Death – The Last Internet Taboo

Here is a sad thought. After your death, more people will post condolences on your Facebook page than actually visit your real, dead, analog, human body in the funeral parlor.

The internet is no longer an invention. It is now an experience. Humans date online, fall in love online, and post marriage and sex videos online. And this might be just the beginning of what is to come.

Recently, I saw a news report where people give their children, still in utero, social media pages. We’re creating a whole new generation of people who will never know life without the internet. Who will never know information was once cherished and sought after. Now, information is cheap, fast, broken, ubiquitous, and consequently disposable.
The web will only become more pervasive in the lives of the upcoming generation.

And why not?
We are sexting. We are tweeting. We are Googling. We are photo sharing. We happily post all our unrequested thoughts on forum pages.

One thing we don’t do online, at least not yet, is die.
Why is this? What will change people’s minds?
(I’m not advocating for or against dying online. I just think it’s inevitable).
I envision a website coming soon. This page will connect thousands of dying people with others who are family, friends, or maybe just dying themselves.

Imagine an entire online community of dying people who are watching after other infirm people, and in turn, being watched themselves.

“Good friends. Be with me online while I pass away. Don’t let me make this momentous transition alone. Somewhere between September 1 and September 15. Do click on over and pay your final respects as I shuffle off.”

Sort of like a pre-emptive, cheap funeral without the strange mustachioed man in a zoot suit feigning concern. The idea only needs a morose entrepreneur and a name. Onlinedying.com sounds so gloomy.

This post is a revisit of an idea the author surveyed before. See the previous post “Dying In Real Time” for more.