Wednesday, September 16, 2009

death in the digital age..

Facebook has changed the death rituals..

My friend had many far-flung facebook friends. Many of them have used her facebook wall to say goodbye... including me.

We've shared the bad news via Facebook -- and I'll share memorial details that way later.

We've been looking on the news for updates on the story -- and it felt more real to see her name in print.

Just now her death was the lead story on the local 6:00 news-- and folks from far away are now looking for the story to come up on-line.

While some things, like death, are inevitable -- the death rituals are changing... it's kind of weird.

1 comment:

Bardiac said...

When I played Everquest, the community dealt with several deaths. Partly the issue was that we all used avatars and rarely knew real names. And the people in the off-line part of our lives didn't know our passwords usually. So getting information through was difficult, but once it got through, it got posted in forums associated with the server or guilds. Very different, though.