Monday, April 27, 2009

After Death, No Reason For The Spam To Stop

What a convenient way for forgers, and others of ill repute, to shop for new identities.

Just start surfing the soon-to-grow cottage industry of post-death, on-line immortality!



H/T to @GregMitch (Greg Mitchell) for this enlightening, if not frightening, link;

Dying is no reason to give up online social life

A wave of new companies are starting to offer services such as virtual cemeteries where guests can visit and e-mail alerts set up by funeral homes to remind relatives near and wide about the anniversary of your death.

Some companies even offer to e-mail your wayward relatives in danger of being left behind when the Rapture whisks you to the threshold of the Pearly Gates.

[Snip]

Los Angeles-based EternalSpace.com launched its Web site in March, offering a variety of virtual scenic locations online for a person's final resting place: A "Zen Garden," a "Lake View," a "Tropical Valley" and other options.

Sold directly through funeral homes, the service allows a person or relatives to establish a pastoral grave site and add digital amenities such as the image of a park bench or mausoleum.

Once there, visitors can purchase items to leave behind, such as flowers, religious icons and other trinkets symbolically important to the deceased, such as golf clubs, a horse saddle, a piano or trees that can grow over time. Prices for each range from $5 to $35 apiece.

[Snip]

Already, Facebook has become a central hub for news that a person has died with their home page functioning as an ad hoc trading post for information about the funeral and gathering place for condolence notes.

After that initial phase, relatives can ask Facebook to place the dead person's page into a "Memorial State" that limits use to only certain friends and family members. To trigger that process, family members typically must send Facebook a newspaper clipping about the person's death, or an official death notice from a local government.
Hey, it was always legend that Mary Baker Eddy had a telephone in her crypt.

If she were still around now, and passed on, who knows, the story would probably replace "telephone", with "laptop".

Just think of the torturous harassment, some overbearing mother, spamming her children, badgering them about "visiting me" at the cemetery.

Add, for an extra fee, of course, some voice-software, and you can have that haranguing mother screaming at you, out of your in-box.

More extra fees, and you can give that dead Mom a "celebrity voice (no doubt, the "B" List celebs must be calculating that extra income already).

There goes the inheritance, as the recently departed will be squandering their money on building the best, biggest, loudest (all the bells-and-whistles) on-line crypt, leaving those sites to emulate the terra firma graveyards, and charge those "maintenance" fees.

And, the Pet Cemetery guys!

Wait until they hook into this.

Fido Forever! ...

That's where the big jackpot is, and we're talking retirement villas here ...


We feel the need to bring out Joe Pesci, from 'Casino', once again;

"Always the dollars ... Always the fuckin' dollars ..."



Bonus Obits

Heston Dead; Coroner Can't Pry Gun From Cold Dead Hands

It's Now Dirt Nap Time In America

Don Nottebart ... Now, This Is An Obit With Some Ooomph!

This Just In! ... Marceau Fans Preventing Coroner, Family From Taking Body; Believe It Could Be New Routine ... Officials Frustrated As Throng Stakes Out Front Of Home, Many in White Face and Mime Costumes, Waiting

Obit - Avis Founder Pulls Off The Road at 92

Swedish Film Icon Ingmar Bergman Dead at 89 ; Police Depressed, Working Through Emptiness, Not Ruling Out Foul Play


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