Every now and again, someone dies. It happens. Death is life’s constant companion. I’ve been thinking some more about what Feldspar wrote, and a couple of things occurred to me.
Death is pretty much the physical world’s version of putting you permanently out of contact with your friends, family and peers. You’re gone, and those people who know you are diminished by it. They grieve for the loss, each according to their nature.
Being permanently and persistently out of contact has much the same effect. If you drop off the grid, as it were – suddenly gone, and never to be contacted again – then what actually is the difference between that and being dead?
For the people who know you online, there isn’t a difference. You’re gone, and those people who know you are diminished by it. They grieve for the loss, each according to their nature.
Delete your account, close lines of contact, stop answering your email address? You might as well be dead, because to those people you only know electronically, there’s not really any practical difference between the electronic cessation and the physical cessation. You’re lost to them. As good as dead.
If you tell someone before you leave the grid for good, does that mean you don’t die?
It certainly helps to transform, or reduce the grieving process.
I agree.
One of our friends left SL mysteriously.. and left others worried and concerned. She ended up contacting me out of SL, finding my e-mail address and letting me know her situation. I was able to pass on the message that she wasn’t planning on logging in again. At that point the worry did turn into a grieving process. Because we knew the situation, however, it made it easier to heal.
Those that leave without saying goodbye (as it were), is very much akin to discovering that an AFK friend moved mysteriously in the night with no forwarding address. You don’t know what to think, other than your relationship is no more.