Life Online After Death
by AlexaEven while my 21-year-old brother was stationed in Italy with the US Air Force, he could always make me laugh, whether via AIM, Xanga or MySpace. For the past two years, the online Zach is the Zach I’ve gotten to know best, as I’ve been accompanied by ShadowsandDust7’s presence in my buddy list and followed stories of his adventures snowboarding, rock climbing and hiking in the Italian Alps on his blogs.
Thus, when I received the awful news a month ago that my brother had died in a hiking accident, one of the first places that I turned to was his MySpace. His last login was 4/20/2007 — and that salient date-stamp will always remain the same. When I opened his site in a state of initial denial (”Zach can’t be gone — he just left a comment yesterday!”), I found that dozens of friends had already left messages, not about Zach but TO him:
“Zach dude, we missed you today man. I had a sweet assist to Ruben. I was really looking forward to seeing you up in California in a couple of months. I guess i’ll have to delay seeing you for a little longer.”
As grief and the celebration of Zach’s life unfolded and as friends continued to “keep in touch” with Zach via MySpace and the memorial blog we set up, I encountered facets of social media that I’d never thought much about before:
MySpace was how many of Zach’s long-distance friends knew him best while he was in Italy, and online, it’s almost as if nothing had happened: His page looks the same as ever. Though Zach is physically gone, his MySpace presence feels alive. And so people go there to “be with” Zach. Instead of talking to a tombstone in the land of the dead, it’s like you’re chatting with a friend amidst a community of the living.
A person’s physical mark can erode or change relatively quickly. But according to recently-announced policies, “MySpace won’t delete a profile for inactivity, and it also won’t let anyone else control a deceased member’s profile” [1] and Facebook “will put the page in a memorialized state indefinitely” [2] when notified of a person’s death (unless a family member requests that the profile be removed). Zach’s bedroom may not always be his room, but his online spaces will endure.
As people are becoming increasingly aware of the role that online communities play in the grieving process (NY Times: Rituals of Grief Go Online), which has been most recently brought to light by Virginia Tech (USA Today: Slain Students’ Pages to Stay On Facebook) and Iraq (AP: Fallen Soldiers’ MySpace Profiles Live On), it makes me wonder how this role will continue to evolve.
Will we see the emergence of more explicit policies regarding members who die? (I had a hard time finding any policies — including for email addresses — about what happens when the user dies.) Is there a place for online “cemeteries” — sites to help friends and family, perhaps far in the future, easily find and revisit their loved one’s online presence (MyDeathSpace seems like a slightly morbid attempt to create such a thing)? How enduring will online memorials prove to be in the long run? (After all, the web is only in its twenties.)
For now, in these first weeks after Zach’s death, it’s been comforting to still “have Zach around.” Instead of an awkward new ritual of leaving flowers at his graveside, I can leave messages for him the way I always have. There will always be things that only Zach would understand, and it’s nice to know that there’s still a place I can share them.
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June 4th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
Thanks, Alexa, for a neat post. An open and honest personal take on a phenomena many of us have read about but few of us have experienced, but beyond that a clear explanation for those new to the idea, and some provocative thoughts about where it could/might head…
June 5th, 2007 at 1:49 am
Thank you…
You touched here a question or two which I have posed myself a while ago…
Like, what would be written on some tombstones in 10 years? Maybe 20? Will some people have, apart from the usual “Name & Family Name” & “Lived from 19xx to 20xx”, perhaps a URL with small letters?
What happens when someone dies - someone who had a notorious online presence?
Ken Kifer continues to ‘live’ online, for example… ( http://www.kenkifer.com/bikepages/ )
Others, too…
For me… I dunno.
I wonder.
I would be happy, when one day, when I am no longer walking the Land of the Living, what I have written and painted, will remain, no matter in what form, online or on paper
Nuy who knows…
June 19th, 2007 at 7:46 am
One thing that I’d like to add is that Alexa’s brother had friends all over the world, and as these far-away friends heard the news of his death, they were alone with no “place” to go. The memorial site gave them a place to go and connected them with all of us and with his other friends.
In a conversation with a friend of mine who’d lost a best friend when they were both in college, my friend told me how important it was for him to have a place to go, which was his friend’s burial site. He still goes there occasionally though many years have passed. Going to a particular cemetery can be pretty inconvenient. The memorial website gives us all a “place” we can go to at any time almost. And, we can see if someone else has been there and know we are not alone in missing him. Alexasmom
June 20th, 2007 at 11:27 am
In our small town, we recently had a tragic suicide, father of a 7-yr-old girl and 18-mo-old twins. In his blog, this man spoke openly about previous suicide attempts and about how difficult twins were. I’ve had no success finding out if Blogger is even willing to take the site down. Various “experts” cite his rights to have the blog up there. I worry that this girl, or one of her friends, will find the blog and she’ll spend her life blaming her brothers for her father’s suicide.
Such unlikely but unfortunately possible situations suggest a need for an accessible policy for handling!
June 22nd, 2007 at 10:35 pm
[…] Andrzejewski discusses her blog post, “Life Online After Death” with the BBC’s Radio Five Live. Listen to the audio recording as Alexa discusses the growing […]
July 3rd, 2007 at 3:31 pm
People who have died live on in this World through their family and friends. They also live on through what they have written and said. Many of the big names from the past who still influence us through their Art, their Music, their Writing or even their Inventions actually died quite young. I raise my glass to Zach and drink a toast to him.
Michele xx
July 15th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Hello Alexa,
I am an active senior member on MyDeathSpace.
Our site is a forum, with a large portion devoted to MySpace deaths. We do the investigating, discover the cause of death, post the myspace page address, and link to articles. The death articles are heavily moderated, and the general rule is respect. Sometimes though, a troll will start some nonsense, but that happens everywhere.
We have some parents, family and friends who find their loved one’s article. Some use the forum as a part of their grief process, and share stories and pictures. They will keep the kid’s myspace up or start a memorial. One woman took over her son’s myspace, spoke as him in the First Person, and had graphic descriptions and photos of his car accident. This seemed a bit macabre to me, but who am I to judge how one grieves?
Some parent’s try to erase their kid from the net all together. A high percentage of young deaths are caused by suicide or stupidity. Some people try to teach a lesson so their loved one didn’t die in vain, some try to sweep it under the rug.
We may seem voyeuristic and macabre in our affiliation with this site, but in every town, at every water cooler, in every barber shop people discuss deaths, especially unexpected ones. We just cover a larger community, on a virtual plane.
That being said, you folks have a great day.
If you are interested in “virtual remains”, I have a site used for research. http://mydeathsearch.com
August 3rd, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Hi , there are good sites dedicated to idea of creation of online memorial and obituries. i am a Senior of one of them http://www.tolive4ever.com
may be you will be intererested in limk to each other
June 16th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
[…] if we just step outside of our polished bubbles to find it. After all, MySpace had played an important role in my life. I jumped on board and looked forward to understanding MySpace, its users, and how the website […]