The Shape of Days

Well this is just morbid.

An Israeli blogger (I’m guessing; his site is almost entirely in Hebrew) who may or may not be named Tzafrir has written a plug-in for the WordPress content management system that has just one purpose: to notify somebody if you die.

It’s actually kind of clever, if you think about it. What this little doodad does is pay attention to how often you log in to your blog. If you don’t log in for a set interval — two weeks is the default — it’ll send you a warning e-mail. If you don’t log in for another week, it will send an e-mail to your designated next-of-kin.

I know it sounds a little silly, but believe it or not, there are people out there who don’t have a ton of friends they see on a regular basis, who don’t have close family, who just generally aren’t all that in touch with any one person. Some of these people have blogs, and some of the people with blogs rarely go more than a day or two without posting something. If they don’t post something for two whole weeks, it’s a sign that something’s up. Something that person might want somebody else to know about.

Then again, maybe this isn’t such a great idea after all. It’s one thing if you disappear without a trace, but it’s another thing entirely if your loved one buries you, mourns you, starts to get on with his or her life and then a week later gets an e-mail from you. That’d just be inhumanly cruel.

Am I going to install this? Honest to God, I really don’t know.

Update

Ain’t the Internet neat? Shortly after I posted this, I got an e-mail from the author of the plug-in I was talking about. His name is Tzafrir Rehan. Real nice guy.

And yes, as he points out in his comment below, if you set up a system like this for yourself, using this gadget or any other automated system, you want to be very careful just how you construct the message. If it goes off prematurely, of course, it’s all a big laugh once the misunderstanding gets sorted out. But if the worst should happen, know that the message you arrange to be sent in your absence will be the last thing that person ever hears from you. “Hey, I’m dead!” probably isn’t what you want to say.

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