Morning, kids. Are you ready for some delightfully cheery death chat?
The “what happens to my online presence when I die” question has been haunting our minds in recent months, ever since the story broke about Facebook suggesting people “reconnect” or “share the latest news” with a deceased friend. Epic failure.
Think about it. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace (own up, who still uses it?), your blog, emails, Flickr, Picasa, Youtube…The list is endless. And it’s likely that you, my dear Viber, have accounts at more than one of those services I just mentioned, besides the thousands I didn’t.
And you’ll also die. Unless Seth’s already hooked you up with a 20% off at the cryogenic freezing clinic (very hush-hush, mail me if you want an inside pass).
Social media, email, and life in general being what it is, you’re likely to have some unfinished business on the go when you shuffle off your mortal coil. Unless you’re the TBG. The TBG’s business is always finished.
But for the rest of us?
Well, there’s this depressingly convenient website called Deathswitch.com, which is painfully clever, really.
The site’s tagline is “Bridging Mortality”. (Nice one, cryo-geeks. You don’t have to rub it in our mortal faces.)
Imagine that you die with computer passwords in your head, leaving coworkers without access to critical files. Imagine your loved ones cannot find your bank accounts, or that you die with a secret that you longed to reveal during your lifetime. A deathswitch is an automated system that prompts you for your password on a regular schedule to make sure you are still alive. When you do not enter your password for some period of time, the system prompts you again several times. With no reply, the computer deduces you are dead or critically disabled, and your pre-scripted messages are automatically emailed to those named by you.
“You die with a secret you longed to reveal during your lifetime”? Not sure that’s a good idea to encourage the posthumous revelation of lifelong secrets. What would Oprah have to speculate on? And I mean, dirty laundry is one thing, but have you ever tried to argue with a dead guy? Even if they’re dirty liars, they’ve got the sympathy vote. Impossible.
Click here to hook your email up to the afterlife.
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