Digital Death

I think I’ve talked about it before, but we, as a society, suck at digital death. We don’t know how to deal with closed accounts, we don’t have agreements on post-mortem privacy and we have no idea what “inheritance” looks like.

Case in point, when Asher went home early, I had access to his phone. He was able to unlock it for me before he died. And only because of that was I able to go through his works and put together Ashercon. There were so many things I didn’t exactly know about and many people who only knew him online. I had hoped to get them all, but…

Sometimes they slip through.

Like this:

I knew he had to have one, but I didn’t think about clearing it out. Apparently someone else found it, knew he passed and reported his account.

Which means it gets to close.

My friend calls it “the doghair of death.” Anyone who has been responsible for bills/legal/estate crap… they know it. Usually in the first few months, you get… just a ton… of random letters and messages. I was stunned and horrified at the number of scam messages I received. And I think if I didn’t have access to his phone AND his password manager, I wouldn’t have been able to know the legitimacy of some of it. After about 180 days, there was a bunch of messages from services saying, “Hey, you need to use your account or you’ll lose it.” I don’t know if that about data hygiene or just a way to get people back on their platforms, but it was a lot of work. Then again at a year and then again at two years… Always finding dog hair, no matter how much you clean.

It’s also why I log into a handful of his accounts every week. Mail, Spotify, Discord, logout. Mail, Spotify, Discord, logout. I can’t let them go stale. Not yet at least. Which is how I found out his one and only personally backed Kickstarter (it’s cool! I reached out to the creators. Asher’ll be getting a special mention. And a sword of his story (not by name)).

Names

But you know what’s actually cool? The username. derninjafingers. When he was little, he was relentless in getting into things he shouldn’t. If we weren’t watching carefully, he’d work his way into something that was supposed to be child-proof and delight in it. He earned the name Ninja Fingers because we no child safety locks were capable of holding him bac and he was always on the hunt for more sweets. He’d snatch them, and we’d be completely unaware until we looked back and 3 cupcakes were gone.

So, not bitter, but sweet. Thanks Twitch for reminding me of that.

• derninjafingers - Ninja Fingers and could get into things he wasn’t supposed to be able to.
• asherpants - Asher’s pants. I can’t actually remember why. But it was his first email address and was something we said all the time as a family term of endearment.
• smasher - It’s in the video. Loved destroying his brothers’ work.
• smasherpants - Evolution on asherpants.
• coconutwaffles - Mom’s fault. It was her steam account, then she stopped playing games and it was bequeathed to Asher, when he passed, she got it back.
• really-cool-bird - It’s from a video of a cartoon referencing another video of a bird that looked awesome on a branch. Like it was street grinding down a curb.