stubby43
aka Phil is a 25.42 year old boy, has been a member since December 22, 2006, has scored 3,809 submissions, giving an average score of 2.65, helping 191 designs get printed.
I dont really know how to start this topic because its a pretty difficult one to discuss but I we need to re think how we prepare for death because our current methods of dealing with dont really work in an online world.
I think it might be easier if I explain why this subjects been on my mind today.
This morning I found out that a video blogger I follow on youtube died on the 26th, he uploaded this video the day before he died.
I never met him and I'd only spoken to him once through comments on a video but I watched the videos he posted every week for about 8 months. I guess form my point of view he was more like a celebrity but he wasnt, he was a regular guy uploading videos about his life in Japan.
What I'm trying to get at is before the internet you knew your family and your friends and those friends were generally pretty close by (or a phone call away) but online its different.
I'd consider most of you guys my friends but the majority of you I've never met in person, we all have profiles on lots of different social networks and for people like Rodger Swan they have subcribers (he had 5,795), people that they've never met or talked to but have had some sort of contact with him non the less.
Our group of contacts is much, much larger than it used to be.
How do you inform all these people that a person like Rodger Swan has died?
Given that you dont know the passwords to his accounts and thats assuming you know what networks he goes on at all.
Rodger Swan was lucky because his family knew he made youtube videos and his parents contacted really well known youtubers in that community but most of us dont have that kind of set up.
My parents know I'm addicted to threadless and my account is signed onto all the computers so they could probably use it to post a blog so if anything happened they'd probably alert people.
But its my facebook and twitter that I'm worried about, the fact is a lot of my friends live in canada.
My parents would have no way of contacting them at all if they couldnt work out my password.
its awful news to hear when anyones died, let alone someone you had vague contact with. the thought of people over the internet suddenly disappearing without a trace and you not knowing they've died or something is really sucky =/ I thought about it the other day when the posthumous insectoid print was awarded to harpo25/bart. That really affected the threadless community even though not many people knew him in person.
It's not something I like thinking about too much.
Wow, I mean I didnt really know him I'm not even sure if we ever talked but I loved his work and that was such an amazing thing for the thread staff to do.
yeah I never knew him, I think he subbed more before I started blogging, but yeah that was pretty sad. It's sad when you hear about these kind of things down the grapevine though I guess if it wasn't for the internet you wouldn't have even had the chance to know these people so it can't all be too bad.
I think it should be a good thing, its good that the videos are up there still to be treasured. I noticed on Rodger's youtube page he was still getting comments from people offering condolences so it can almost be turned into a tribute to his memory I guess.
Yeah theres been a big out pouring for him all over the place, he has a facebook fan page thats been turned into a digital tribute to his memory, theres been a lot of tweets going out for him and a few people have made videos on youtube.
He was a big part of the Japanese youtube community, a lot of those guys meet up so I guess the only thing they really know how to do is a video response.
This came from his parents:
"We wish to thank everyone for their kind words and let you all know that it means the world to the family. We never imagined that he touched so many lives. We received the results and the official cause of death was Internal bleeding in the abdominal cavity caused by acute pancreatitis. We will forever miss our beloved son. He is our angel. Randy and Roberta Swan."
My mum explained it to me and its a pretty horrible way to die, it also comes out of no where and the odds of surving are pretty low.
I'm thinking of putting together something like a donor card so people can contact everyone if something happens.
randyotter3000 on Jan 28 '10 at 5:57pm people who actually care rather than having a passing interest will find out somehow regardless of preparation
Maybe but how many people have just stopped posting on threadless, anyone of them could of died we have no way of knowing we just assume that they've moved on to another site.
randyotter3000 on Jan 28 '10 at 5:57pm people who actually care rather than having a passing interest will find out somehow regardless of preparation
Maybe but how many people have just stopped posting on threadless, anyone of them could of died we have no way of knowing we just assume that they've moved on to another site.
well like I said if you cared about someone more you would notice their absence and maybe check facebook or blogs or something?
I dunno what would happened if i died. I'm pretty sure my husband would be too devastated to tell the online world. I'm thinking either it would be like hey what happened to that Tess girl? Or my mother might go through my phone and tell everyone on there which Brian and Tasha are on there so they'd be the first to know.
I think if you look at the print it talks about his death, that or there is a threadless news post about it.
I remember harpo25...he did all those lovely drawings...gosh. I didn't know that he died or anything. That is really upsetting.
And I do think about this kind of thing, a lot, because...I'm morbid, I guess. But Facebook is especially weird -- a classmate committed suicide about a year ago and his profile is still up and people write on his wall. I don't really know how I feel about that. Facebook in general is kind of tacky and sometimes it feels like leaving his profile up is the epitome of that (especially given the circumstances of his death.) But then it also feels like that's sort of the contrast, and that it's a public and necessary reminder of his presence and it would be far, far worse to just erase it.
I've thought about what it would be like if my boyfriend or I died -- we have it set to show "in a relationship with..." I don't want to think about it, but I'm just kind of...sick like that I guess. And even though I've thought about it I still don't know what we would do.
I imagine Phil or Annie would figure it out sooner or later. My parents are technologically challenged, and I can't see them logging onto my Threadless account to tell people I'm dead. Maybe my brother? The thing is, very few non-bloggers actually know about my connection with Threadless.
And I don't really care about Facebook or Twitter. Most of my friends on both of those are bloggers anyway.
But Facebook is especially weird -- a classmate committed suicide about a year ago and his profile is still up and people write on his wall.
I get what you mean. A good friend of mine passed away almost two years ago and I hated logging in and having Facebook tell me that her birthday was coming up when she had just passed a few days eariler. And now that have they have that whole "reconnect with your friends if you haven't said anything to them in a while" thing and I get this horrible sense of guilt when she comes up.
I have no problem with her account still being up, some people have found it really helpful in the grieving process but I wish there was a way to kind of stop those other notifications that make it seem as if she's still alive.
Jan 28 '10 by
