Of death and Facebook

2016-02-12T13:50:00-05:00

dying online is open to anyone willing to share his or her end with the blogosphere. [...] This dissolving of the barriers between the public and the intimate is death’s vital new upgrade... death has acquired a “neurotic separation” from daily life, and this separation has been identified as part of the “malaise of the late twentieth century.” But thanks to the internet, death might be losing some of its pariah status.

Prompted by the recent mass internet-public mourning of David Bowie, as well as a few agencies that offer post-death social media updates to perpetuate the online persona of your late loved-ones, Adrian Shaughnessy (graphic designer at the Royal College of Art) reflects on how a death shared online gets us that one step closer to immortality, "or for as long as the links keep working."

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Of death and Facebook