Have you ever wondered who will come to your funeral?
Sure, you have.
You've pictured your best friend or lover draped over your casket or urn, crying to a soundtrack that you've recorded in your head (or already burned on a CD). You've seen, clear as day but in the space between your ears, members of your family all dressed up and rehashing your life over photo albums and trays of a neighbor's homemade baked ziti. You've pictured the look on your niece's face after she's just been told by the man reading your will that you've left her the necklace or watch she'd commented on a million times. You've even imagined the look on your mother's face as she goes through your dresser drawers looking for clothes to give to the poor, but discovers your sex toys first. And that's when you called your sister and made a pact that you'd get to one another's bedroom before anyone else.
Sigh. Good times.
If you're a famous person or even a mini-celebrity, maybe you've imagined a memorial service where people you don't even know would wait in line for hours in the rain (because it almost always rains on days important people are buried) just for the chance to tell everyone gathered in some magnificent hall with high ceilings and polished floors how you touched their lives just by being, you know, the fabulous person that you are.
But I'll bet you've rarely, if ever, given much thought to what would happen to your online life if you should drop dead, say, as you're reading this.
What if you croak while on Second Life? How will all the avatars you've had sex with know you're dead, and not just offline cheating on them with a person you can actually touch?
If you're the only person who knows your top-secret and numerous login names and passwords, who will access your accounts after you die? What would happen to all the files you've stored on your iDisk? How will your Twitter friends know your new address — @deadnow? And — OH. MY. GOD. — who will update your Facebook status? What if, in a final act of irony, the last thing you ever wrote in a Facebook chat was "Nature calls! LOL! BRB!"?
The answer is that your virtual life after death would be in the hands of a very much alive and likely sleep-deprived social-network intern with access to the ultimate delete key.
You can't let that happen, right? Well, fear not! When you're 86'd, the creators of LegacyLocker.com, EternalSpace.com and other sites eager to cash on all things croak-y have got your 2.0 death covered.
According to a report published by CNN on Monday, "Legacy Locker allows users to set up a kind of online will, with beneficiaries that would receive the customer's account information and passwords after they die ... If someone contacts Legacy Locker to report a client's death, the service will send the customer four e-mails in 48 hours. If there's no response, Legacy Locker will then contact the people the client listed as verifiers in the event of his or her death."
EternalSpace.com works a bit differently. For now, its services are only offered through a few funeral homes, cemeteries and crematoriums. But to those who opt in, the site offers "virtual memorial pages full of videos, pictures and tributes." The people you leave behind "can choose from different headstones and bucolic landscape backgrounds — the mountain lake is a popular option — to create a customized online grave site," CNN reports. They can also "add 'tribute gifts' such as roses, candles, stuffed animals and other items, while mourners can access photos and videos in a 'Memory Book' and leave remembrances of their own."
If you think those sites are very stupid, If you're sure the concerns that'll survive you will require more from your loved ones than a single 140-character maximum post, be bigger and more important than even Ashton Kutcher's Twitter account, or if you're wondering why anyone would fork over $29.99/year to sign up with LegacyLocker.com when for less than one dollar he could buy a couple of pencils and pieces of paper, welcome to the club.
But, as the saying goes, there's a sucker born every minute. And, just like the rest of us, every sucker has the right to die in his own glory, even if it's just imagined.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to write my Wikipedia biography. But I'll be right back. I hope.
Recent Comments