http://faerye.net/tag/mortality Posts tagged with "mortality" - Faerye Net 2005-10-12T19:57:20+00:00 Felicity Shoulders http://faerye.net/ http://faerye.net/post/blog-buddies Blog Buddies 2005-10-12T19:57:20+00:00 2008-08-07T11:37:14+00:00 <p>Perhaps I&#8217;m morbid&#8230;actually, scratch that, I know I&#8217;m morbid. At any rate, one of the symptoms thereof is that sometimes, I wonder what would happen to my blog if I were to die. One of its functions, after all, is to prove I was here, that I did something, even if it was silly&#8230;even if I never get a novel published, here&#8217;s my existential impression upon the world. If I die and stop paying domain fees, will anyone save the contents for posterity? Will they keep them on the web, or just make copies for my family and friends? </p> <p>Yes, I have actually pondered these things. But stop backing away slowly, this is actually a point that should be pondered. All over the world, people pick up blogs and put them down, like children with fad toys. What if someone&#8217;s blog is really <span class="caps">GOOD</span> and they stop updating it? Don&#8217;t you wonder what happened to them? I know I&#8217;ve wondered sometimes, when <a href="http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/" target="links">Baghdad Burning</a> goes a long while un-updated. I don&#8217;t know that girl&#8217;s real name (and even if I did, good luck finding reliable civilian casualty lists). How do I know whether there&#8217;s just even less electricity and telephone than usual in her suburb of Baghdad, or whether she&#8217;s part of a scrolling headline on <span class="caps">CNN</span>?</p> <p>So here&#8217;s what I propose. All you folks with blogger blogs and diaryland blogs and so forth &mdash; choose someone you really trust (preferably someone you don&#8217;t think will be in the car if your car is struck by a meteor) and give them your blog password. Then, if you ever die, the untold millions that doubtless troop by and appreciate your humanity will be advised of your mortality. It&#8217;s like &#8216;porn buddies&#8217; on Coupling. Except instead of moving your porn before your bereaved parents see it, they let the internet know that your comic book has become a graphic novel, that the intrinsically serial medium has stopped its series.</p><p>I don&#8217;t like to think about the vast waste of abandoned blogs frozen in time, proclaiming the sharpness and immediacy of thoughts and concerns long gone. It&#8217;s eery. Even I am not <em>that</em> morbid.</p>