Death and the Internet...

[Michael Poe]

There's an interesting post over at Twenty Sided about handling a recently deceased friend or relative’s various online accounts.

This was actually a pretty major concern of mine before I got married since none of my local friends or relatives at the time were very tech savvy, and I had seen plenty of people just stop without any way of knowing if they had died or just got bored and left without notice. Eventually I loaded up a 'I'm dead' notice on Exploitation Now and constantly pushed the date on it back, so that if something happened to me the auto update script would eventually run it. I figured that would at least get the word out to enough people to spread the news to the various groups and forums I was on (it wouldn't have done much for whatever mmog I was playing at the time, but I had always insisted on a odd degree of anonymity for those). I even wrote a funny little comic involving getting hit by a truck and blow jobs from angels that I had meant to draw to go with it as well.

You know, I'm actually not sure where the script for that went... that's kind of sad really, I wrote a four panel eulogy for myself, but now I don't even remember where I put the bloody thing.

[davester65]

I do a lot of financial related stuff online. So this is something I probably should think about.

[Garlock]

In my own case, I don't have all the same connections, but there are people I know online who would want to know if and when I'm gone. However, it also brings me in mind of some sour memories from before I even had an Associate's Degree in college. One of my friends from a board had been reported in a coma and then dead. The news was destructive, but that wasn't the worst part. It was a lie. For a year, our board was under a false premise until finally she got a guilty conscience and told us the truth. Other people were really pissed off and I was shocked as hell. But in my wisdom, I decided to forgive and defend her. It was a mistake and she came clean, and I felt I'd rather have her around than dead. Still, this leave an important lesson for the internet and especially this case: It can be abused, badly. My friend wasn't being malicious, and that's why she felt bad for the effect it had on people. Others might not be so keen.

[Bealz]

Thoughts turn to dying around big birthdays
Had those 20 years ago (+/-)
Still here tho, so enjoy yourself and stop being melancholy!

Always happens around the *zero* birthdays...

[Viking-Sensei]

Wordpress has a "Drop Dead" plugin (ok, it's not called that) that does the same thing you were talking about with the eulogy comic... you set it for X number of days/weeks/months/years, and if you never show back up, it eventually emails someone of your choosing on your behest with a pre-determined email message. It's probably designed so that you can send username and password information for the admin account to somebody so they can make final arrangements for your blog/comic.

Also... I never ran across the "Eulogy" when I was restructuring EN, so if it does exist, it's not saved anywhere in your current FTP structure...

[Imp-Chan]

It's not there anymore because five years ago, he moved here. Now there's me, and if Poe and I die in a fire or something you'll know and will be able to say something, and if all of us have a plane land on us on the way back from a con or something, there's still a long line of people after that.

^-^'