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Having gone to two funerals over the past month, I’ve been forced to confront mortality more than usual lately, so now you’re coming along for the ride.
Naturally, on the ride out to the second of the burials, I began to wonder, “Can I get a column out of this?”
Indeed, dear reader, I can.
Despite both passings being Jewish graveside burial services about an hour’s drive from midtown Manhattan, the differences were striking.
One funeral was expected, the other sudden. One had a crowd gather around; the other was for the closest family members. At one, I learned about Jewish burial traditions; at the other, I learned about an impressive psychic.
All the while, my family plans to gather in four months to unveil the headstone at my father’s grave. His was the funeral to which I will forever compare all others.
Here’s what I was mulling over on that car ride to Staten Island this week.
The ad industry is so obsessed with the death of the cookies used to track us, but it is rare that we confront the digital tracks our loved ones leave behind upon their passing.
Do we clear those footprints?
Do we set them in digital cement?
Do we designate who will care for our digital presence when we’re no longer physically present?
There are digital services that address some of these needs. For example, my former colleague Ann Marie Mathis-Almariei founded will-it, an estate planning tool to prevent the kinds of family conflicts that tend to arise after a loved one dies.
But how many of us can even name one of these services, let alone ever signed up for one?
How many of us even want to look for options like that?
How many of us want to tell those closest to us what we want to happen to digital wake, whether or not we plan on having a funereal wake?
While it might not be common to head out to a bar and discuss what you want people to do with your remains, the conversation does come up at funerals. I’ve been a part of a few such chats this month.
This one wants to be buried; that one wants to become a tree. A third muses about turning their ashes into a piece of jewelry. Yet another wants to be planted on her husband’s golf course so that he may receive a tax write-off.
But who tells others what to do with their blogs and podcasts? What about those social media accounts — and does anyone even know all the accounts you manage? Do you trust anyone with your search history? Are you okay with your cookies surviving you?
Do you trust anyone well enough that you’d give them access to this information while you’re still alive? If not, how and when would you share it?
Would you rather leave it all up to chance?
If you have a will, is any of this specified there?
If you have a living will, does anyone ever say what could be shared while you remain alive or when you depart for the hereafter? What about if you’re incapacitated, kept alive but unable to manage your digital presence?
Would you rather trust executors of a will to determine what happens with your car, home, heirlooms, and any worldly possessions than to give them access to your social and other digital accounts?
Oh, and what should happen with that Spotify year in review?
I’d like to end this with some grand reveal. “Whoever buys the most $CMO coins this week gets access to my social accounts when I pass!” That’d be a fun marketing stunt. Perhaps it’s even fitting. (Joe Jaffe, if you’re reading this, you can steal that for the $JAFFE coin.)
No, there’s no grand stunt here, or even answers.
As I’m pondering life, the universe, and everything this week following attending the funeral of someone I never met but whose presence continues to radiate across the universe and perhaps the multiverse, I’m left with a lot of questions.
Have you tried addressing any of this?
What will happen to your digital presence when you’re gone?
When’s the right time to make those plans and have those conversations?
Who do you even have those conversations with?
What’s going to happen to our own first-party, first-person cookies?
David
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