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The online death: How do people deal.
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Wiki's not perfect, but we're talking pseudo-science (I'm sorry, I suppose "soft-science" is the P.C. term) here, so I'm sure wiki's close enough.
Same principle as "tears of joy", why people will cry at sad movies-- even if people are outside our "monkeysphere," if the circumstances of their death-- or their life-- are reflected in our own, I think we experience "empathy."
On that note, I know for a fact I've bawled even when people I know only in name have passed away on forums I've been a member at. I'm very emotionally thorough, and have always found something in their lives that resonates so strongly in mine that I feel emotional for that reason--
so, the question I would raise is, since I am being emotionally affected for myself, and not truly mourning, am I being illegitimate when I offer condolences and talk as if these people who have passed away influenced my life?
EDIT: Just purely a logical question here. I'm not saying it would change how I felt or acted, just asking if the logic follows that the source of my emotions being Person X does not equal the object of my emotions being Person X.
For a lot of people, that's going to be how it is. I can't say I know even a tenth of the people on this forum, and if one of them were to pass, it would be a "well, that sucks" moment and move on. If it was someone prominent on the site or who I happened to know well, I would take it not unlike how I would take a death of someone I knew IRL. However, even then there is still a bit of "moving on" which is easier - their absence is less noticable in the mass of people that use a site. In a smaller community the impact would be far more apparent.
I think we should take a minute to admire this. Conceptually, the joke is extremely predictable - but the execution is masterful.
Agreed. I mean, there are a lot of people I talk to from this forum regularly, and some I have met in real life - and more than once! - but more than a few have just dropped out of my life just like that. One day we'll be talking four, five times a week, and the next...nothing. Now, whilst they last, I'd consider these relationships to be quite real, and important to me at the time. But I have a fairly quick recovery time.
Mind you, I'm not exactly one to fight for friendships in real life, either. I'm terribly lazy at maintaining them; people flit in and out of my life according to where I'm living at the time. I'd rather a friendship just suddenly stopped one day and left me with happy memories than I broke up with a friend through a fight.
Not meaningful? I disagree. Despite agreeing with Rook I don't think that what he says automatically means that community sites are meaningless. Are you aware of how many people have found significant others, or made a new roommate, or just found a new drinking buddy directly through these forums? I'm willing to bet it's much, much higher than you think.
Anyway - as for me, I've never had to deal directly with any death. The only death I've ever encountered was my great-aunt, and she'd had cancer and I didn't know her terribly well so a) it was expected and b) I didn't miss her. I wasn't sad when she died. I've always wondered how I'd react to the death of someone I knew. I don't think it would affect me too much. But I do consider a lot of people on these forums to be good friends, and I would like to be informed if they died.
I thought this too.
Then my grandfather died who i was pretty close to. And i still thought that.
The day of his funeral, i held up pretty well until the herse came around the corner, with his coffin inside it, and his prokpie hat sat on the top.
I suprised myself and broke down.
You will never know until you're there.
I can understand that. I think I'd probably be emotional at a funeral even if I didn't know them that well. So far, I've not had to attend a funeral, however.
I envy you.
The only four funerals i have ever been to have happend in the last year and a half.
My first funeral i was a pallbearer.
i also envy you.
I remember not too long ago a link to a thread on Something Awful where a member had actually killed a neighbour and himself, and learned that they have a strict poicy of banning the accounts of dead members (but how you find out for sure is still the problem).
I'm actually dealing with a good friend dying as we speak. He's older, in his 50's, and has been dealing with various illnesses for years. Now, he's at the point where his body can no longer sustain itself, and it's giving out completely.
He's decided that it's his time. He's not really treating to live, but living to treat- and he doesn't want to do that any longer. Not with the pain he's in, or the emotional pain it's causing his loved ones.
He wrote an e-mail to us, his extended online family, in order to explain his decision, and to begin to wrap things up. Without the internet, there wouldn't really have been a way for him to get through to all of us. One phone call would have been difficult, can you imagine ten?
As I said, he's one of the best friends I have, and he lives in Indiana. If it wasn't for him and his partner, I wouldn't have met my wife. We owe him a lot more than we could ever really repay.
In the defense of the internet, it has been our #1 tool for keeping all our friends together this last week. From Orlando, to Boston, to L.A. to Seattle. We couldn't have done it otherwise.
A friend of a forum friend died, a few years back, while playing on a beach in the autumn. They were there alone, and had built a sand castle that he crawled into, and it collapsed on him. He died on the beach, and this forum friend told us the story.
I cried, but not because I was really mourning the kid-- I didn't know him. I couldn't. I cried because it was absolutely goddamn retarded, and because it's a vulnerability we all share, and because it resonated with my own fear of dying in something silly-- I am the sort of person who would, in that scenario, say "Don't go into that sand castle."
So when someone died, a country away where I couldnt've said that, it resonated with me, and I cried, and I told the forum friend that it was absolutely terrible and you have my best wishes-- I'll pray for your friend.
But I was only ever emotionally-affected because it resonated with my personal being. Am I still lying?
Seems like in the future we'd need some measure of "Inform people of my death here:" in a will and testament, but it'd probably get updated or revised quite often depending on the web site's longevity. I know I spent 4 years of my life entirely online, outside of occasional foraging for food downstairs, and losing somebody I knew online would suck as much as anyone I knew in "real" life dying. Not like them existing in a different kind of existence to our mind makes their loss any easier to deal with, I'd figure.
Here's hoping we find a way to link up our heart-beat to a kind of auto-posting emailer that'll immediately post the time of my death at web sites I'm registered at to have each account removed, heh. Though it'd suck to have heart attacks or something create false alarms.
I'm pretty much the same way...I've been to several funerals, but even the one for my grandfather, I only got teary-eyed, and only when they played taps. The idea of death doesn't upset me, but music associated with it always gets me.
I think I get it from my father, who is very practical and matter-of-fact about death, as is his mother. When my grandfather died, my dad just called me up and asked "Hey, are you coming over to watch 24 tonight? Because grandpa just died, and if you could go by the house and tell your sister, I'd appreciate it". My grandma was the same way, when I asked her how she was doing, she just said "I'm doing fine, I hope I get to go that quick when I die" (he died of sudden and massive heart failure)
Xbox Live Gamertag: Suplex86
But if you're telling people that someone's death affected you greatly when what's really affecting you is the thought that it could happen to you, I think it would be more honest to say something about how "the scary thing is that that could happen to anyone" than "it hurts to think that I'll never be able to interact with this person again". Simply wishing they hadn't died on the grounds that you don't like death for whatever reason (mine being usually something to the effect of so and so not deserving this, hence not giving a crap when a shitty person dies) is a seperate matter entirely, something like "it's terrible that this happened" or whatever. Essentially, I want people to say what they mean, not what they think sounds the best to the people they're talking to, as I think honesty is one of the highest means of showing respect. If something has to be phrased delicately, then by all means phrase it delicately, but still tell people what you're actually feeling if you're going to tell people what you feel, or don't tell them anything if you're unwilling to tell them the facts.
Of course, most people won't like that. Most people would probably see it as pretty high disrespect. But then most people don't really value honesty unless it's honesty they want to hear.
But what you say you said seems fine to me. It doesn't look like you're making any untrue claims.
I'm pretty much with him there.
It's always weird to think about that sort of thing from a personal perspective though. If I died, how many people I converse with every single day on the internet would care? How many would ever even find out I was dead?
Attention Hudsucker employees:
We regretfully announce that at 30 seconds after the hour of noon, Hudsucker time, Waring Hudsucker, Founder, President, and Chairman of the Board of Hudsucker Industries, merged with the infinite.
To mark this occasion of corporate loss, we ask that all employees observe a moment of silent contemplation.
Thank you for your kind attention.
This moment has been duly noted
on your timecards and will be deducted from your pay.
That is all.
i tihkn they shut it down but for a while there was a site dedicated to dead people's myspace pages
one of the most cruel and funny things I have ever seen.
but anyway, my cousin posts here sometimes as does one of my friends (very rarely) but fuck yeah I'd want them to make a post here, in its OWN THREAD, telling you guys I'm gone.
And I'd want to know about any of you too. I'm closer to this "place" than I am to my college God knows, and maybe almost as close as I was to my high school... that makes all of you close to me simply through a shared community. That's besides the ones of you I know better than that and consider friends.
I have yet to become so close with an online friend that I would actually get emotional if they died or something.
You mess with the dolphin, you get the nose.
My source was a trustworthy sort, so I spent the rest of the night crying into my pillow.
Of those on the net who I'm close to, I have thus formed a habit of checking their local obituaries whenever I lose contact for too long; once I even swallowed my pride and contacted an old rival of sorts (RP crowd leads to strange grudges) who I had heard knew how to get her number (He had done so to show off once, and she had mentioned it), and then I went and had a short chat with her mom.
Now with blogs, I basically track the things to make sure she's safe and happy, since our work hours clash horribly, and we only really talk like once a month at best of late.
But as for random forum types... I pretty much just feel neutral about it. I'm neither willing to make accusations nor assume the worst. Hell, I knew one person who was using someone else's account in secret for YEARS before revealing herself, so you just can't trust people on the internet until you have a much more direct link to them.
I suppose a connection with a real person, rather than the words they choose to represent them online, are really important to me. I met one of my longest, most excellent friends via IRC, and now that I've flown interstate to see her several times over the course of about 8 years, I think I'd feel extremely fucked if she died. But if she was still just words on a screen, regardless of how hilarious and touching some of those words are... I don't know?
Also, what happened with CT? I'm not getting something.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
And I want someone to gank the holy hell out of all of them.
hi5!, CT. You dick, getting to see baby elephants. Seriously.
I've spent hours just looking at all the fascinating ways in which ordinary kids live and die.