« Armageddon And The Internet »

Blogging is the world’s newest forum; blogs are where we can rant, praise, inform, question and answer. Here we discuss pitbulls, coffee, Keanu Reeves, and the 2011 earthquake.

For as long as I can remember, we've been told that we’re becoming a species addicted to instant gratification; that our attention spans dwindle with each succeeding generation and the sound bite has become the limit of what we’re willing to digest.

Like many, I’ve been following the unfolding crisis in Japan following one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded. Not only have I paid attention to the official newscasts, but in my new role as the Neophyte Blogite, I’ve also kept an eye on what netizens have been saying and doing.

Just as I start making a list of oddities that might make for an entertaining blog entry, an enormous earthquake (one of the strongest ever recorded) took place in the Pacific Ocean. The epicenter was close enough to Japan to wreak havoc on the entire country.

The news outlets are reporting over a thousand dead, and offering plenty of analysis, but the twittersphere and blogosphere is where the disaster gets up close and personal. How much impact do statistics have after you’ve read the translated tweets of children asking how to find parents who were caught in the disaster zone? Twelve year old Aimi wants to know if her parents could have swam their way out of the tsunami since the water doesn’t look very high in the footage. How about parents begging for news of children who were caught? Their beloveds should have contacted them by now it must be that the cell phone towers went down. Right?

I take a break. When I come back to it, I start to read about what the rest of the world is saying, and how they’re responding to these events. Plenty of people are convinced that the end is nigh; I’m surprised at how many people are absolutely convinced that this event is connected to the Mayan calendar.

So many people are talking about a “supermoon”  being responsible for the earthquake that Discovery Magazine published a refutation of the pseudo-science being used to make the arguments sound legitimate. I can see how people who don’t really know much about physics might find the idea that the moon’s gravity could be to blame convincing, but the doomsday gurus should do some research.

I’m still feeling smug when I find a post on a 2012 forum, written last year, where someone using the handle "TheVeiledProphet" predicts a big earthquake and, unusually for prophets, gives an exact date. March 11, 2011; he hit the bull’s-eye. Wow, creepy!

Even without the “alternative” interpretations, this has been a world-changing event. Literally, it turns out. Japan has been pushed eight feet by the quake, and the Earth herself has been shifted four inches on its axis. It turns out that four inches CAN make the Earth stop and time stand still. Budump-bump, ching!

As I wrap up this blog entry, I find out that we’re now also facing a nuclear disaster. It’s being rated as slightly less serious than Three Mile Island, and much less serious than Chernobyl, but with everything else going on around them this was the last thing that Japan needed. Another few reactors are still at risk, their cooling systems have failed, so there might be more to come.

People are pulling together to help the people of Japan and stories that restore your faith in humanity are trickling onto the web. Godzilla-themed jokes are already ubiquitous. Millions of people have their eyes on Japan and they’re digesting more than sound bites. The internet gives everyone a voice; the good, the bad and the ugly.