LETTER FROM
THE EDITOR
HUFFINGTON
01.20.13
Death and
the GOP
N THIS WEEK’S ISSUE,
Jaweed Kaleem examines a phenomenon that
unites two of my obsessions: the role of social media in
our lives, and the ways our society
talks — or more often, declines to
talk — about death.
Social networking sites like Facebook are opening up the conversation about death in new ways,
including allowing people’s profiles
to remain even after their death —
a practice that can be therapeutic
for friends and family who want to
share photos and messages about a
departed loved one. But it also raises questions, from basic issues of
privacy (who should be able to view
that profile?) and inheritance (who
should maintain it?) to farther-out
concerns like: Should a person be
“tagged” at her own wake?
As Kaleem writes, “Facebook,
ART STREIBER
I
with 1 billion detailed, self-submitted user profiles, was created
to connect the living. But it has
become the world›s largest site of
memorials for the dead.” Facebook
contains the profiles of about 30
million people who have died. It’s
not quite ancient Rome — where
“Memento Mori” (“Remember Death”) was carved on trees
and statues — but the existence of a
social media afterlife is one way we
are using the latest technology to
deal with a timeless fact of life.
And it ’s not just Facebook.
MyDeathSpace.com has a message
board where visitors can view and
comment on social media profiles
of the dead. My Wonderful Life
allows the living to plan ahead,
offering digital estate planning
Join the
conversation
on Twitter
and Facebook