Everyone in this photo one day will die (photo of
Adam Fagen)
Look, one day you will die. Deformed inside an industrial fan. Having struck with a light bulb. Peacefully while you sleep after masturbation without precedent. It does not matter so much how you die. Your veins will shrink in the flesh. New formations will grow inside your head, neck and lungs. You will die. Your muscles will tremble and dissolve. Your bones begin to rub and become dust. You are dying. You are dying right now. You will die.
Anyway: Facebook knows this and for this it presents a new tool to help users manage their accounts after the time of death. As he says
The Next Web The new tool "Your Legacy Contact" will allow you to appoint a friend, who will take control of your account if you end up. This person will be able to pin one last message on your homepage, notify your friends about the funeral, and update your profile to make it more serious and appropriate.
The profile picture is the most important of all. I have a nagging feeling that I might one day be murdered—my limbs end up in garbage cans, my head at the bottom of a lake, my torso fed to dogs, or something—and I worry about what picture of me will used in the news, as part of the manhunt that will be organized with torches and dogs to locate what is left of my genitalia. I'm afraid she'll be the one who's too young, has acne scars, my hair is shit, and I drink beer through the shower at some house party. Maybe she's the one who's face down on the floor after being hit in the balls with a wooden bat. Or maybe the one I'm dressed as his character Nintendo in an awful club, looking like I just realized I fell for it. There are no decent, respectable photos of my existence. This is what I fear more than anything to do with the inevitability of death.
Last summer we had to open the mother's laptop - fortunately it was still logged in - and we made a post "Hello everyone, although it's a little awkward, of course" - then we asked Facebook to digitally bury her account. It was a bit weird thing to manage during an already strange and sad period, but imagine what would happen if it had Twitter or Instagram or a network of strange racist friends who had met by commenting under video clips on YouTube. All of these accounts should be closed and immortalized. Friends only on the internet should be notified. The internet makes it all the more complicated to die.
I guess this is an indication that Facebook is growing. Before 8 years it was a platform where the prodigious youths could share their photos from their night craps. Then came the place where you could announce your first stupid little relationship and your even deeper separation. Through this you have organized every party you have been in for the last five years. Know your friends' birthdays and yours, the important events for you better than you. The Facebook grew up with us-holding our hand by sending us invitations to Farmville, letting us know our situation by writing something like, "I just lost my cell phone. Send me all your phones "- and now he is studying the issue of death. I'm not saying that Facebook literally wants us to die, but Facebook has definitely been transformed and is now really aware of death, in this panic-like way that causes sweat.
The Facebook he woke up doing cocaine and tripped over a fox in the street and just freaked out. Facebook calls you at 5am. and he tells you "dude, I love you. I know I don't say it enough but dude just don't forget I love you. Because one day we're all going to die and I don't want you to die not knowing that I love you." Facebook says "do you want to play Candy Crush right now?"
Creating “Your Legacy Contact” is probably a more important decision than the emergency contact you fill out in an employment contract. Perhaps even more so than choosing a best man or maid of honor at the wedding. You die at work and you just need the most responsible person in your family to put your bloated corpse into a coffin. But your Facebook page? You need someone to 'Like' every compassionate message. Someone who knows who Selfie from Instagram you are more beautiful. Someone to hide all those pictures of you from the parties where you passed out and had your ass out. Essentially, Legacy Contact's role is primarily that of an editor: to filter out all the bad bits of your life and embellish and enhance the good like painting.
Anyway, you'll be fine. You still have a lot of time. You will live forever. But for the rest of us—all condemned to invisible timers above our heads counting down to death—Legacy Contact is a stark reminder that the Facebook party is over and that our youth is but a twinkling μνήμη and that we also need to start making responsible people our friends before the end inevitably comes.
