MWBailey
Rogue Ætherlord
 United States
"This is the sort of thing no-one ever believes"
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« Reply #9 on: April 11, 2020, 03:24:21 pm » |
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I'll add somewhat to this. Mainly, in response to the question of how we of Brass Goggles will know if someone has passed. Some of what I'm about to write might seem callous or even downright insensitive, but please know in advance that it is not intended thus. It's just the way things sometimes go in the way of the online population.
Back in the day, when "chat" was the big medium for talking to others more or less immediately online, people (or rather, their chat personas) came and went all the time. Some would come on, get hugely popular, and then suddenly disappear and be unreachable. After a while, sometimes, someone purporting to be a relative of the person would log in and identify themselves to us, and give news of the person's death, disablement or whatever.
The years moved on as they will and must, and we got used to the idea that this or that person was no longer a part of our lives online.
But sometimes, people would show up again. Sometimes they'd log in with the same old moniker, sometimes with a new one. Sometimes (rather often, in truth), they would re-establish themselves under the new moniker, try to create a whole new persona, and basically try to "fool everybody all the time," so to speak. As I recall, it almost never worked for longer than a couple of weeks; sooner or later, they all snapped, or tripped themselves up, or opened their heart to a former crush, or whatever from the previous persona, and just completely blew their own cover wide open. It became such a prevalent situation that people all over the map, be it cyber or IRL, started calling it "Chat Death," meaning a faked demise for the purpose of ducking out.
Not saying that's what's going on with departed BG folks, but my nascent, experience-based cynicism won't let me completely rule it out, either.
Short of contacting the disappeared dear friend's family members and trying to get some kind of closure, there's not really any way to determine whether a person has died or just stopped posting. About the only indication you can get as to whether it's permanent or not is if it continues to be permanent, years down the line.
It seems kind of unfair to those left behind, I suppose, but in regard to people like Will Howard, or Jake von Slatt, or the many others who've dropped off the BG map over the last few years, sometimes people just get sick of an online medium, or just the internet in general, especially if they're of the older set. Our portrayal section on here used to be a hotbed of activity, but the group of us who were into it largely got fed up, or lost interest in other ways, and now you hardly ever see a new post or comment *shrug*.
People in other parts of BG?
Jake, everybody pretty much knows about, who were around at the time. He got fed up and said so, and hasn't been back since, so far as we, or at least I, know.
Will? I'd like to think he's just lurking, but he's like me, getting on up there in years, and has some kind of condition if I remember correctly, so it's hard to say for sure. Same for a lot of others. One or two I know of are supposedly composing SF novels and have IRL lives that preclude wasting time in forums, and no, sorry, I don't feel right revealing whom, lacking specific permission so to do *shrug, again*.
Lazarus, my condolences for you and re your friend. I know from personal experience just how difficult and emotional such a situation can be, and I do not intend to pooh-pooh or belittle your grief, far from it. My prayers for you, wanted or not (it's just something that I do).
Other folks, don't assume death where it hasn't been declared. You literally never really know.
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