I got this in my email the other day, and it made me sad:
Marj is a friend from Canada (she migrated there around 1995) who I met over mIRC in 1998 and met in real-life around 2000. We lost touch after I started working in 2002. A month before my wedding in 2004, I asked a common friend for her number because she wasn’t answering my text messages in the one registered in my phone book.
That was when I got the shock of my life — our friend told me she had died of leukemia two months before.
She never told anyone of her friends about her condition, so when she died only the friends her parents knew were informed. A few weeks later her father answered my text messages through her number that I had texted, confirming what I had been told.
And up until now, three years after, the Friendster reminders continue.
I could just imagine how I would react to this if I were her father or her brother. In one hand, it might hurt me for reminding me of her birthday, a celebration of life, which she had already lost. On the other hand it might remind me to celebrate the life that she had and she lived — and it will remind me for the rest of the years until Friendster closes shop — though there might be a Google cache of the profile pages.
The implications of our personal details being stored in electronic form means that she, and all of us, would be immortalized online until our accounts have long been inactive and purged from the Internet.
What do you think? Should there be a way to inform Friendster that a person has passed away so that such reminders would cease, and their account would be disabled? What about our blogs? Our writings? Our opinions? Our comments? Our arguments?
When we die, what legacy of our persona would we leave behind in the Internet?
Something to ponder on, and remind one’s self of, whenever we write a blog entry or comment, post in forums, upload pictures, or even twit.
Happy Birthday Marj! I know somehow you’ll get to read this, now that you’re with the Savior you have so much loved. 
10 responses so far ↓
1 Sidney // Sep 19, 2007 at 3:07 pm
Sad story… too young to die.
Once you are on the Internet you can’t erase it anymore. It is stored forever in countless servers. There are even companies that are storing web pages as a business. So even if you decide to stop your blog and even if you erase everything, somewhere someone has a copy of it.
But then there are also physical records that will outlive you (school records, marriage contract, death certificates,etc.)
2 What's Your Exit Strategy? - Manuel Viloria.com // Sep 19, 2007 at 6:36 pm
[...] entry The Immortality of your Persona in the Internet got me thinking. What happens when you go, but your blog [...]
3 The immortality of your persona in the Internet - PinoyBlogoSphere.com - Pinoy Bloggers Society (PBS) | “Anyone* Can Blog” // Sep 19, 2007 at 9:53 pm
[...] (read more…) [...]
4 andianka // Sep 20, 2007 at 1:28 am
oh.. i know the feeling. i had the same experience where i was reminded of a birthday of someone who’s no longer here, i think that was last month. in a way, i do pray that these internet personas stay forever (if possible). it’s nice to have a memoriam of the people you love which you can visit every now and then. and yes, with that thought, we should be considerate and compassionate about what we post. something like that.
5 r.o. // Sep 21, 2007 at 3:02 pm
i have a close friend who actually has died na (at such a young age) and he has a friendster account, and i never had the courage of checking his site after his death. i don’t know why.
6 aajao // Sep 21, 2007 at 6:07 pm
she’s a PExer too, ayt?
life…
7 Jon Limjap // Sep 21, 2007 at 6:55 pm
Sidney,
Well, physical records of your friends don’t show up in your mail to remind you of them being gone.
andianka,
It’s more like, you should be careful of what you’re leaving behind. If you’re leaving behind a trail of scandal and controversy… diba?
r.o.,
I know. And you don’t have to. But Friendster chooses to remind you anyway.
aajao,
Don’t think so. ‘Di ko naman siya nakasama sa mga EB ng Singles forum, #lasalle undernet lang.
8 benj // Sep 21, 2007 at 11:31 pm
The Philippine Blog Community has yet to lose one of its own - unlike Singapore or the US. I wonder how people will react…
9 Christianne // Sep 30, 2007 at 8:13 pm
Yes, she’s a PExer. I used to talk to her a lot in the Personals forum and she was a frequent poster on the “PExers who have a personal relationship with Christ” thread.
10 Jon Limjap // Sep 30, 2007 at 9:38 pm
benj,
I don’t want to find out, really.
Christianne,
Ah, yes. Now I remember.
Leave a Comment