This is the post that spawned the post you are reading now. In the light of Will Your Work day, I meant to write it much sooner, but time being what it is — slippery, ephemeral, and hard to catch — well, I’m getting it done today.
I suffer from an illness that has periodic flare-ups, during which time I’m not able to participate in much of anything. I can’t go out, I can’t meet with people, and I can’t get into Second Life. I’m one of those people who regularly disappears from life, leaving little or no trace, and no forwarding address.
I’ve seen it happen to other people, too. They get sick, have upheavals in their lives, get busy, whatever — suddenly, they withdraw from their lives, leaving their friends wondering what happened.
My advice?
DON’T.
Always have a plan. Plan to tell people you won’t be around for a while; you don’t need to explain yourself. If required, plan to relay the message through someone else; I need to do this, because I’m not in a position to do it myself by the time I get sick. Don’t disappear.
Go further. Once you’ve started making plans, you might as well go the extra distance. Make out a will which includes your digital property. Make sure that if you die, that everyone who should be notified is notified, including folks who you communicate with online.
Why?
Your online life is part of your life. Your online friends will try to find out what happened to you if you just vanish; they will worry, and fret, and suffer, just like any other friend.
You carry the same obligation to all your friends — online friends are not lesser friends.
Well said, but even without the dramatic disappearance aspect, many people DO think of online connections as somehow less important, less “real” and therefore they feel less obligation to behave responsibly. Hence much drama.
Every time I see it happen the song “Easy to be Hard” from HAIR passes through my mind.
Personally I think a lot of it comes from the deadpan, neutral aspect of avatars (at present). Appearances and body language play a big role in how we communicate (or IF we do). I think as avatars become more naturalistic this will have a dramatic effect on digital relationships.
A point I forgot to mention:
If you have made arrangements, then if you do vanish without a trace, people will then know to panic, and generally ask after you, because the chances that something bad has happened are increased.
Caliburn, I think you are correct, there are still plenty of people out there who place less importance on their online connections. However, there are also a growing number of people who care as deeply for the friends they communicate with solely online as with people they meet face to face — I suppose the why of those growing numbers will determine how far the phenomenon spreads.
I guess the other way to put this is, online friends are not lesser friends but they may have fewer communication lines with you, so you might need to work harder to make sure they can find out what you want them to know, if you’re not online.
It’s interesting to realise how much we assume we have been communicating through sometimes limited channels, when they break down..
due to eye surgery (one that takes several months to recover completly) and some malfunction of the head, plus a few other things, for several months now i’ve not logged in SL with much frequency, I did leave a note on my profile letting people know what was going on, and asking them to use email to talk with me since offline IMs often are unrepliable, still, many people IM me, and once in a while when I do log someone asks me why they hadn’t seen me on lately or somthing… :/
Or you COULD just exchange e-mail/IM name/social networking contacts with the SL people you really are that close to. Doesn’t seem like a bad idea, except for the whole “ZOMG MY FIRST LIFE AND SECOND LIFE ARE SEPERATE PLZ NO ONE NEEDS TO KNOW I AM A IRL FATTIE” philosophy some SL people tend to have, which is more than a bit rediculous.
Also “disappearing from Second Life” tends to happen if you actually have a real job. Happened to me once I decided to get up off my lazy a$$ and contribute to society for once.