Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Old [Bloggers] Never Die...

...They Just [Quit Posting, Yet Their Blog Remains Online Forever, Making Us All Wonder Just What The Hell Has Happened To Them]."

Whew, that was a lot more complicated than General MacArthur's quote about old soldiers! Yet, there are so many times that I will happen across a blog where the person posted pretty regularly, and then... nothing.

This spawns an inevitable barrage of questions, like:
  • Did they die?
  • Did they suffer memory loss?
  • Did they figure that blogging was just no longer worth it?
  • Are they too busy to blog?
  • Did they finally get a life away from the keyboard?
What would happen if I died? Would anyone out there in Blog-dom even know? I think about this on particularly bad traffic days when half of the people think they're undercover NASCAR drivers, while the other half drives like there's a 20mph school zone for the length of the interstate.

For instance, when I first started blogging, I checked out the locals here in my state. I started reading one girl's page and was fascinated by her life, and the things she had suffered through, and I was amazed that she seemed to be doing reasonably well despite it all, and then.....nothing. Kind of like when you talk to someone on the phone, and the line goes dead halfway through the conversation.

Contrast this to a young woman I know who spent time in a couple of different chat rooms, made friends left and right, and then dies tragically one day. Yet, by the time her funeral was held, most of the chat room members knew she had died, some of them driving or flying out to her funeral and meeting her family.

How'd they know?

It's not like chat rooms or blog pages put up a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death), telling others "We're sorry, but the author of this page has recently been eaten by a bear. This page is no longer available" or some other tactful way of expressing the person's demise. So how do we know? Or do we?

This entry has been just a brief assurance of the fact that though nature, fate and karma conspire against me on a regular basis, I'm still here.

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