Status: Dead

Something very creepy about modern social media are those who have profiles but are now deceased, as in kicked the bucket. Bought the farm. Dead.

This is sad and creepy, but not without humor. Oh yes, you knew this was coming.

What happens on dead people's profiles is that being the online world is so impersonal, chances are really good the friends/buddies/whatever of the deceased do not know of their untimely demise.

On MySpace in particular, you'll see promotional comments on dead people's profiles all the time. Here's a good example (PDF). When you load up that page you'll see a hot tattooed girl in her early 20s. Don't get turned on, because she's dead as a doorknob. How did she die? No clue.

Yes I find it comical she described herself on her page as, and I quote, a "SICK B***H." Aaaand add to that a video of someone lighting up a fart. I'm not kidding. Go see for yourself.

And of course in the page comment area you see promo ads from other MySpace harlots. Very typical.

I feel there should be a new status update option for social media profiles, that being dead, as in "Current Status: Dead" or maybe "Current Mood: Pushing up daisies." Either would work. It's always the case where a friend of the recently deceased has access to the account, so they could set the "dead" status and that would be that.

In this fashion, when the living see the profile of one of their former friends as deceased, they'd say, "Oh! Darn.. dead person. Guess I'd been not post my promo ad for my new crappy CD."

Published 2009 Oct 20