You guys know that most of my time-killing online time (which is a LOT when you work from home) is spent on reddit. It's a sinkhole of time filled with interesting links, insightful comments and lots of puns and plain tomfoolery. That site has literally made me cry and laugh out loud in a matter of minutes.
But I want to share one of the things I really dig about it... it restores a bit of my faith in humanity. Every day. You may be aware how often they raise funds for charities all the time (Colbert challenged reddit to raise 500k for a charity (DonorsChoose.org) that helps fund schools, and they did it and got Colbert to personally answer some awesome questions), but that's just people throwing money.... laudable, of course, but nothing really personal. The real merit of reddit's human factor is how they go out of their way to help individuals in need.. not just for money, but personal things... getting plane tickets for people who can't get to their family for the holidays, driving a scared, lonely girl to the abortion clinic and staying there with her as support, finding jobs, finding missing people... thousands of little things like these.
Today I got a real smile with something similar.
Gizmodo had a link to this YouTube video:
I was floored by this man's talent and moved by his willingness to get back on track with his life. I immediately thought "reddit has to see this... they will help this guy, I know it".
And I clicked over to the site, ready to submit the story... and it was already there, on top of the frontpage, with 2500+ upvotes (You can see the thread
HERE if you like). They are already on it... this man's life is about to be changed. They've contacted radio stations in Ohio, scrambled around to get in contact with him, offered to pay him for recording voice-overs of anything... and now an anonymous source has offered $15,000 to a radio station so they can afford to hire him.
It's a matter of time before the homeless man with the golden voice has a second chance. And I've been smiling like an idiot ever since I saw that thread. I've always felt contempt for humankind, and I still do to some extent, but reddit has proven to me that large conglomerated groups of people can actually be a huge force for good, and not just fuck things up.
I'm in a good mood today, and it's because of reddit.
