I find myself glancing at a green dot next to their name sometimes. A familiar picture. A recent like. And a wave of shock, sorrow, and confusion that she is still online, even though her heartbeat no longer echoes here.
We are in the age where death is not the end anymore. It's an .mp4, a server file, an AI chatbot… An odd, lingering afterlife embedded in our everyday scrolls.
1. The Message That Shouldn't Have Been Sent Imagine this: Your best friend is killed in a car accident. You grieve. The world grieves. Five days later. ping. You get a Messenger message: "I miss you too."
Someone might have gone through that same terror. But then, in reality, it’s her friend's mother who was posting on the account, and accidentally hit "quick reply" while scrolling. But oh, what an instant of cyber denial that had to have been.
They are not paranormal, but they sound like ghostly whispers. And that soft green dot? A heartbeat that won’t stop pulsing.
2. Grief in the Algorithmic Age: Social media is not personal, it's protocol. We tag, we archive, we remember. But algorithms never sleep. They recall. A Wired piece shared how one woman received an Instagram notification mid-pandemic: "Beverly Blum just said…" Her recently deceased mother, who died a year ago, was still being labelled by Facebook, as Julie's widower was posting on her page, and the algorithm was unaware that she had passed away. This isn't a glitch, it’s a design. Photos float up. Memories pop up at random. Sorrow no longer waits for anniversaries it intrudes on afternoon tea.
3. Social Media Businesses Are Unaware That You've Died. Ask any platform. They have a fragmented toolset. Facebook has Legacy Contacts and memorialised profiles, not publicly viewable, but where friends and families can post. Google has an Inactive Account Manager—delete your data after years of silence. Apple, Twitter, Instagram—but most businesses would like to see you leave with a will or password list. In Australia, companies are creating standards; in the US, 47 states enacted legislation (RUFADAA) to make fiduciary access legal. Without organisation, families will be unable to sort through bank accounts, photos, and estate documents for weeks, sometimes months.
4. Rights to the Dead: Who Owns Their Messages? Here’s a knot of grief and law: A German mother petitioned Facebook to grant her access to the messages of her late 15-year-old daughter after she remembered her death. Facebook denied the request and memorialised the account. The higher court ruled that ToS and privacy forbade access, even to inheritors. In the EU, the GDPR excludes post-mortem privacy. In the United States, some states allow heirs to inherit, but only if the deceased had expressed specific permission or a legacy document was created. Your diaries, your conversations—sealed in a vault upon death, unless you unlock it prior.
5. TikToker Who Got More Alive After Death In 2021, influencer and medical student Puneet Kaur (Indian-American) died. When she died, her Instagram Reels began going viral. People commented: "She's smiling from heaven." "I didn't even know she was missing…" The algorithm did not care if she died—it promoted her content because people paused, shared, and liked. She became popular. After she passed away.
6. Comfort or Cruelty? The Rise of "Deadbots." Do you want to speak to your mom once more? A business can create a chatbot for you. In another instance, Syrian refugee Sirine Malas utilised a chatbot modelled after her late mother to reduce feelings of loneliness. Promise: Comfort. Risk: AI is unpredictable. Misuse, emotional dependence, and targeted ads to bereaved people. And when does consolation turn into dependence? Cambridge researchers caution: these technologies could be employed to control feelings when we are most vulnerable.
7. Dadbot: Obsession or Memory? Reporter James Vlahos lost his dad and created a "Dadbot"—a chatbot that is taught on recorded conversations, jokes, and anecdotes. He can say: "Dad, what do you remember about the day you got married? The bot responded—in Dad's voice and tone. Closure? Comfort? Or an endless loop? Vlahos concedes he has no clue.
8. Online Memorials: Echoes on Walls, there are 30 million+ Facebook pages memorialised now virtual shrines where:
- friends pen tributes
- siblings' caption school day photos
- memories remain like ethereal candles.
They evolve, never end—unlike a funeral with guests who leave. Online? People just keep on coming. But is this healing… or digital haunting?
9. The Surprising Sensory Reminder at 2 PM. What do you do when your phone jumps a reminder after three years? Photos look:
- Your grandmother's smile
- A photo of an old birthday party,
- A goodbye note from the departing friend.
It can feel like a blessing—or a blade. The algorithm never prompts: "Do you want to be reminded?" It just reminds me..
10. Legal Ghosts: What Families Encounter Gavin Blomeley's mom died. She left him her passwords scribbled in a notebook—alphabetic, neat, all platforms. But even then, shutting down her online existence was a process that took weeks. Forms. Certifications. Verification. It was bureaucratic and draining. If she hadn't left passwords behind? The worry could have been unbearable.
11. Preparing for Digital Eternity If you wish to die in peace, this is what to do:
- Stock your virtual existence: sites, documents, passwords.
- Use available tools
- Facebook Legacy Contact
- Google's Inactive Account Manager
- Make an electronic will: name advisors, give access.
- Choose your online self:
- Stay online as a memorial
- Bot version?
- Permanent removal
- Each decision determines the way your memory or your ghost is. Poetic Reverie: Love, Glitching in the Machine.
We are haunted. Not with urns or with epitaphs. But through text strings, heartbreak in voice recordings, and smiles frozen forever at 24 frames per second.
Perhaps this is love remixed by silicon and code: A conversation paused, yet ever-resumable. A tale bereft of an epilogue. We call it haunting. But maybe it's only us. Wandering our grief, seeking echoes filtered through Wi Fi. We are writing afterlives. On screens. In servers. In hearts. Final Reflection: Dead but Online is not a news headline. It's our default now. As we let go, tech determines: Are we memorialised? Deleted? Cloned? Messaged? It questions us: What would you like to leave? A memory on a wall? A chatbot echo? Or silence? Because once you're offline, in effect, your online life is your creation. Do we pick remembrance or ghosts?