Brad is proposing a Day Without Weblogs as a blog counterpart to the Day Without Art to commemorate World AIDS Day.
There's some fairly cool community among the early bloggers, so I've a tendency to give their ideas some extra weight. But as I thought about this further, reservations formed.
And the reservation essentially boiled down to trying to figure out what I'd really be saying if I played along.
That we need more AIDS/HIV research and funding? Leaving aside from my libertarian leanings about public health issues I think it's clear that from a risk/reward standpoint AIDS is disproportionately funded relative to other diseases.
That we need more AIDS/HIV awareness? Despite how saturated I think we are with messages about the problem, we probably do, but wouldn't that be better served by a day of links to safer sex topics?
That we need a memorial to those who've died of AIDS? If we need memorials to those who died, shouldn't we be celebrating what they've accomplished rather than mourning what they didn't? Heck, everyone who dies leaves some potential unfulfilled, it would be way too easy to live in that world rather than acknowledging that some pretty fantastic stuff does get done.
So I won't be commemorating a Day Without Weblogs .
Tuesday, October 12th, 1999 danlyke@flutterby.com