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How To Have an Online Social Life When You're Dead
A wave of new companies are springing up to offer such things as virtual cemeteries, alerts to remind loved ones about the anniversary of your death, and even email services that send an alert to your sinful relatives in danger of being left behind when the Rapture carries you away. "People have a desire to perpetuate not only for themselves, but for their loved ones, the story of their lives, and technology has all these new great ways of doing that," said John McQueen, owner of the Anderson McQueen funeral home.
Just a simple flash game where a yeti can send my head flying with a spiked mace will suffice.
My work here is dung.
you could really creep out your enemys after you're gone, but you wouldn't be able to enjoy it.
still just knowing ahead of time. :-D
Bad enough we have all those dead bodies cluttering up meatspace. Now they'll be cluttering up cyberspace too!
mmmm...forbidden donut
Sounds to me like they want to perpetuate the mourning process in order to assuage their own fear of death. I've seen people do some rather odd things because they, on some level, could not come to terms with their own mortality; this is tame compared to some. However, this may not be a gift to the loved ones at all; it very well may be a selfish burden. It's selfish because there is an (unstated) assumption in it that everyone's mourning process is the same and is compatible with this idea. Making assumptions like that about such personal matters seems to me like very poor taste. If that compatibility doesn't describe the bereaved then they may be placed in the unenviable position of disliking this service while at the same time feeling guilty about rejecting it. Besides, calling them "loved ones" implies that you and what you stood for are not so easily forgotten in their hearts and minds.
I'm not saying this is necessarily a terrible idea, but I think it's rather unnecessary. Certainly it should be done with a great deal of forethought and an awareness of these potential problems.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
is bad enough you have to filter through friend requests in facebook, now you have filter through dead people wanting to be your friend too?? wtf is wrong with that?
How do you kill that which has no life?
This site, mentioned in the article, is particularly hilarious. I like how the way they know the rapture has happened is based on if enough devout christians they've hired to login everyday don't. It'd be cute if those people just lost internet access and everything were sent out early... or would that cause the RAPTURE? ;)
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
My father just died on the 5th and I'm still torn over it, but the idea of... whatever the Hell this is supposed to be is just downright hilarious.
I miss him and he'll forever be in my thoughts, I won't need reminders of when he died or an artificial ghost of him to haunt the internet with.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
The relevant question is: will these post-mortem emails have an unsubscribe link?
'Yearly reminder; Stingrays, NOT harmless.'
To: My Stupid-ass Kin
From: Your Vengeful Relative
Subject: BWAHAHAHAHAHA
Dear Weaselly Bastards,
If you're reading this, I'm dead. Since I'm sure you're all feeling really bad about treating me so rotten (especially you, Uncle Phil, for not lending me 5 grand for that Camaro), but I'd like to take this opportunity to rub it all in by hiring this company to Internet stalk you forever. Every birthday, holiday and anniversary of my untimely demise, this company will send you insulting messages reminding you of how great I was, and how deficient you all were (excluding Cousin Sally, who always put out for me, oops, that was our little secret).
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
This is pretty old stuff. Just before I died I configured a server to send out updates of my status and opinions to various online sites like Fark and Slashdot. It even alters the content based on the site. For Fark, it takes into account my general state of decay and runs the algorythm to come up with just the right level of troll and anti-social behavior.
For Slashdot, it takes the measurements from my corpse and runs it through a similar algorithm that pulls in the date, the most recently updated wikipedia entry, and combines the information from "Define:" google searches and returns the result.
So far the results have been promising. My Fark Algorythm has succeeded in broadcasting just the right amount of vile comments to hook a few responders and my Slashdot Algorithm has reposted just the right amount of plagiarized wikipedia entries to earn me enough "Insightful/Informative" comments to earn me enough karma for a comforable after-net-life.
Don't think I've forgotten about power. I requested that I be burried next to Edward R. Murrow and that a few loops be placed around his grave. With a simple RSS feed to our current 'news' sites like Fox, CNN, etc. I think this server is set to run into the next millenium.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
And thus with the outing of the last respected Slashdot community luminary as a LARPer, Slashdot began its quick plunge into irrelevance.
Probably no more so than any of the other peculiar rituals that humans have concocted to elaborate the otherwise harsh reality of the person -> meat transformation.
This sort of e-memorial stuff is, in my opinion, stupid, because online stuff tends to be transitory("Yes, father, this webpage shall be your testament unto the last of days, or until some idiotic Bubble 2.0 firm blows their VC money.") and shallow("OMG, I can give facebook user "Grandpa's grave" a purple heart if I add the greatestgeneration_nostalgia app!"); but it isn't fundamentally different than the meatspace stuff, beyond the air of crassness that takes a while to wear off any new custom.
Your son is dead.
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The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia