Deathbook
For me the jury is still out on Facebook. Yes, I use the site and sometimes the grotesqueness of this act gets to me. It gets really bad when you look up childhood friends and see them looking worse than their grandparents. Years of wear and tear or abuse has taken their toll on nearly all of them. Seeing their photos makes me want to go back there and find out what the hell happened to them to age them so much.
I’m not immune either. My head of thick curly auburn hair is now thin and white, but I feel like I fared better than most of my friends.
My other quasi concern is the potential of Facebook becoming an unreliable memorial site. I’m sure that by now we all know someone that was once on Facebook that has passed away. It is haunting to come across their page and see their words, images and reactions. Their pages collect the comments and invitations as though they were still reading every day. They may even have new friend requests. What I’d like to know is how long will Facebook be there to uphold these unused pages? Can we count on these memorials being there through eternity? Are all the Geocity web pages we created twelve years ago still there? I haven’t been able to find any of my old sites. What makes us think that Facebook will still be here in twelve years?
Maybe Facebook should do what Hotmail does. No activity in 90 days and your account is deleted. If not there is a chance that one day Facebook will have more accounts of those no longer with us that those that are.
Maybe this is a good time for someone to come along and create a social networking site for the dead. This could be a site where you add things while you are alive and after 90 days of inactivity the site will assume you are dead and post all your stuff for eternity.
posted by The Guy Who Writes This at 4:00 AM
5 Comments:
I love Facebook, have founds tons of friends from childhood and beyond and have immensely enjoyed reconnecting with them, some even in person as well that I would not have otherwise even found without Facebook.
I don't play games and rarely do quizzes either. I one of the people you speak of who is unlucky enough to have two close friends die unexpectedly this past 6 months and yes, I have written on their pages afterwards. Dont know how long it will be there and I don't care. Friends and family all got to share their feelings with others on their sites following their passing.
And I don't care if people from the past look old, we are all still connected by our past and that would just be petty to say stuff like that because you never know what they may say about how much you have changed either.
i dislike facebook. but i love this idea of the dead book.
sounds like a million dollar idea there, guy.
That's why I don't use my real picture. I prefer my friends to remember that I was once a young vibrant steel rhinoceros, rather than the broken down shell of a man I am today.
Like the deathbook idea, tho.
Just a minute, I have to post a response on fb.
Auntie, doesn't it disturb you that all the effort you put into facebook will be obsolete in the blink of an eye, just like My Space?
Weese, I'll let you have the idea and run with it it. All I ask is if it makes you rich I'd like a shinny new back hoe.
Darev, just like Misima.
g, gonna make your 5,000 friends slog through it, eh?
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