Oh, the Internet

Hello again!

I seemed to have developed a trend of posting something everyday but I just wanted to warn you guys to not get lulled into the belief that I will update this blog that often. Exams are coming up for me so I'm not going to have a lot of time to update this blog in the coming weeks.

Going back to the main purpose of this post, lately I have been watching a lot of YouTube videos which gave me many ideas for what I can say in this blog, but one consistent thing that has popped up is the amazingness of the internet. Emilythebravee posted a video talking about how through YouTube she was able to meet some of her now closest friends that she pretty much only met for once in real life at Vidcon (link to the video: http://youtu.be/NZw5X2cpyVM). This got me to thinking about the Vlogbrothers and the community that has developed simply because two brothers wanted to keep in contact with each other from across the country in another form other then text. (Keep in mind this is before skype, facetime, or other forms of video chat.) Now this community, called Nerdfighteria, has grown exponentially and does amazing things like donating money to build a well in a third world country. The goal to reduce "world suck" has continued to new leaps and bounds as more and more people are getting inspired by the Vlogbrothers and finding the courage to start blogs or vlogs on the internet. I don't want to attribute these awesome communities to just the Vlogbrothers but to also pretty much anyone who uses the (almost scary) power of the Internet. Rather than posting videos of people doing stupid things and hurting themselves, amazing programs have developed like P4A (Project for Awesome.) And not only are these communities able to do good in the world, but they are able to help people get more confident and find friends that they normally would not have had in their real life. With the Internet you can be whoever you want to be and that power is so freeing. Sure things can become harsh when people bully, (and trust me I'm not saying that cyberbullying is a small thing at all) but if you are able to put things like that behind you or even become part of a community like Nerdfighteria that encompasses so many different websites and people posting videos or blog entries to just have fun, then you'll learn that there is a world outside of what happens in your daily life. There are so many people in the world struggling with the situations given to them and our world doesn't really offer many ways to escape those problems. But with the Internet these struggling people can find an outlet, a world that doesn't include unemployment, abuse, or the other many flaws that our society frowns upon. With the Internet, no one has to know about the dirty details of your past if you don't want them to. You can create a whole new persona to essentially escape into, via the Internet. This new persona, however, needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Because, we can't escape too far from our reality otherwise situations could just become worse. There's no point in wasting our lives by keeping our horrible situations the same if and when we have the opportunity to fix them. Who knows, maybe its through the Internet that people find ways to fix their problems whether it be financial, physical, or emotional. Of course, the Internet is not a magical fix-all for the horrible situations in our world, but for just one moment maybe we can pretend it is.

I hope you guys had a good weekend!