lj death and the graveyard of the future

I just heard this on eyebrowofdoom's LJ: _redpanda_ died yesterday of cancer, only about a month after being diagnosed.

The name immediately rang a bell and I seem to remember a cute brownish furry animal icon and I'm sure I've had exchanges with her. So I went to her other LJ, Kielle, and I tell you, there is nothing quite as eerie and sad as reading the LJ of someone who has died.

You scroll back to the blithe entries of ignorance, and it's all squeeing and picspamming and the utter frivolity of LJ. It's so full of life! And it's eerier than reading letters of someone or seeing photos, even seeing a video of a person who has died. All of these other media have the past built into them but LJ is so present. When you're reading it, it's happening NOW and you want to hit that 'comment' button and get involved. It's also a medium that is about as close to informal conversation as you can get, the back and forth of chattiness, but it doesn't evaporate on the wind like a telephone or f2f conversation nor even delve into the ether of email in-tray morgues: it continues to sit there and live. With all the mood icons hopping and the icons smiling out at you and the frivolity.

It makes me realise that we are only at the beginning of the online era. At some point, inevitably, we will all be dead, and what will be left will be these scores and scores of LJs with our icons and musings and rants and obsessions and kerfuffles and flockednesses. It will be like a huge graveyard of enshrined life. And who will then read the flocked posts?

This is eerie. And the eeriest thing is that it's going to happen.