I just read an article about people who died and their families wanted their online friends to know. But how could they access all their accounts when the only person with the password ain't telling.
I don't know about you, but I'd like to know when I'm dead. I'd like an email or something. So to prepare for the inevitable, I'm glad that Blogger allows me to schedule posts for some future date. Like I can make a entry that will automatically post if I'm not around to stop it. Maybe schedule it for thirty days from today. This could be the message:
It's been 30 days since I last logged into this account. I don't think I would just forget about this account. I think there's a good chance that I'm dead. If I don't post anything soon to correct this, then I'd say I'm dead.
Wait, what if I'm in a coma? There's hope, huh? Maybe I'm just in a coma. And when I awake, I won't remember any of this. And then we could be friends again. Because I won't have any memory of all the awful things I wrote here. Do you think you could forgive me for all this terrible stuff I've been posting? I bet you could... because of the coma.
Well, so far I haven't created this "death note." (Hey, that's catchy. Someone should use that for the title of something.) Mostly because I might just forget to log in for a month and I wouldn't want for you to get the wrong idea when you read the post. Because some of you are old and you might hurt yourselves from all the joyous dancing.
But getting back to the original story ("Deaths of gamers leave their online lives in limbo" AP), "Jerald Spangenberg collapsed and died in the middle of a quest in an online game,..." so his daughter went on her own quest to let the members of his WoW guild know that he was dead in the "meat" world. When one member found out weeks later, he said he'd thought that Spangenberg's absence was due to "an argument among the gamers that night."
"I figured he probably just needed some time to cool off," the member said. No, no cooling off, unless you mean cooling off to room temperature. He died. Right after an online fight with you guys. Another video game related death.
But here is the important thing: how come Spangenberg didn't give any of these guys his real data? What is the true worth of online relationships? If I don't tell you in the online world who I really am in the thingy world, is it because I don't want you to know?
If this is true, then what about the daughter? Did she do the wrong thing by tracking down the other members of the guild (from which her own dad kept his real identity a secret)?
Regardless of how important we claim these online relationships are, are they ever as valuable as our real relationships? (If they are, then don't they become real relationships?)
Anyway, I guess the real test of whether the.effing.librarian is dead is whether he remains hilarious. And if you would find my death that funny, then I guess I wouldn't really be dead; I'd become immortal. "There can only be ONE!"
