Yesterday, 33 people were killed at Virginia Tech when a very disturbed man with a gun went on a shooting rampage. What happened yesterday was very horrible, the worst nightmare of some come to life; the biggest school shooting so far, I’m told. I mourn for those who have lost loved ones.
But that same day, a domain was registered: onedayblogsilence.com. This website now wants to encourage all bloggers to be quiet on April 30th out of respect for the victims.
I want to know: Why? Why April 30th? Why does anyone think this will help the victims or their families? (And why is this showing up in my WordPress dashboard? It has nothing to do with WordPress. Of course, that’s a whole different issue.) April 30th is a Monday, why do people think that partying all weekend long then saying nothing on Monday will make any kind of statement? It’s very easy to hold off posting to a blog for one day while not taking anything to heart about what one claims to be standing in silence of and letting “real” life go on without a second thought to the issues.
Why don’t people understand that by being quiet about issues like these, we essentially encourage them? Why push it under the rug? We live in a day and age where we can quickly exchange information. Why should we be silent about anything? To be silent is to say it is not worth discussing. To be silent is to offer our endorsement. To be silent is to be ignorant. To be silent is to let it happen again.
If this person who set up this onedayblogsilence website cares so much, he or she should be advocating reform instead of silence, even helping to gather donations or letters of support for the victims’ families. Silence does not help. No, I tend to think there are personal reasons underfoot here. Maybe the plan is to get a lot of backlinks regarding this April 30th, have the silence day, then sell adspace on a quickly established website. Of course, I’m not accusing anyone, but that’s the thought hanging in my mind.
No, if you want to be silent, be silent in your heart with your thoughts. Think about what you can do to change things, to stop this from happening again.
I, for one, will not be silent on April 30th.
8 Comments
I’ll probably end up being silent on the 30th, but not for that reason.. I agree that yesterday’s event was extremely horrible…I was surfing this morning and I already found one of those “get a free Ipod” sites using yesterday’s event for a banner ad! It said something like “How many died at VT?” with answers of “10, 30, 60″ Come on, how sick is that? *sigh*
OMG wow. That is bad. Very bad. Man that is horrible. Wow. Just wow.
I agree with you Valerie. We’ve been silent for too long which is why this keeps happening. Some people have tried to get legislation passed to make it harder to get guns and it keeps getting shot down.
I’m so tired of this happening. So many innocent people lost and so young. They’d barely begun to really live.
I won’t be silent April 30th either.
Silence isn’t going to change anything. Certainly blog silence isn’t. It never has and never will. The only way the US will stop people shooting each other is to ban guns. Simple really.
I’m going to go off on one now. On TV, someone was interviewed about the shooting, and the person interviewed suggested that legalising abortion had caused people to think that shooting people was alright. I’m sorry, but where’s the logic there? It’s exactly the same with a day of silence. Get on the tables and shout about it; that’s how news spreads, that’s how change happens.
Man, that doesn’t even make sense. Sounds like you came up with a pretty good hypothesis though.
Well, the thing is… banning guns is not going to do anything at all. The bad guys will always have the guns, it will only be the good, law-abiding citizens that can’t protect themselves. Guns in themselves are not bad, it’s how they’re used. There should be reform in some areas but I don’t believe that a ban will do anything at all.
As for the abortion argument that you brought up, Phil, I don’t know that the two can be truly directly related but I think the argument would go back to a loss of respect for human life in general. People are losing more and more respect all the time…
But, no, we should not be silent!
Even though it sounds logical to Lorelle, I personally think this idea itself will not benefit the families at all. The blogger may have good intentions, but I think we need something else. I think such a trend can actually harm people more, as it will allow people to setup websites like the one above whenever people die or something tragic happens and to start trends simply because they can without focusing on whether or not such trends will actually do anything.
“It’s the thought that counts†; yes, that sentence sounds cute on a date, but in history thoughts that result in useful actions result in things happening. Thoughts alone do not do anything. Similarly, a day of silence is just another meme. I can’t see anything logical in it. The blogger many people are linking to now says we should use that day to stop and think. I agree with her: we should use that day to stop and think. However, we should also do everything else in our lives, and we should use everyday to stop and think, and to move on at the same time.
One Trackback
…who died in that shooting recently. Valerie, as a response to the very site that advocated such a stand, posted “Silence is not the answer.†Later that day, I ran into an…