How Do We Deal with Death in the Metaverse?

Pixels and Policy normally approaches the interplay between virtual worlds and some aspect of business, culture, policy or politics. However, there is one issue that transcends these areas not because of its easy definition, but because it is such a hazy concept.

Can the virtual world change the way humans deal with death?

A Death in the Virtual World

Death defies easy description. Is it a policy issue? Of course. Governments take death into consideration on a large scale of social programs, law enforcement actions and military initiatives. But for the purpose of this article I speak about death on a more personal level.

How do we deal with death on an individual level, and how are virtual worlds likely to alter our response mechanisms? 

How deeply do our emotional connections to the virtual world run? In The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, virtual communication pioneer Howard Rheingold points out that users of the early newsgroup The Well responded to the death of a prominent Well user with varying levels of grief and community remembrance. 

In a paragraph describing how the Well's virtual community came together for both a real and virtual funeral for user Blair Newman, Rheingold says:

Death seems somehow more real, even if your only participation is in the virtual funeral. How could any one of us who looked each other in the eye that afternoon in the funeral home deny that the [virtual] bonds between us were growing into something real?

Are immersive graphical worlds any different? Friendships and relationships are established and maintained over years, until social connections we've never met in the real world become as valid as face-to-face work or school friendships.

We memorialize virtual friends in ways they would enjoy, just as we speak of how real-world friends would "like to be remembered." Sometimes, in the case of prominent fantasy MMORPG players passing, funerals can take on a great deal of spectacle, incorporating humor and entertainment into an assembly of grief. We acknowledge their role as a member of the fantasy community, and respond with an equally fantastic send-up for their former avatar.

The Blurring of Social Relationships

Do we take the death of our closest virtual confidante any differently than the death of a childhood friend? Should we? There have been no studies done on how individuals respond to the death of a virtual friend as opposed to a friend with whom they interact closely, but my suspicion is that the grief in both cases would be nearly identical.

Little did I know when starting this piece that Dusan Writer wrote an eloquent post on the topic that addresses the fact that, for an increasing number of us, friendships exist in both the physical and virtual spheres. 

There is little call for a  virtual environment where avatars visibly grow old and frail and fall to disease, partly because this ruins the fantasy of creating your own vital, chiseled ideal character. But there's something more to that. We are uncomfortable with death, frailty, aging and degrading. As Dusan notes, virtual worlds persist in a pristine state regardless of how many avatars flow through them.

Whatever the case, the death of a virtual friend is no longer an anomaly in the virtual world. Second Life has seen its share of virtual funerals, as have fantasy games like Ultima Online and World of Warcraft. Real people are behind these events, and real people are the focus.

Perhaps virtual worlds are augmenting our grieving process by allowing users the capability to turn deaths into large-scale community remembrances without any actual financial expenditure. In this way, every memorialized individual receives the full measure of remembrance and pomp, elevating a death to pageantry and ritual.

I'd love the thoughts of Pixels and Policy's readers. Have you experienced the death of a close virtual friend? Were they memorialized in their virtual world of choice? How did it affect you? While all users are free to post thoughts and comments, I ask that you please keep them respectful.

Comments

[Oft Radikal]

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[Win]

I have had a few people disappearing from SL and each time I felt grieving in a similar way I would have if they had died in RL. The first one erased her account, possibly due to a SL relationship (not with me) becoming too involving, just when I was getting to know her, and she left me with the regret of what I thought could have become a beautiful friendship. I wrote a post on her on my blog, knowing she used to read me, in the hope she would write me for, at least, a hello. She didn't.

http://win.myblog.it/archive/2008/09/10/serenella-is-missing.html

A much closer person to mine committed SL suicide when she realized her fantasies in the metaverse were getting dangerous and possibly making her oblivious of her RL. She did write to me a lovely goodbye note, which I was able to use in a post dedicated to her as a farewell. We have been in touch ever since, albeit sporadically. We have fond memories of our relationship on SL and look back to it with serenity.

http://win.myblog.it/archive/2009/03/31/l-ultimo-saluto-di-costanza.html

Lastly, a dear friend of my Second Life disappeared last march and we never heard from her again for months. We worried, grieved, kept wondering and feared the worst. When she popped back online after 8 months, she contacted all her best friends apologizing for making us all worried - RL had seriously undercut the time she could dedicate to SL and that was the only reason for her disappearance.

To me, death on SL is all about being able to say goodbye. When you can do that, the grief is still there, but it's not as bad as not knowing what happened to the agent behind the avatr. Because, well, it's true: these are REAL relationships we are living... but I guess we are not wired yet to face the duality between the avatar and its agent.