-grabbing within the first place. Attendance at this yr’s XOXO was capped at 1,000 paying attendees, and there was a lottery system for getting in. However to even make it into the lottery, you needed to fill out a questionnaire that the Andys reviewed. They prioritized the individuals who would make the pageant attention-grabbing.
Even the identify is a manner of choosing for attendees
After the primary yr, “all these folks confirmed up in our inbox and have been like, ‘How will we do some like, stealth advertising activation, no matter bullshit,’” Baio says. He harassed that the purpose of the lottery was to not decide whether or not folks have been cool sufficient to return — “we’re two of the least cool folks on the planet, sorry” — however reasonably, whether or not they have been members of the neighborhood that the pageant was constructed round. “Anybody who’s silly sufficient to say, ‘I like crypto, it’s my total being, I wish to come right here and discuss crypto a complete bunch,’ okay, nice, you’re going to hate it,” Baio says. “You’re not going to get prioritized within the lottery fairly a lot.”
Even the identify is a manner of choosing for attendees. For those who’re the type of one who will get turned off by a pageant named, functionally, “hugs and kisses,” you aren’t going to use.
When XOXO started, Playing cards Towards Humanity had emerged as a megahit from a Kickstarter marketing campaign. However as time wore on, the challenges of making an attempt to make a residing as an indie creator more and more grew to become a pageant focus. In 2014, Kazemi’s discuss successful the inventive lottery was one of many pageant’s breakout hits. In it, Kazemi spoofed the archetype of talks given by profitable inventive folks and steered it was extra essential to proceed rigorously creating (that’s, “shopping for extra lottery tickets”) than making an attempt to strategize round learn how to choose the precise numbers.
In his most up-to-date discuss, Kazemi revisited his 2014 themes. He’d give up his job, moved to Portland, and begun residing the indie dream. Besides, it turned out, residing the indie dream simply meant completely different issues. Kazemi described changing into a landlord as a part of staying afloat and in addition famous that his output of inventive initiatives had declined relative to 10 years in the past. Different creators make different compromises — podcasters doing advert reads for less-than-savory firms, as an example — in an effort to proceed making issues.
“We have been like, ‘I believe now we have yet another left in us.’”
The Andys advised me that they’d deliberate to make 2020 the final pageant — however their plans have been interrupted by covid-19. “We did make the choice in 2019,” says McMillan. “We have been like, ‘I believe now we have yet another left in us.’” This last pageant, 5 years after the final one, was attending to unfinished enterprise. However the Andys need you to know: XOXO is over. “We aren’t coming again subsequent yr,” McMillan says. “That was the top of XO.”
Persons are nonetheless making impartial initiatives, utilizing assets as solely the web can. Erin Kissane, as an example, talked about processing covid knowledge with the Covid Monitoring Challenge. Molly White mentioned “Web3 is Going Simply Nice,” the timeline of assorted crypto crises. Kazemi’s work at Tiny Subversions has concerned a fork of Mastodon and instructing folks learn how to run their very own social media websites.
It wouldn’t shock me — or for that matter, the Andys — if this group of individuals have been to create spinoff get-togethers from connections made at XOXO; it’s a tightly knit group. “I’ve been considering quite a bit about Darius, like his discuss asks, ‘What’s subsequent? What are we going to do subsequent?’” McMillan says. He doesn’t have a solution, and he doesn’t count on to be accountable for no matter it’s. “That’s essential to consider, and answering that query within the not-too-distant future can be essential.”
