"Next Blog" Slice of Humanity

So I was bored and unable to sleep, so I indulged my curiosity and started clicking through the "Next Blog" links off of my Blogger bar. Some of the things that I found were:

• Dozens and dozens of soulless pages of advertisers spamming Blogger with their products, presumably to come up on search engines more. Not a human word among them.
• Many "So, I guess I'm starting a blog" pages.
• A handful of "real" blogs, but they were so bland and devoid of any feeling or passion that I couldn't stick with them. ("So I washed my car today...")

Then, I stumbled upon a site that was chilling, depressing, and frightening all at once. It was a blog by a white supremacist, who was treating it as a news source for other like-minded racists. In his posts, he was basically pouring out a lot of unpleasant vitriol against anyone who showed tolerance for non-whites. Now, I know this element exists in society, but I had never seen it without the attempt to look socially presentable, like the pundit that came on Fox News to explain how immigration is destroying America with a couple of jury-rigged anecdotes. This was pure, bald-faced, unapologetic hate, and it left me feeling tainted, queasy, and depressed.

Clicking away in disgust, I quickly came upon another blog that was also depressing, but for an entirely different reason. This one was by a young student, where she basically poured out a lot of personal frustration and despair, marvelling at the injustice of her life and the shackles of silence she was bearing, apparently wanting to tell someone out there about some undisclosed event, but feeling unable to. Worse, the most recent post said she probably wasn't going to be posting any more.

It was by far the most personal blog I'd seen. On the cusp of the white supremacist blog, it was heart-rending to read about this poor young woman suffering alone in sort-of silence, recording her thoughts for anyone in the world who would listen, but clearly assuming (fearing?) that no one would read it, or even care.

Her post sounded very much like the sort of thing that a lot of us felt during those bleak teenage years when you can't seem to connect with anyone or anything, especially your own life. I remember how it felt back then, how dismal the world seemed and how helpless you feel at that age to do anything about it, so I just dropped in an anonymous comment trying to assure her that it gets better.

Don't know if it will do any good, or even if she'll see it, since she was leaving the blogging scene. But after seeing such a torrent of hate from the racist's blog, I felt I had to balance the scales a bit. Hopefully, a little message of encouragement from a stranger will ease her pain a bit, and be a little drop of data that works to build someone up, rather than tear people down in this noise-heavy sea of digital communications.

Maybe it was pointless, maybe not. I'll never know. But to you, dear reader, I issue the challenge: make contact with the people putting their lives out there for you to read in their blogs. If they're in pain, ease it. If they're in need, encourage them. What's the point of having a tool to let the world read your diary, if the world remains silent to your every thought?