I readed about a woman who suffered a serious accident, went into a coma for some months and when she recovered, her sore, bitter SL partner didn’t believe her history. Whould you do it? What whould you think if it happened to you, if you where the one waiting for months without getting an answer?
If you have a lover or “simply” some friends you don’t want to harm, it is possible you had been asking yourself the opposite question: If something happens to me and I cannot get back, how can avoid the important persons* on my SL live the excruciating doubt?
* Mine is called Natsumi (kindest friend, charming woman, naughty Natsumi); follow this link and vote for her in the Second Style Fashion challenge #5, you don’t need to register. Since the picture there doesn’t make her justice, I added a better one to help you decide and for general enjoyment :-)
But I digress… We where talking about avoiding unnecesary pain to a loved one if something happens to you. The first step whould be to give an RL friend your SL user and password, with instructions to connect and give an explanation. That first step is huge for inmersionists and can be avoided if you have another way of contact, like an e-mail.
This kind of notification can end being nothing more than a nice effort, since there is no difference between a RL decease or a virtual burn-out, where you leave SL and give a sad lie as a farewell. Even if you ask your will executor to give your password, so your possesions can be inherited in world, there will be always a doubt, a wound that doesn’t fully heal.
What is the solution? The only one I’ve found is ask your executor to give much, much more than your virtual self password… simply keeping the payment information that goes with it, with your real name on it.
This is the final surrender: medical reports can be believed, a decease certificate can be found and, of course, the memory your real life loved ones have of you can be seriously damaged, even more sorrow brought on them, if the person you gived your love and your hopes wasn’t worthy of it.
At the end there is no single answer, nothing is fool proof, but I know I don’t want to go and leave that kind of doubts behind me.
**** Warning!****
Remember that if you give somebody your password and have payment information on your account, that person can use it to buy and transfer L$… so if you are dead don’t blame me about losing money *think of angry undeads, yuck!*. Since the net is always dangerous when managing money, it is a good idea to use a debit credit card with little money in the associated account, instead of that shiny Visa Platinum that can ruin you.
“The first step whould be to give an RL friend your SL user and password, with instructions to connect and give an explanation.”
Well…. last week I heard of the case like that. Now, imagine that somebody who died iRL left name and pass to somebody like relative or friend. If anybody inworld knows what happened and see that person’s avie inworld, how would e feel? Or in the case person’s avie should tell inworld friends that human behind the avie has passed.
That means somebody in-world knows your real identity, and you could make him your executor and avoid the RL friend… but yes, everything sounds creepy.
*sighs* I know discussing this sounds morbid, but I am really worried about it; that’s why I whould love to have a protocol for this kind situations.
I know there is a service somewhere, that requires you to log in every x time, if you don’t, they assume you’re dead and they send out the e-mails you’ve asked them to send out to certain email addresses.
What is scary, is that if I had to make an SL testament, I’d need to list over 5k items. *grins*
The idea is good, Vint, it let’s you send a last message, but there whould always be the doubt why the account owner stopped loggin… 5K transferable items! OMG! :-)