lj death and the graveyard of the future

[lobelia321]

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.

Comments

[bunnysquee.livejournal.com]

redpanda was the person who mocked me for reading the odyssey at my advanced old age and you and elfofmirkwood went to her lj and told her off. i have not interacted with her since that episode, so it was a great surprise to read that she has died.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

O my god.

I don't know what to say. So I sort of 'knew' her quite well! Well, at any rate better than I had thought I did. I certainly 'interacted' with her. But again, that was such a life-affirming thing to do! Rush into someone's journal, make snarky remarks. She mocked you and was alive, and now she is dead. This is so very strange. And so banal at the same time. Like death, I guess.

Does elfofmirkwood know this? We had such fun going on about Orli on the paperback cover of Homer! How to square these things?

[bunnysquee.livejournal.com]

isn't it strange to think of now?

yeah, she does.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

It is very strange. I can't really feel sad, except in a general way, as I feel sad when reading about anyone's death in the paper, for example. But I didn't really 'know' her. I can also not feel bad about having gone into her LJ and about her having mocked her. In fact, the person elfofmirkwood teased and the person who died don't match up in my head at all. It is very strange.

[mandalaya.livejournal.com]

That is very eerie indeed.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

It is, isn't it? We're like the cutting edge of a new phenomenon. Soon a whole generation will have lived with it and died with it. *shivers*

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

that was *exactly* my reaction! i did not know her beside seeing her name here and there on fw, but several people on my flist were mourning her death, and i checked out her LJ somewhere between concern and morbid curiosity. And the thing that got me most were the entries before, just like you.

I think any death (or even old age as you leave your profession and your home) are like that...what remains of a life, what seems important... I just found my grandmother's photo albums again, full of pictures of people I didn't know, but somewhere I couldn't let my dad through them out, so they're stuck in some corner of the attic with my teenage diaries and memorabilias whose significance even I can't remember...

Part of me loves this intersection between permancence and immediacy that LJ offers...the other resents it for the very reasons that made you write this entry!!!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

We are the first generation to be leaving something like this behind. It is shiver-making to think about. But who will read these entries once we're dead? Some oral-historians of the future? And what weird and wonderful depositories will they encounter? And how will they crack flocked posts? Will those be lost for ever? Should we, with our dying gasps, post our passwords as a last farewell post???

[eyebrowofdoom.livejournal.com]

Passwords and access is what worries me, actually.

Kielle's husband was an lj'er and a fanficcer, and presumably had her password, and that's why he was able to let everybody know what was going on, and why he is now able to take charge of getting new mods for the comms she owned and so forth. And he is going to keep paying the registration on her domains.

But what about people who keep their online lives secret from their RL next of kin? Their online "estate" cannot be administered, if you will.

And online material does not have a stable existence, unlike traditional historical materials. It's insecure unless it's administered: most free services must remain active or they get deleted; paid services must continue to be paid for.

Could a next of kin get access to a deceased person's webmail, lj etc, if the deceased person had refused or been unable to supply the password, by presenting will/death certificate etc to the hosting company, I wonder? Could one write an online executor into an RL Will and expect that to be enforced? Is there any secure way for those with secret online lives to make provisions discreetly?

I'm not sure I'd trust someone in my online life to act as a secret executor of my online estate by, say, giving them all my passwords in case of my future death. Just because the forum makes us all drama queens, and there is such a lack of social, let alone legal, consequences for what we do online. On the other side of the coin, I wouldn't even want the burden of knowing someone else's passwords; I'd be too tempted.

I'll just have to not die. Let's all promise to not die.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

There was a death kerfuffle about a year ago (it turned out to be a hoax; isn't that awful? The online life is very vulnerable in that way because there's no way of checking up) but it spooked me so much that I exchanged passwords with Demelza in a fit of existential anxiety. She said, 'are we blood sisters now?' It is dizzying to reveal your password.

Come to think of it, I now have no idea where I put that password of hers.

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

I know. Very, very strange indeed. And terribly sad. It was odd because, although I didn't really know her at all, my strongest memory of her was that run-in the two of you had. And ... yeah. Strange and artificial, the way we divide 'LJ' and 'RL'. I was thinking - yesterday alone, LJ made me smile, laugh, cry and roll my eyes (not all at once, you understand). Anyway, sounds like real life to me.

/musing

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I've been trying to square the woman elformirkwood and I teased and the woman who died with her husband next to her, and I can't do it. They don't match up in my head. It is very strange.

[msilverstar]

This has been haunting me for days, and I'm glad you posted because that does help me think about it more clearly.

I'm going to give several people my password, including my husband. I made him an LJ and put him on all my filters, so it won't be such a surprise anyway.