Would we ever know if an author died..?

[writeincode]

I was just thinking: this is the internet, one day an author or reader might stop posting and we'll never know what happened to them.

We need to work out a way to know. How?

[Lugh]

well, I don't know about everyone, but I have a list of people I keep on a disk that my sister is to notify upon my death. Some of them are people here.... I think it's up to the individual how they want it handled. Otherwise you may never know.

 

Lugh

[DarkShadow]

I was just thinking: this is the internet, one day an author or reader might stop posting and we'll never know what happened to them.

We need to work out a way to know. How?

 

That would be the responsibility of the writer. I've already made arrangements in case that should ever happen. My best friend Jeana has my passwords etc should it ever arise and need announced. (god I hope she never has to use them.)

[Myr]

If Gay Authors ever disappears suddenly and does not come back...

Then that means something happened to me and my instructions weren't followed.

[writeincode]

Hm I completely didn't think of a death notification thing.

I'm putting one on my desktop although there won't be many names in it. News spreads fast in my 'community'.

Still when authors stop posting for a while I get nervous and jump to conclusions.

[JSmith]

I know at one point there was a website that offered a service that would email contacts on a list in the case of your death. If you didn't check in for a certain amount of time, they would then call you, then call a secondary contact number that you provide, and if they can't reach you at all or your secondary contact confirms your death, they send out the email to your list.

 

I don't know if it's still around, but I thought it was pretty morbid. I sure as hell wouldn't want to receive an email from someone after they died.

 

 

Joe

[writeincode]

lol Joe. I'd be terrified to do that because for some reason or another they wouldn't be able to contact you and then tell everyone you knew that you were dead!

[Mirage]

What a topic but truthfully I had this descussion with a very good net/real life friend that lives in Australia while i live in The USA. I came very close one day to a near miss head on collision with another car and when he heard about it he was scared to death what could have happened and he would never have known. We decided that i would give him my family members cell phone #'s so if i ever dissapeared he could call one of them or text them and find out what happened to me and then he would contact the rest of our net friends. I have all my friends #'s in a book as well as my cell so if anything ever happened my family could contact my closest net friends. My family knows who they are at least by first name.

[Graeme]

I've thought of this a few times because of people disappearing from the internet and no one appearing to know what has happened to them.

 

There is one person who has my address, and a handful who have a way to contact my wife and for my wife to contact them. That's the best I can do while preserving my anonymity, which I have to for the sake of my two young sons.

[glomph]

I'm not an author, and don't play one on TV.

 

But I was going suggest that if I don't post here for more than a couple weeks, that I'm probably either dead or at least unconscious.

 

But there's always sinility, or maybe I just got tired of having to log in every time I come to the site. What's with that? I thought the intended weekly login would be bad enough. Or then there's the possibility of just enough sinility that I can't come up with my password.

[JamesSavik]

Authors do die and we usually find out about it. I would rather not name any.

 

Some authors just decide to disapeer. They do this for a variety of reasons. Sometimes its a matter of burn out. With others, the reward isn't worth the work. For whatever the reason, I think that an author's privacy should be respected.

[lustful_orcs]

It really can and doers happen.

 

At age 30 I was struck down by a heart attack. One minute you wake up with what seems a stomach upset, the next you're on the ICU hooked up to a cardiac monitor that keeps wailing on and off throughout a long long night. I learned to live with the reality that due to my condition I may at any time be struck down, from the cardiac thump in the chest to the unconscious thump on the floor, down and out in 15 seconds.

 

We should all take precautions, bad things do happen out of the blue.

[old bob]

People come and go. Memories remain. Why worry if somebody doesn

[xander]

I was thinking about this one day as well. I shamefully havent written down a request for notification to my friends on here, and will soon get on that! I mean, I disappear off of here every so often because I get so busy, but I'm signed into MSN a great deal of the time and occasionally find time to talk to a few of you guys on here. But should something happen to me and I'm not on here for a LOOOONG time and ditto with MSN, a few have my address and I'm sure could somehow find out and notify you guys. It's kinda scary talking about this, because like the saying goes, "tomorrow is not promised to anyone" and I know it first hand, because my best friend died when we were quite young...

[AFriendlyFace]

I too have often contemplated this. A few people on here have my address and/or phone number; I suppose they would eventually be able to find out and let everyone else know. It is rather morbid I suppose, but I guess you never know what tomorrow will hold.

 

 

People come and go. Memories remain. Why worry if somebody doesn

[writeincode]

Authors do die and we usually find out about it. I would rather not name any.

 

Some authors just decide to disapeer. They do this for a variety of reasons. Sometimes its a matter of burn out. With others, the reward isn't worth the work. For whatever the reason, I think that an author's privacy should be respected.

 

 

For some reason this answer satisfies me. Maybe its because James' icon is really serious-looking and as a result I regard everything he writes as being possessive of wisdom.

Edited December 4, 2006 by writeincode