I attended my fifth XOXO Festival last month. It was also the last XOXO ever. My experience this year was short and atypical: I was sick for half of it. But I wanted to try and make sense of this event that has been such a meaningful part of my life for over a decade.
What was XOXO?
For a lot of people, independence is lonely. It's terrible to manage yourself... Having camaraderie and support and management and guidance is a really important thing.
XOXO was an event that explored what it means to be independent on the internet.
The final XOXO, in 2024, called itself “an experimental festival for independent artists who live and work online.” Much like years prior, the first two days of the festival showcased work from those artists, from games and films to creative coding projects. The conference took place on the final day: a series of talks from independent artists and creators. XOXO was produced by Andy Baio and Andy McMillan. Attendees often referred to them as “the Andys.”
The overarching topics of the festival changed over the years: a glorification of solo entrepreneurship gave way to explorations of mass harassment, centralized social media, and a push for greater cultural representation. But one theme stayed consistent throughout: the freedom of independence can come with incredible isolation. You cannot survive as an independent artist without a community around you. The best talks explored that idea with emotional honesty and vulnerability.
This is just like a garden for tech people to look at artists like they’re in a zoo without actually leaving their six-figure salaries.
XOXO was a motivational seminar for techies alienated from their labor.
The first XOXO, in 2012, called itself “a celebration of disruptive creativity.” The conference talks were split between creators and “disruptors”: entrepreneurs building tech platforms and marketplaces.
XOXO gradually shifted its focus to “independent art that happened to have online distribution.” But the tech community never really left XOXO. They loved the first festival, blogged about it, and told their friends.
When I was talking to the person quoted above, I was pretty taken aback. The argument seemed cynical. But / and: I haven’t stopped thinking about it since? Most speakers at the conference walk through how they achieved the XOXO dream. They’ve certainly motivated many attendees to do the same over the years. But I met many other attendees with conventional big tech careers. They loved their jobs (or loved the money) too much to leave. The talks at XOXO were a way for them to live vicariously, not a career path to take seriously.
Or maybe they were just too scared to make a change. I know I was. Within a year of XOXO, I was motivated enough to move across the country and find a job more aligned with my values. But it took me six more years to work up the nerve to go independent. And I’m still working up the self-esteem to feel comfortable making art or publishing side projects, to feel like I have anything worth saying.
I will say that the aspirational element of it all made conversations with attendees more meaningful. If the other person wasn’t yet doing their life’s work, but wanted to be, I always felt like my role in the conversation was to psych them up.
It was embarassing. We'd never thought of XOXO as a tech conference, but it was inheriting the systemic issues that [were] in tech.
XOXO was a model for what inclusion work looks like.
I first attended XOXO in 2013. Most of the people there looked like me. At the time, the Andys acknowledged the lack of diversity and promised to do better.
When I discussed this with a fellow attendee at the time, he said something like:
Nothing’s going to change. Everyone does the requisite hand-wringing about this stuff but no one actually cares.
But the Andys did care. They worked to make XOXO dramatically more inclusive over time. They invested in accommodations, wrote thoughtful policies, and made sure they could actually enforce those policies during the event. They prioritized the comfort of the marginalized over those who might oppress them.
It’s not my place to judge whether the festival was truly inclusive for everyone. But the Andys clearly tried their hardest each year to make it so. I kept drawing inspiration from XOXO because of that. It was a testament to how, when people act upon their values with intention and focus, their work changes for the better.
This should be a conference where you can go up to a group of people you don’t know, and they will include you in their conversation.
XOXO always felt like a homecoming.
Over the last decade, I’ve become much more ambivalent about internet art and the web in general. I’m not sure a “good internet” free of corporate control can exist. I’m not sure it ever existed. Whenever XOXO announced it was coming back, I would always debate whether or not I wanted to go.
But the programming at XOXO was never the real draw: it was the vibe. The emotional openness of both the Andys and the speakers fostered a singular environment. XOXO was a place where I felt like I could be my best self in every interaction: open-hearted, curious, comfortable, invested in making people feel welcome and at home. In many cases, I didn’t succeed. But XOXO set a tone where it always felt worth my energy to try again.
Before this year, XOXO had taken a five-year break due to COVID-19. Those years have been tremendously isolating. I started freelancing from home, endured the pandemic, and raised a child from birth through preschool. But going to the opening party this year, it felt like not much had changed. I discovered I could still access those parts of myself I appreciated. I reconnected with people I hadn’t seen in half a decade, and we picked up right where we’d left off.
It made me realize what a tremendous gift this place has been. Now that XOXO is over, I’m thinking about how I might create that energy elsewhere, and summon it in places that feel less welcoming.