I was just thinking about LiveJournals of people who have died

[xiphias]

I've seen several of them. I don't think that anyone I really knew PERSONALLY, in the flesh, who had a livejournal has died -- but there are more than one people on my friends list who died.

I don't remove them from my list. I . . . don't really know why.

If I were to make a random suggestion to LiveJournal/Six Apart, it would be to have a new format or something: that, when informed that an LJ user had died, that they could add a death date to the User info page, black border the journal, and maybe put a final post up, called "Wake." There's something so jarring about all the "We will miss you" messages following up the most mundane "So, I got a speeding ticket, and I payed the gas bill, and I am hoping to see that cute redheaded girl in class tonight. . ."

It's appropriate, of course. That's how death works. Or, one way that it does, anyway. But it would also be appropriate to do something different, ceremonial with it.

If I drop dead randomly, Lis, you can log into my account and make a new post titled "Wake." You can edit my bio info to mention that I'm no longer biological.

But I rather hope I don't drop dead randomly. At least, not for a good sixty, seventy more years. I rather enjoy being alive, I think. And am rather terrified of being dead.

Comments

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

I think I saw that as a suggestion, some time back. Problem is that LJ doesn't seem to let /anyone/ log in to accounts, and doesn't have a good way to verify that someone is indeed dead.

There are a few memorial communities out there, though.

[cellio]

I think the "wake post" entry is an especially good idea. I feel weird when the last post is something inane, and I've sometimes deliberately either surpressed an inane post or immediately followed it with a non-inane one, y'know, just in case.

[goljerp]

It would be interesting if everyone did that. In a way, it's like the "live every day as if it were your last" idea. The problem I have is that it's hard to always (often? consistently? occasionally? ever?) be non-inane in my posts...

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Post-date a post?

[jhitchin.livejournal.com]

What's really strange for me is that I have someone who is in my "Friends Of" list who has died and has been dead for quite some time, yet the account is still active. I see her name there every so often and it just feels odd.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Me too.
A friend died some years back; someone took his IRC nick. Very weird feeling.

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

I know at least four or five LJers who are dead. One at 9/11, one from cancer, one drug overdose/possible suicide, one brain aneurysm (that was just a couple weeks ago), and I feel like I'm forgetting someone. Or multiple someones.

It's weirdly comforting that their journals don't go anywhere. At the tip of my brain, I think I'm remembering LJ used to have a policy (and still may) of "we will never delete a dead person's journal".

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

it's covered under "we don't delete journals". :) LJ doesn't delete anyone's journal, not at this point. they might suspend it under certain circumstances, but not delete.

in regards to ian's entry: it wouldn't be possible for them to put up a black border and a "wake" entry because they don't know whether somebody really has died, and unless the person's legal heirs approach LJ in a way that allows verification of their identity and legal standing, they basically maintain the same hands-off approach they do in general -- LJ never ever posts to anyone's journal. i think that's a good thing; what with the occasional fuckwit lying about somebody's death, or faking zir own suicide.

if you want to make provisions, you can of course leave your account and password information as part of your will, or with somebody you trust, so they can take care of it.

[arib.livejournal.com]

I have one dead person on my AIM buddy list.

[porcinea.livejournal.com]

I'm here on LJ because a dear friend of mine killed himself. And I wasn't on LJ, so I didn't know how bad things had gotten for him. He was on the other coast, and we fell out of touch, and then he was dead.

So when I found other dear friends on LJ, I signed myself up, to keep in touch.

[nolly.livejournal.com]

I have a couple of dead people and several dead cats on my flist. Of the people, one was a close offline friend, and one was a friend-of-a-friend who I'd only recently friended when zie died. I haven't dropped any of them...it feels disrespectful, somehow. My ID on their info pages is like my name in the register at the funeral, a way of showing "I knew zir, and I cared."

[griffen.livejournal.com]

I have two dead people on my flist, and I know of three others around LJ who were never on my flist but whom I knew of through others, or whom I had known in person at one point or another.

I can't remove them either.

[linenoise.livejournal.com]

I actually have one person on my list who I knew in the flesh for many years before his death. The brother of one of my oldest friends committed suicide. His journal is still up. Someone bought him a permanent account, I don't know if that came before or after.

I never had him on my friend's list. We were never that close. I friended him for a while after it happened, but it felt wrong somehow, so I took it off again.

His last post was talking about depression and suicide. Not explicitly, maybe, but it was there. It seems a fitting monument, somehow.

I dunno. It still kinda gives me the heebiejeebies. Especially to read some of the comments. People are still trying to talk to him, and maybe some of them are hoping he'll reply. Somehow.

Wake

[tendyl.livejournal.com]

the Beloved has a envelope with my account info in it to open on my death. In that envelope are orders to make a pulic post letting people know (kinda an obituary thing). I connect to people via LJ and want them to know why suddenly I am no longer responding.

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

I've got a dead person on my f-list as well. Only actually met her once. But when I make f-list cuts, she's safe, even if she hasn't posted or commented in a long time.

Yeah, if I should happen to die, I want my wife to log in, and make post about it. Then I want her to archive my entire LJ to CD, for my daughter. But, I don't plan on getting dead for at least another hundred years. Probably a lot more.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

The idea of having someone else make a final post in one's LJ in the event of death is a good idea. If LJ can't do it themselves, more people should do as others have said, and arrange for a final post where people could reply with their goodbyes.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I have one dead person on my FL, and I can't take her off either.

You know when you have a password and a question? I always pick a question that only Rysmiel and Zorinth and I know the answer to, but which we all know, so that if I am dead they can answer the question and get into the account. I always do this. I happened to mention this a while ago, in the context of "how do you pick passwords", and was surprised that they thought this sort of planning really peculiar.

[rosamund.livejournal.com]

::hugs:: I hope you're around for a good long while, too.