Work fast, die young: The blogger lifestyle?

Star Tribune

SAN FRANCISCO - They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece -- not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home.

A growing workforce of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.

Of course, the bloggers profess a love of the nonstop action. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly.

Once again, it's blame everything except the personal choices made by people. I usually don't speak ill of the dead, but in this case I have to speak out. It is not that a blogger's lifestyle kills, it is that people choose to work the hours they do, and live the life they live.

What is it with people? Something new comes along that makes a major impact on society, and those not benefiting from, or participating in, the new trend, decide it is evil and dangerous.

Cue Shatner; Get a life, people.

Actually, stop being so fraking scared. Your way of life is not going to disappear in a flash of bright light, leaving you destitute and hopeless. So some people lived life as they chose, and possibly burned themselves out to the point of death. It was their choice of lifestyle, not a diabolical new industry, that killed them.