Dawn of the Facebook Dead

Photo credit to atomicjeep.

A while back, I wrote about the possibility of social automation leading to digital dopplegangers who stayed around long after our deaths (Digital Ghosts – Something creepy this way comes).  Looks like I’m not the only one who’s been thinking about this topic.

@tomscott, creator of the hilarious Actual Facebook Graph Searches tumblr and subsequent meme, created a (also hilarious) video on this topic.  When Facebook Resurrected the Dead takes a mock historical perspective on the creation of the digital afterlife.

Digital Doppelgangers – Who said you needed to be dead to have a ghost?

twins by raysto

You know how you generally shouldn’t say things if you have to preempt them with a qualifying statement like, “I don’t mean to be rude, but…” or “I don’t mean to seem racist, but…”  Okay, well, while I generally think that’s a great rule, I’m going to go ahead and violate it with this post.  (No, I’m not going to be racist.)

So, here goes:

I don’t mean to be a conspiracy theorist, but…

Thinking (and writing) about social media automation and digital ghosts has got me thinking (and apparently writing) about online identity theft and impersonation.  The pieces of ourselves that we’re leaving around the internet may allow for us to have ghosts – even before we’re gone; I’m going to call them digital doppelgangers.