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And so I'm crying like a baby. That was beautifully, tragically well written. Screw all the social media apps and the rest of the nonsense we're all working on

• judk 12y ago
  My mom has cancer. She loves to keep in touch on social media.
  • Theodores 12y ago
    Very, very good point. A lady I knew only through playing a game (which is an app of sorts) put a lot of effort into said game and became the lynchpin of the community. She passed on due to the c-word that we don't speak of. We were collectively devastated, some of my other online friends stopped playing for a week or two and things were not the same afterwards. Her daughter had the good sense to log on to the phone and tell us what had happened, we were kept from the truth until then. I was deeply shocked by the turn of events, much like how, on the internet 'nobody knows you are a dog', nobody knows you are dying of c-word on some hospital ward. But we didn't need to know that, in-game conversation was light hearted banter, no special treatment, which was good. From that hospital ward that lady had a good fifty to a hundred 'in game' friends all around the world, we were there, outside of visiting hours, 24/7. I think I was more shocked and with more grief layers to go through than I have experienced when some of my relatives have passed on. You would wonder how you could be so upset about losing someone that you only spent six months of your life compulsively playing an online game with. But it can happen. So, +1 to your original point. Games and apps or fancy shopping websites might seem trivial when there are so many problems in the world, however, through such things community can exist. People in those communities treat others as normal, they stay on topic and people that are seriously ill really appreciate it. I am at a loss for meaningful kind words for your mom. 'I hope she gets...' - after that I am stuck. However, if she doesn't play online games, get her to do so, and to make friends with a community of people that don't care about how ill she is.
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  Who cares if it's not easy? It's important. There was a day when we sent men into space just for the challenge. I don't think that merely doing a lot of difficult and complex medical research is beyond our power.
  • maguay 12y ago
    You're right. It's very important, more so than putting a human on Mars. What I meant is that cancer is far more than just one thing to cure. I have a friend who's a cancer researcher working with immunotherapy, one of the more promising new directions for cancer research. And yet, even if we can cure, say, leukemia with it, there's still other cancers that may or may not be curable in the same way. Still, it is a hope that one day we'll have a cure for all the varied types of cancer. It's still not going to be easy.
    • eli_gottlieb 12y ago
      I get you, but I still think that even scientific research is largely a matter of committing the societal effort rather than of some Mysterious Power of Science -- which is how people seem to act about cancer research. And it's quite frustrating to me, because I hear lots of people say things like, "Why should we fund cancer research? Cancer is a thousand different incurable little things that always get you eventually. Disease and death will always be a part of old age, so why are we throwing public money down the drain?" You know, like they already do with fusion research, and most other forms of clean-energy development. Then, a decade after they said that sort of thing, someone ends up in another stupid war for control of fossil-fuels, and on net, tens of thousands of people die painfully and pointlessly because a few despairniks found it more convenient to claim science doesn't work than to spend even a little effort on actually doing some good for the world.
      • maguay 12y ago
        I'd love to see a world that invested all of its military spending into medical research instead. We could cure so much if we did so.