Ameliorating the Inevitable
I mentioned a few of the larger conversations happening around death, and would like to focus on one that transcends digital space, but requires careful consideration in relation to it.
You, too, will die. It is absolutely critical that the larger cultural movement around demystifying death and making space at home for big questions extends to our digital selves.
Caitlin Doughty is a big name in the death scene these days, and it is with a nod to her that many people start the difficult conversation at home. She is working to build an atmosphere of death positivity- founding Order of the Good Death, which is rife with supportive messages, resources, and information- and an informative YouTube channel Ask a Mortician.
While this is at least as important as getting your AFK affairs in order, it is still, unfortunately, an imperfect process, as Caroline Sinders discovered when taking it to task in 2016:
Death online, like in real life, can be a difficult topic for conversation. “Designing for death” isn't a product design specialty. The vocabulary that companies use to talk about death online is itself telling of the disorganized state of the conversation. When talking about a deceased user inside of a system, Google refers to the account as “inactive,” while Facebook talks about “legacy” and “remembering" and Twitter simply refers to it bluntly as "shutting down an account." For survivors of the real-life dead, this disparate approach can be emotional and confusing.
Neither Twitter nor LinkedIn have a way for me to tell them what I want to happen to my account when I eventually shuffle on. They will allow an immediate family member or designated member of the estate to shut down an account, but neither platform has a way to mark the account obviously "dead"—you can't change the Twitter "verified" blue check mark to a black R.I.P.
Initially I planned on making a curated guide to plan for your/my e-/death, and that is still something I may do in lieu of data-anxiety, but this list is more comprehensive than I could have possibly hoped for.
Consider this your memento mori for the day.