RIP XOXO

Though I’d heard this XOXO festival would beryllium the past one, galore radical I spoke to seemed not to judge it. I was told by erstwhile attendees that festival organizers Andy Baio and Andy McMillan — affectionately called “the Andys” — “always accidental that.” But from the festival’s beginning, it besides seemed wide that the Andys didn’t program to bash this forever.

Anyway, this year’s XOXO felt similar an Irish aftermath to me. It was similar we had each gathered implicit the assemblage of a circumstantial play connected the net to wage our respects.

XOXO began successful 2012, calved connected the crowdfunding level Kickstarter, wherever Baio worked. The basal thought was to observe “disruptive creativity” — that is, to instrumentality each the artists who marque a surviving online and bring them unneurotic with technologists. Kickstarter was portion of this: a spot for radical to money their originative projects without having to, say, transportation VCs oregon impressment an A&R guy. At the time, the thought was that the net would marque it imaginable for radical to marque a surviving without the compromises made by firm culture. My erstwhile workfellow Casey Newton attended successful 2014 and wrote of the festival, “It’s a spot wherever the ideas are dangerous, wherever civilization matters, and wherever art, not commerce, lies astatine the halfway of everything.”

Ten years aft Casey’s visit, I attended for the archetypal time. The festival, held astatine Revolution Hall successful Portland, Oregon, appeared to person been stripped to the minimum viable product. It was shorter than erstwhile iterations, and the murals, rental drones, stone concerts, and different goodies from a decennary agone were obscurity to beryllium seen. But past 2024 is simply a worse clip for autarkic creators than 2014 was. 

“There conscionable became a greater and greater knowing implicit clip that platforms are not your friend,” Baio says, successful an interrogation aft the festival. “They are your partners but they are uncomfortable partners, and the much you trust connected them, the much astatine hazard you are, that they are going to alteration oregon displacement successful immoderate uncomfortable way.”

Those shifts affected XOXO, too. The festival had scaled down due to the fact that determination were less sponsors. The tech companies that had been important for the creator system stopped spending wealth connected autarkic events similar XOXO. Instead, they focused connected their ain events, which they could control. “In the past 5 years they’ve chopped their, I assume, selling budgets,” Baio says. “They’ve tightened their belts.” 

Still, it was fundamentally a party. There were ample outdoor tents, tabletop games, 2 days’ worthy of programming and hangouts, karaoke — The Verge’s Sarah Jeong did “Enter Sandman” — and plentifulness of nutrient and drink. Darius Kazemi, an net artist, attended each festival but the archetypal and told maine that this last 1 was his favorite. “I bash deliberation smaller events are better, generally,” Kazemi says. “They’re much productive successful presumption of making bully speech and affectional connections with people, that benignant of thing.”

The evenings featured caller and upcoming video games specified arsenic Time Flies — a standout among my friends — Despelote, and XOXO contented Johann Sebastian Joust, a no-graphics crippled that involves moving successful clip to the Brandenburg Concertos. There was a tabletop evening arsenic well, which I missed due to the fact that I was astatine a enactment thrown by The Verge, where, once again, I got drunk with Casey.

If this each seems beauteous dorky, that’s right. XOXO is simply a gathering of the terminally online, galore of whom met each different connected Twitter. One recurring punchline passim the 2 days of talks was that whenever idiosyncratic wanted to evoke level degradation, a photograph of Elon Musk would flash up successful their slides. “What difficulties person accrued for america successful the past 5 years?” says McMillan. “It’s each worldly to bash with fucking Elon.”

“Well, not each of it,” Baio says.

“It surely hasn’t helped matters,” McMillan says.

“It’s truthful agonizing to person thing that is similar the connective thread betwixt a assemblage spell away,” Baio says. 

Early on, XOXO was referred to arsenic a “meeting of the mutuals,” arsenic successful radical who followed each different connected Twitter. But erstwhile Musk took implicit the level and began shredding it, it meant galore users peeled disconnected to Bluesky, Mastodon, and “dark social” spaces connected Slack and Discord.

XOXO primitively came into being arsenic a effect to the commodification of festivals that had erstwhile been astir oddballs — similar South By Southwest. Gradually, these events had been swamped with marketing types, pushing retired the weirdos who’d made the festivals absorbing successful the archetypal place. Attendance astatine this year’s XOXO was capped astatine 1,000 paying attendees, and determination was a lottery strategy for getting in. But to adjacent marque it into the lottery, you had to capable retired a questionnaire that the Andys reviewed. They prioritized the radical who would marque the festival interesting.

After the archetypal year, “all these radical showed up successful our inbox and were like, ‘How bash we bash immoderate like, stealth selling activation, immoderate bullshit,’” Baio says. He stressed that the constituent of the lottery was not to justice whether radical were chill capable to travel — “we’re 2 of the slightest chill radical connected the planet, sorry” — but rather, whether they were members of the assemblage that the festival was built around. “Anyone who is anserine capable to say, ‘I emotion crypto, it’s my full being, I privation to travel present and speech astir crypto a full bunch,’ okay, great, you’re going to hatred it,” Baio says. “You’re not going to get prioritized successful the lottery rather truthful much.”

Even the sanction is simply a mode of selecting for attendees. If you’re the benignant of idiosyncratic who gets turned disconnected by a festival named, functionally, “hugs and kisses,” you aren’t going to apply.

When XOXO began, Cards Against Humanity had emerged arsenic a megahit from a Kickstarter campaign. But arsenic clip wore on, the challenges of trying to marque a surviving arsenic an indie creator progressively became a festival focus. In 2014, Kazemi’s speech astir winning the originative lottery was 1 of the festival’s breakout hits. In it, Kazemi spoofed the archetype of talks fixed by palmy originative radical and suggested it was much important to proceed rigorously creating (that is, “buying much lottery tickets”) than trying to strategize astir however to prime the close numbers.

In his astir caller talk, Kazemi revisited his 2014 themes. He’d discontinue his job, moved to Portland, and begun surviving the indie dream. Except, it turned out, surviving the indie imagination conscionable meant antithetic problems. Kazemi described becoming a landlord arsenic portion of staying afloat and besides noted that his output of originative projects had declined comparative to 10 years ago. Other creators marque different compromises — podcasters doing advertisement reads for less-than-savory companies, for lawsuit — in bid to proceed making things.

The Andys told maine that they’d planned to marque 2020 the past festival — but their plans were interrupted by covid-19. “We did marque the determination successful 2019,” says McMillan. “We were like, ‘I deliberation we person 1 much near successful us.’” This last festival, 5 years aft the past one, was attending to unfinished business. But the Andys privation you to know: XOXO is over. “We are not coming backmost adjacent year,” McMillan says. “That was the extremity of XO.”

People are inactive making autarkic projects, utilizing resources arsenic lone the net can. Erin Kissane, for instance, talked astir processing covid information with the Covid Tracking Project. Molly White discussed “Web3 is Going Just Great,” the timeline of assorted crypto crises. Kazemi’s enactment astatine Tiny Subversions has progressive a fork of Mastodon and teaching radical however to tally their ain societal media sites.

It wouldn’t astonishment maine — oregon for that matter, the Andys — if this radical of radical were to make spinoff get-togethers from connections made astatine XOXO; it’s a tightly knit group. “I’ve been reasoning a batch astir Darius, similar his speech asks, ‘What’s next? What are we going to bash next?’” McMillan says. He doesn’t person an answer, and helium doesn’t expect to beryllium liable for immoderate it is. “That is important to deliberation about, and answering that question successful the not-too-distant aboriginal volition beryllium important.”