The Dead Living Comic
Back in May 2005, The Living Comic had something nice to say about Scribs. The guy writing it, Occultatio (fun aside: try to figure out how you’d pronounce that), said he’s been a lurker on my site for years. It got my interest, I liked the way he wrote and what he wrote about, so I checked up on his blog occasionally.
But he hasn’t updated since November 2005, so it makes me wonder, did something happen to him? He appeared to make a big deal out of updating three times a week or giving copious apologies when he didn’t, but since then, nothing. Now his blog is slowly being corrupted, Reboot-virus-like, by comment spam and php include errors.
He might be fine and moved on to better things; he might be dead behind some new drywall in a Georgia basement, I don’t know. I just think about this occasionally…if I suddenly died, my friends would know, but there’d be a couple websites that were no longer being updated, and some collection of people who’d wonder why, and they’d never know what happened to me. There’s a weird feeling here for me, and I have a hard time putting it into words. I kinda want to say it’s about the immediacy of the Internet–or maybe its illusion of information permanence–but I think it’s independent of medium. It’s probably the same weirdness as if someone sent you a letter shortly before they died, and you receive it the day after their funeral.
October 13th, 2006 15:02
http://www.greggalcik.com/ffb.php
October 13th, 2006 20:49
Ah-Kuhl-Tay-Show
October 14th, 2006 01:29
Yes, yes, I wasn’t saying I didn’t know how to pronounce it. I just said it was interesting.
October 14th, 2006 11:29
I have thought about that sometimes. If I died, how would the Internet know? It’s a bigger problem if you actually have a fanbase, like I don’t. If you know you’re going to die (cancer, death row, etc.) you can give a trusted person your passwords, but what if you die suddenly? What then?
October 14th, 2006 16:02
Speaking of Scribs, have you not been reviewing questions for the last (*checks*) 87 days, or have they all been too lame to bother with?
October 16th, 2006 13:07
Something like this happened to long time SpinnWebe-ian, Orrin. He had a very active web site for a couple of years, then updates just stopped.
October 16th, 2006 18:21
… And what of the persistent websites? The ones where you never have to login or pay dues to maintain an account? I wonder how many Myspace accounts are actually owned by people who have since assumed room temperature, for example?
Maybe in my will I should have my username and password for someone to write an obit.
October 16th, 2006 23:52
I know Occultatio through another social network (spoooooky), and he’s a Harvard senior, so he may just not have the spare time to write any more.
October 26th, 2006 13:32
I’ve had the excact same feeling. Not that I’m running a site or something but my internet friends, how will they know if I died? It’s kinda creapy when you think about it.