The Funeral of WoW Gold

After a heated argument during a raid with his guild, World of WarCraft player Jerald Spangenberg went silent and logged out of the game.  When he didn’t sign back on for the rest of the week, his guild assumed he had deserted them and decided to boot him from the group.  Little did they know that Jerald had a reasonable explanation for not showing up — he was dead.

Jerald had apparently suffered an abdominal aneurysm, went AFK (away from keyboard, an in-game indicator letting people know you aren’t at your computer), and was automatically logged out after 10 minutes.  The other guild members were pretty upset with Jerald for abandoning them in the middle of a raid but thought that he would be back after he cooled down from the argument that had just occured.

Because of the semi-anonymous nature of online gaming, nobody had any way of knowing that Jerald, in real life, had passed away.  Assuming Jerald was just being childish, the guild decided to remove him and continue on without him.  Needless to say, they felt horrible three weeks later when they finally found out what had happened from Jerald’s daughter, Melissa.

To combat this type of scenario from happening in the future, a neuroscientist named David Eagleman set up a website called Deathswitch (which is unintentionally pretty hilarious).  The site requires you to check in to your account periodically to prove you are still alive.  Not doing so will result in your assumed death (or coma, or other serious incident that would render you “critically disabled”), in which case emails are sent out to predetermined individuals.

The purpose is to let loved ones know your bank account numbers, passwords, locations of critical files or paperwork, etc.  It can also be used, such as in Jerald’s case, to let online friends know why you haven’t been around.  The Deathswitch website even suggests using it to “reveal unspeakable secrets” or to get the last word in an argument.  You can also attach video files and pictures, though that’s part of the ‘premium package’ and costs $20 per year.

Even though it seems pretty morbid, how would your fellow guild members or online buddies ever find out that you had died?  If not for the determination of Melissa to protect her father’s reputation, Jerald’s guild would have harbored ill feelings toward their friend and just assumed him to be a jerk. 

With so much of our lives taking place online and so many “friends” that we’ve never met face to face, it’s actually an important topic to consider how death affects our digital selves.  In real life, there is no Spirit of Redemption.