In the early days, Adele McAlear didn’t think about what she would do if one of her online friends passed away. Most of her friends on Twitter, Facebook, and the like were people she had never met in person. But, eventually it happened. Someone whose picture she had seen every day in her Twitter roll died. Adele was suddenly faced with the question of how to handle it.
Adele is a marketing consultant in Montreal. The incident set her on a quest to find out as much as she could about death and digital legacy. Now she is considered an expert in Canada on the relationship between death, social media and technology. As it turns out, it is a subject that we as a society have been slow in facing.
A shorter version of this interview will air on a future episode of Spark, but you can hear the full, uncut interview below, or download the MP3. [runs 14:34]
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I struggled with this a fair bit last year when my younger brother died. Fortunately he kept all of his passwords written down in a drawer near his computer or we wouldn't have been able to do as much as we have.
Many online services don't have any real death policy, I remember the responses I got back from Steam and iTunes were the same, but the approaches very different. The person at iTunes basically said that they can't transfer the account, but you can have multiple accounts authorised on the same device, so offered a password reset.
The help person at Steam initially responded that he couldn't transfer items, and then when asked for what they could do responded that he was unable to help me because I was not the owner of the account. Which was the worst possible response I could have received.
One of my worst memories associated with the event was having to log into his facebook account to ask his friends not to talk to the press and having one of them contact him on facebook chat asking "Nick is that you?" and having to respond negatively.
Adele McAlear says *if you die". I think this says it all.
Ravelry, a 500,000 user, international site for knitters and crocheters, recently discussed this. http://www.ravelry.com/discuss/for-the-love-of-ra…
One of the points discussed was that "passed on" doesn't always translate, so they went with "died".
I caused a situation to happen somewhat like one in the Adele's interview,
When she commented…"at least this friend of theirs is living on in some capacity."
It was pre-social media (2005) yet public. I made a radio request for a family friend on Shelley Solmes'
Take Five Radio 2 show. Wanting to display that 'modern' classical music could be tender and poignant,
I asked them to play the Janacek violin concerto, Catherine Belyea was the co-host, which was a treat
because she's a Czech/Slovack music specialist.
They liked my choice and story and placed it on a repeat broadcast when host's
were unable to chair live. Then, you can see where this is going, our friend passed away and for a year
they continued the repeat broadcasts. Even though the request was in the present tense,
it became a touching tribute, especially since the Janacek work was titled
'The Wandering (pilgrimage) of a Little Soul'.
I probably wouldn't have thought of her on those days it aired.
Eventually someone might have called the radio to say she'd checked out.
One of my family members said I should have, that it was my responsibility,
but I didn't and the memory of my friend lived on the airwaves a little longer.