I May Be Dead But You Can’t Get Rid of Me That Easily

OK, I have officially seen it all.  I happened to catch Bill Maher’s blog the other day, which is not something I normally read.  It was the headline that got me:  Posthumous Posts.  The article, which you can read HERE, is about how there are no less than three–count them, three–companies which have been established to allow you to….wait for it….tweet after you die.  Or post to Facebook from your comfortable perch 6 feet underground.  Or otherwise remind people that while you may be dead, you are not forgotten despite their best efforts to do so.

There are numerous people out there who still say, “I’ll die before I start using Twitter!” and this is exactly the market for which these companies have been waiting.  Seriously, these three enterprises, which are called DeadSocial, IfIDie and LivesOn, are there to enable you to send out that last grand message, or set of infinite messages, to those who succeed you in life.  As Bill Maher correctly notes, the best tag line here is that of LiveOn:  “When your heart stops beating, you’ll keep tweeting.”  God I wish I was the marketing person who thought that up.  It’s freaking brilliant.  It’s also sick as hell.

In the spirit (pun intended) of these companies, I have decided that the best possible thing you can program these services to post after death is the randomly timed, “Psych!” or, “I saw that and you should be ashamed of yourself;” or, “You still owe me $20.” Even better:  “Damn it’s hard to keep the chocolate from melting down here.”

It occurs to me the band Death Cab for Cutie may have inadvertently written the perfect jingle for this industry.  Their hilarious (or deep, depending on the quality of your sense of humor) song,  “I Will Follow You Into the Dark” is perfect for that lingering Facebook experience.  This gives new meaning to the moral challenges of unfriending someone, eh?

And as we all head towards the weekend, I will leave you with what is to me one of the funniest comedy routines of all time, that of George Carlin discussing how to die with panache or go out with a flourish, as it were, taking advantage of a little known fact:  just like in football you get a 2 minute warning when you are about to die. The reason no one knows about it is that everyone who experiences it….dies.  Carlin was popular long before Twitter was, but his amazingly hilarious work lives on after his untimely death.  It’s almost as if he saw this article coming!  Happy weekend!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkIqccMRTNo