Brief Episode

I see dead people. On MySpace. The first was a profile a friend of mine had in his Friends list. It was his teenage brother, who died a few years ago in a sad turn of events. The profile exists as a tribute & a marker, a gravestone in cyberspace. But I didn’t seek out the profile. It came to me.

Dying to See You Again

My friend mentioned it in an email message. He had mentioned his little brother in the past and I had inquired about him in a friendly email. I received a link with the profile page. I asked for details of a brother I thought was alive. I received a link to a dead person.

It wasn’t the first profile I’d seen of someone who’s passed away. But it was the only time someone has sent me a link to a deceased friend or relative. My first time to see someone’s profile online whom I knew was dead was on Friendster.

A dear friend of mine was best friends with young man whom I met on several occasions with her. When I browsed a stranger’s profile, I ran across his. I thought I’d been mistaken, but Friendster showed me the person we had in common — my dear friend. I was shocked to see his profile on Friendster. I’d forgotten — he was on Friendster when he was live alive. Friendster listed his status as not logged in for over two weeks. More like two years. Because he’s no longer alive.

Dead Can Date

Should there be new check box in online profiles? Alive? Dead? Missing? I can see future profiles right now:

I’m male. Single. I like listening to music and walks on the beach. I’m drug and disease free, seeking same. I’m into hooking up, dating, and making new friends. Please send me a message or post a comment or add me if you like what you see. Not seeking long term relationships. The only reason I can’t commit is because I’m dead.

Several of the social networking websites allow one to accept new friends automatically. It seems quite macabre, yet also comforting to me that we can be dead and gone, but still making new friends online.

Should We Log Out When We Check Out?

According to Salon, MySpace’s policy retains all profiles, regardless of living status, unless a family member requests the profile be removed.

This has become more important with such things as My Death Space, which receives a host of negative commentary on the web and in the blogosphere.

Oddly, none of the coverage I’ve seen of My Death Space connects the First Amendment to the questionable content easily accessible with the proliferation of self-publishing software for internet blogs. Or that the right of likeness and the right to privacy and what happens to each when we die.

Digital Dead Celebrities

Heirs to celebrities can sue, sometimes, to control the right of likeness. And they can also benefit financially. Remember the Audrey Hepburn Gap Ad? For skinny pants? The amazingly thoughtful Third Way advertising blog cited the commercial’s risk in alienating consumers because of the commodification of Audrey long after the fact:

“Audrey Hepburn is a cherished cultural icon and pairing her with the Gap (or with AC/DC for that matter) may strike some as heresy.”

He concludes:

“Sad but better for Audrey Hepburn than reanimation in a beer commercial. “

Alas, she’s selling tea in China. Steve Jonson of the Chicago Tribute blogged about the Hepburn’s son signing off on the Gap commercial:

“While it matters legally that her son OKd the ad campaign, it doesn’t matter morally. “

Hmmm… aesthetics as morality? Let’s revisit that one in the future. After we put Adam Sandler in jail for too many fart jokes.

I Know What You Did Last Summer - Before You Died

What of those who are not famous? The father of Justin Ellsworth, a casualty of the Iraq war who sued Yahoo for access to his son’s email in the hopes of publishing a tribute website with the email from strangers his son had mentioned as sustaining him emotionally in the war.

Yahoo’s terms of service state that when a customer dies, the account dies. If a family sends a copy of the death certificate to Yahoo, everything is purged:

“No Right of Survivorship and Non-Transferability. You agree that your Yahoo! account is non-transferable and any rights to your Yahoo! I.D. or contents within your account terminate upon your death. Upon receipt of a copy of a death certificate, your account may be terminated and all contents therein permanently deleted.”

The brave marine’s father built a website for his son Justin Ellsworth, but none of the email messages he recovered have been posted to date. The website requests those who’d like to share them, to contact him.

Does publication of your email or photos make you aghast before you’re a ghost? A paper by Jean B. Louis & Ryan K Garabo and an editorial from Smart Computing conclude that we should stipulate to our heirs in our wills what we would like done with our electronic effects.

Tributes & Shrines Online: a 21st Century Update of Death Portraits?

Post-mortem photography has a long and macabre history. A few years ago, a friend of mine showed me a book of family portraits where sometimes the sitters were all dead, and sometimes they were posed with living members. The web-site Thanatos.net features a horde of images. Reader beware: if the sight of dead babies upsets you, please do not click!

Ben Mattison’s excellent thesis, I found these words that Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote of the British version of these photographs:

“I long to have a memorial of every being dear to me in the world. It is not merely the likeness which is precious in such cases–but the association and the sense of nearness involved in the thing…the fact of the very shadow of the person lying there fixed forever! …I would rather have such a memorial of one I dearly loved, than the noblest artist’s work ever produced.”

But even before the sepia-toned portraits of Charon’s latest batch of passengers were made with photography, Americans (and presumably others) simply loved to carry their dead.

Robin Jaffe Frank’s book of mourning miniatures details a pre-photography custom of carrying one’s dead. She writes of the practice of painting in watercolor on thin disks of ivory (early mini-disks?):

“Portrait miniatures, small enough to fit in the palm of the hand, are unique among works of art for their highly personal associates. At the height of their American popularity, from 1760 to about 1840, these cherished portraits were frequently commissioned as a way to hold on to absent loved ones.”

From Sepulchre to DeathBerry

We’ve come full circle in the digital age. Social websites and death sites can be followed and tribute & shrine profiles maintained - and viewed! - on mobile devices. So we’re very close to having “every dear being” as Browning wrote - in the form of their visual likeness and profile and private thoughts - available to us. At the click of of a mouse. Or the stroke of an iPhone. I hope to never receive an obituary of a friend by SMS on my DeathBerry.

© 2007 Brief Episode.
Photo by Alejandra Mavroski