A co-worker and dear friend – let’s call her Lily – passed
away about two years ago. At the time of her decease, she had all of five
Facebook friends, of whom I was one.
She used to fret over her Facebook status constantly. She
hated the fact that Facebook presented her as both a graduate of Harvard and
Simmons. “Why doesn’t it always show Harvard first?” she asked me.
“It’s Facebook,” I said. “It addresses itself to the person
looking at it. It may think I care more about Simmons than Harvard, and it’ll
show me Simmons first.”
She looked murderous. “There’s got to be a way to fix this.”
Well, if you’re on Facebook, you know that there are very
few ways to outfox Facebook.
Anyway, as I said, she passed away. I did not delete her
from my Facebook friends, because I like seeing her name come up on my
“friends” list. (Three of my seventy Facebook friends are deceased. I refuse to
delete them. I like seeing their faces and names on the list. It allows me to
pretend that they’re still alive.)
And then, the other day, I saw the following in my Facebook
news feed:
LILY posted (five hours ago): I'm on the 6th day of
Raspberry ultra drops and have lost 7lbs already, it's insane! the first 3 days
alone I lost over 2lbs. it really is amazing... you gotta check it out!
Dear me. Evidently someone hacked poor Lily’s Facebook
account (which was, of course, never deactivated), and is using it to promote
Raspberry Ultra Drops, whatever the hell they are.
This is pretty funny, since (as I said) Lily had all of five
Facebook friends, and I’m sure all of us were startled to see Lily posting on
Facebook from beyond the grave.
But it made me think of George Carlin’s old joke: “If you die
while you’re on hold, will the little light on the telephone stop blinking?”
We all have dozens of Internet identities and membership and accounts.
What happens to them when we die? Should
I notify Facebook that Lily’s account has been hacked? If I do, will they do
anything about it?
And what will your survivors do when you pass away, and suddenly six months later you come back from the
dead on Facebook with news about a new weight-loss plan?
Probably it’s worth thinking about.
I love thinking about Lily, floating around in the afterlife,
incensed about her Facebook account being hacked. Lily was the soul of propriety.
But I suspect that, wherever she is right now, she’s pretty calm
about it.
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