West Karana

I’m not dead yet.

Published by

Tipa

on

I’m not dead yet.

One of the really exciting experiences getting older brings is finding yourself a customer for the whole end of life marketing.

I get, at least weekly, calls or postcards assuming I will soon move into elder care and that they can dispose of my now-unneeded house painlessly and at only 50-75% of the market value. I wouldn’t even have to clean it!

Naturally, every organization I have ever dealt with ever — AAA, banks, grocery stores — has a wonderful new life insurance policy they need to sell me, hoping I won’t last long enough to see it pay out more than I put in. NO MEDICAL EXAM NECESSARY. They are very clear on this. It’s okay if I am on my deathbed; they’ll still write that policy for me.

And, why, yes, I am looking to donate any money I might still have when I die to your random organization. But, I live in the USA, which means end-of-life care will drain every bit of money I have left, and more besides. In the USA, it’s best for your family if you just go for a long walk and never return, I guess.

And not to mention all the Medicare scam mail I get. I’m not even eligible to sign up, but they’re getting ready to scam me when I do. I love the US. Corrupt from top to bottom, and if you have a dime, there’s a billionaire somewhere who wants it.

The latest: yesterday I got TWO calls, both from different number, claiming to be Google, asking me if I was still alive.

A legacy request has been submitted for the Gmail account linked to this phone number. If you are not deceased, please press 1 to speak with our security team for prioritized assistance. However, if you are the family member of the deceased person associated with this phone number and you initiated this request, please press 2.

I immediately asked my son if he’d been telling people I was dead again, and he looked a little sheepish…

It did get me thinking about how I would go about leaving my electronic legacy to my family. I guess after a year, all my blogs would just shut down and that would be the end of that. I don’t have anything special in my e-mail. In maybe at most two years, I’d be forgotten? I share my real name with a celebrity and so it is already hard to find me online. I’m pretty sure there’s nothing I do online that my family would value or wish to preserve, so when I go, I’ll be erased.

People are always saying that everything you do lives on the internet forever, but that’s not really true. Everything you do online gets drowned in spam. For every blog post I write, there’s a thousand spam/AI posts. For every social media update I do, there’s a million bots posting. Nothing says “you’re not special” like posting stuff on the internet.

Anyway. Dark turn there. Update: not dead yet. When I do die, I’ll take this post down in a year or so to let you know 🙂

4 responses to “I’m not dead yet.”

  1. bhagpuss Avatar
    bhagpuss

    I didn’t start getting funeral parlors and rest homes sending me stuff in the mail until very recently. I think it may have started when I began dealing with end of life care issues for my mother. So far I only get stuff in the physical mail, probably because I mostly haven’t used my real name online since the 90s. Of late, though, it’s become a lot harder to avoid it so I guess it’s only a matter of time.

    On the digital legacy front, I can’t imagine any reason anyone I know would be remotely interested. No-one reads the blog, no-one plays games, I only ever email or text people about practical issues. All of that has about as much relevance to anyone as the essays I wrote at school or shopping lists from a decade ago.

    What I might do, though, at some point, is make sure all the blog posts and music I’ve made are stored on physical format. Burn the music on CD and the blog posts on DVD. Then I might leave them to some cultural institution in my will, along with the 8000 comics, 1000 vinyl albums, boxes of photocopied fanzines and all the rest of the crap I’ve accumulated. When I was at university the faculty library had a whole floor of such legacies, mostly in cardboard boxes, unsorted. I imagine some academic, somewhere would have fun going through it all in 2150, when they finally got around to it.

    Reply
    1. Tipa Avatar
      Tipa

      If I downloaded and saved all my blog posts and online history, it would never, ever be looked at. I guess since I am in my 60s, I can’t help but think what I will leave behind of me. There’s my kids, of course, but of the things I’ve worked on — all gone. My blogging, writing, games — mostly just for me. Once whatever money is distributed and my house split between my kids, I’ll just be a fading memory and my online presence will disappear.

      I really do not want to go silent into that dark night. I want to yell and scream and make a fuss and prove to the universe that once I was alive.

      I also get funeral insurance policy scams and stuff. I’ve told my kids, stuff me in a cardboard box, burn me, scatter my ashes somewhere beautiful. I visit my mom’s grave, and she’s in a family plot, and all there is of her is her name chiseled into a headstone along with those of her parents and siblings. That and some pictures is all I have of her. That was her impact. I guess she and her sister are also stark reminders of the dangers of smoking, alcoholism and (in my aunt’s case) drug abuse, as they both died relatively young — far younger than I am now.

      I guess maybe it’s best we’re forgotten when we die.

      Reply
  2. Nimgimli Avatar
    Nimgimli

    But you’ll still be on archive.org!

    Reply
    1. Tipa Avatar
      Tipa

      Yes! My earliest websites are still there! Now if I could remember my Geocities page address I’d have them all…

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Recent posts

Discover more from West Karana

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading