your funerals, hosted online
memento mori
Evan was 25. Evan was sweet, a little crazy, but hella funny. And like me, he was writing a blog.
It has been almost 17 years since he committed suicide. In the most elaborate fashion possible, he set up his blog to continue publishing after his death. The last post was on September 11, 2007. His birthday. He was supposed to be 26.
As of the end of 2023, there are more than 3 billion active users on Facebook. By the end of this century, Facebook (if still functional at the time) will be the largest cemetery in the world.
In 2004, Yahoo refused to provide the father of a Marine killed in Fallujah access to his son's email.
You and I, we will die, sooner or later.
But we will experience death in a really different way than our parents, than our grandparents, or our ancestors. That is because of the Internet.
Social media platforms, like Facebook and others, have evolved beyond social interaction; they've become living archives of our lives. From the friends we make to the jobs we hold and every mundane moment, every aspect of our existence is meticulously documented.
Even after death, this digital record persists, and its significance extends beyond our own lives, impacting those who continue on after us.
dear Facebook, I’m dead, here’s proof
In the eyes of the Internet, the concept of death is non-existent; you're only marked as "inactive" or "offline," never truly acknowledged as "dead."
Social media platforms require notification of your passing, yet the methods they demand for confirmation are erratic. Sometimes a simple request from a loved one suffices, while other times legal documentation is necessary. Often, the platform are indifferent to your mortality. This inconsistency adds to the confusion and can exacerbate the grieving process.
Facebook
Facebook offers the option to memorialize an account upon the request of a family member or friend. Memorialized accounts preserve the original content shared by the user but prevent anyone from logging into the account or making changes.
Verified immediate family members can request the removal of a deceased user's account.
Google
Google allows users to set up an Inactive Account Manager, which lets them specify what should happen to their Google accounts if they become inactive for a certain period of time.
Upon the death of a user, Google offers a process for requesting access to the deceased user's account or data by an authorized representative.
Google also offers the option to delete a deceased user's account upon request from an authorized representative.
Apple Id
Apple provides a process for family members or authorized individuals to request access to a deceased person's Apple ID and associated data.
This process typically involves submitting a formal request to Apple's customer support along with documentation such as a death certificate and proof of relationship or authorization.
Reflecting on this, it struck me how many online accounts I have that no one else has access to, such as my Facebook, my emails, and this blog. Security reasons, sure. But what happens if I just suddenly pass away one day? Perhaps it's wise to consider including a list of passwords and important information with my will to facilitate those accounts in the event of my death. There are also several services that help you take care of this concern.
However, I’d probably outlive most of my accounts, making these preparations useless. It's a complicated situation.
your funeral, hosted online
The transition from private to public mourning is evident in the impact of social media like Facebook on our way to grieve a person’s death. In the past, the passing of a celebrity would only be in the news, and people's reactions would typically be confined to private discussions.
However, with the advent of the internet, particularly social media platforms, the response to celebrity deaths has become more public and immediate. When actors or musicians or a well-known person pass away today, the public response often takes the form of a condolence comment, a tribute share to personal walls, or a reaction story, contrasting with the more subdued and private mourning of earlier times. Now, everyone can comment about how they grieve a person online.
This widespread expression of emotion may or may not provide genuine closure. It's possible that sentiment for the deceased gets overshadowed by a momentary impulse to join the crowd, or the fear of being seen as not-caring, rather than the .
It's worth considering that when expressions of sorrow and reverence can be reduced to mere clicks of a button, does death lose its significance?
The question of how to treat the dead “right” is as old as dying itself. And many different funeral rituals are many culture’s different answers to the question. The internet simply represents one of many new factors shaping the evolving ethics and etiquette surrounding death.
Traditionally, religious beliefs have heavily influenced how we navigate the end of life, but in today's age, the digital age, private tech corporations play an increasingly significant role in facilitating and curating our experiences of grief. With online platforms constantly evolving and adapting, the protocols for grieving remain fluid and are not yet firmly established.
However, as technologies and social norms continue to develop, there's a possibility that practices like "legacy contacts" could become standardized rituals over time. Whether these platforms will endure long enough for such procedures to solidify into enduring customs remains uncertain, but their influence on our collective approach to death is undeniable.
Thanatosensitivity
Thanatosensitivity describes an epistemological-methodological approach into technological research and design that actively seeks to integrate the facts of mortality, dying, and death into traditional user-centered design. - Wikipedia
Those are some big words and probably sound too confusing. But reading into Michael Massimi and Andrea Charise’s research, they offer some really interesting insight:
One compelling example, perhaps adhered to by some readers already, is the recent suggestion by American and British ambulatory care units to program into one‟s mobile phone a contact named “ICE” (standing for “in case of emergency”) so that rescuers can easily identify and call an emergency contact when the phone‟s owner is possibly dying.
The need for this type of preparation crystallizes how difficult it has become to unravel the data stored in highly personalized devices. Some of this complication has been brought about as a result of computer security measures. A 2001 news story describes how Yahoo! denied the family of a deceased US marine access to his email, preventing them from accessing urgent information sent to the account owner but necessary for handling the aftermath of his death.
As this webmail-based example suggests, this problem is likely to compound with initiatives which seek to place vast amounts of personal information on the web (a philosophy espoused by technology leaders including Google and Microsoft).
Passwords do not enable access in the event of emergency or death. A similar, but even more problematic, counterpart to password is biometrics: systems which use biological markers unique to an individual (e.g., retinal scans, thumbprints) and routinely assume a living body for access.
As more data becomes tied to passwords, remote hosting, and biometrics, access to data following death become increasingly problematic. Is access physically possible? Should all files be accessible after death, or only a few? For whom? Who oversees these details at the time of death? Do users understand the posthumous implications of using biometrics versus passwords?
These concerns are predicted by Kafka’s situation described earlier. Consider that if Kafka had password protected his works, neither he as an author nor his extraordinary books would exist today.
The research asked a question: How should we treat a person’s data after their death?
After my death, should all of my digital footprints be erased entirely?
In the real world, not many of us will burn pictures, letters, and all of the belongings of a loved one who just passed away. But much of our memories and interactions now don’t exist analogically, they are online. We post ourselves on Instagram instead of taking a Polaroid, we send messages instead of letters, and there are another million things that we have left on the Internet, that remind people of us when we pass away. Deleting these digital traces could deprive friends of their only connection to a person that they loved.
Conversely, leaving everything untouched may lead to uncomfortable experiences for others, as in the case of interacting with a deceased friend's active social media profiles.
The phenomenon of exaggerated grief on social media further complicates matters, adding an unsettling layer to the digital afterlife. Setting profiles to memorial status might offer a compromise, but not all platforms provide this option.
Additionally, considerations about post-mortem privacy arise, including who should have access to our digital content and communications. Our death on the Internet is not only about data, it is about really sensitive data. It’s about the private messages and information.
I, personally, would like to take every interaction I have with my friends on the Internet to my grave.
ourselves in the flesh, ourselves in the codes
Our digital identities resemble life, mirroring the appearance, sounds, and even movements of living beings, yet they lack true vitality, creating an eerie sensation. While some may seek solace in clinging to these digital remnants of departed individuals, I find them more baffling than enlightening, causing distress rather than comfort due to their near-realness.
We, in this age and world, exist both physically and digitally. We are made of both flesh and code. Our death in this meatspace is promised. But our digital selves - like a part of myself that has been engraved on this blog - are here to stay. It will continue to exist for longer than we ever want it to. But it will never grow, either.
memories that won’t last
These days, when someone passes away, we often encounter their digital presence - perhaps in their Facebook profile, their blog, or a TikTok they made long ago - all of which remain entirely intact. Unlike the meatspace that ages and gathers dust, an online persona persists, seemingly frozen in time. Unless someone actively removes each component, these digital remnants remain, preserving the person's favorite songs, their smallest worries, just as if they had been updated yesterday.
Posts on platforms like Facebook don't diminish with time; they retain a perpetually fresh quality, like they were just posted yesterday, a timeless reminder of the individual who once inhabited them.
But only in theory. At the end of the day, even the online world decays too. Someone has to pay for the storage, someone has to pay for the domain, with all the tiny requirements that are demanded to keep a website going. Faceboo, despite being a giant as it is, may or may not go out of business, and new platforms will rise. The online cemetery, in the end, is still as fragile as their physical ones.
Evan’s blog is still up for today. Friends visited Evan's blog to share their memories of him, and there are hundreds of comments there. These comments express a range of emotions - sadness, anger, denial, acceptance - but they all share a common thread - confusion. But can he ever answer them back?
Initially reading his blog, I was flooded with emotions, forcing me to step away from writing this post for a while. Despite never having met him, the digital remnants of his life made me feel as though he was still present, speaking directly to me. His humour, his interests, his attitude toward life, a sense of familiarity that struck too close to home.
Though he's no longer here, his lingering online presence feels hauntingly tangible.
closing this blog, thank you for reading this unnecessarily long post to the end, if you feel resonated with anything I share or want to share some thoughts of your own, please let me know.
many thanks to chị for helping me write the precautions.
I love you all and wish everyone a nice weekend.
Read more:
Evan’s blog - I would recommend that you read this blog only in your best mental state possible and that you currently don’t have any suicidal thoughts. If you do, please do not read it.
Facebook of the Dead (xkcd.com)
Death and social media: what happens to your life online? | Ars Technica
Dying, Death, and Mortality: Towards Thanatosensitivity in HCI | Michael Massim, Andrea Charise
this post is pure gold!
"The question of how to treat the dead “right” is as old as dying itself. And many different funeral rituals are many culture’s different answers to the question. The internet simply represents one of many new factors shaping the evolving ethics and etiquette surrounding death".
"We, in this age and world, exist both physically and digitally. We are made of both flesh and code. Our death in this meatspace is promised. But our digital selves - like a part of myself that has been engraved on this blog - are here to stay. It will continue to exist for longer than we ever want it to. But it will never grow, either."
They are my favourite parts, making me wow. And I've never heard about Evan story till now. Also about this topic, I thought of me passing away someday but not about how I'll leave the world digitally. Thank you for sharing and writing this.