I read about The Girl Who Has Infinite Karma in The Inquirer today. The 'karma' being referred to here is Plurk Karma. Plurk is a micro-blogging site where members can reap karma points when they post regularly (but your karma can also take a notch when you gain Plurk friends, change your layout, etc.).  The higher one's karma is, the more Plurk features he or she gets. The girl, Hazel Danielle Santos, in the article was not able to reach Plurk Nirvana, which is equivalent to 80 points, because she never got the chance to fulfill that.

She was the happiest woman on earth, as she exclaimed about it in her Plurk post last October 12. She got engaged on that day, but, unfortunately, also got into a car accident with her fiancee after the engagement party.

When Hazel died, someone appealed to the Plurk management to freeze her karma, since it had saddened everyone to see her karma points dwindling down. Well, she can't update her posts now, can she? The management was understanding enough and, in response, placed an infinity sign beside the karma on her page.

This may sound strange, but reading the article has moved me. I've always played with the thought that those who have lived with the Internet may experience a different kind of death compared to those who haven't. Now, seeing how it is with Hazel's death, I think there really is a contrast.

I mean, it's different because when we die, people can still get to know us through our online accounts, unlike before when people only learn about history and the lives of the dead through word of mouth or written text rummaged through old dusty cabinets. Now we have the Internet consisting of digital autobiographies of the future dead (I'm sorry if that sounds grim).

I've always believed that it's important to chronicle our own experiences (based on our own selection of experiences, of course) in the Internet, may it be by creating blog posts or uploading photos, because that is the most convenient way we have now to make future generations understand how things were in our lifetime.

If you can't make a mark in the world, at least try in the world wide web. That is my goal, before time will come that someone has to appeal to the Plurk management to give me my own infinite karma, which, upon thinking now, can actually count as a death wish.