Digital Shadows

photo courtesy of sacredsites.com

Facebook - a digital tomb?

"look! this is me!" we shout.
"Look at me having fun! Look how popular I am!
Look how cute i was when i was little! These are my friends and family. This is what i do for a job but this here is what I love doing outside of work...
these are the things that define me...music, likes, films, tv, books, quotations....check out how amusing i am as i comment on your status update" and so it goes on...
what exactly are we doing here (and why is it so irresistably addicitve?) are questions for another blog but for now i'm thinking about living memory boxes within FB, and the digital shadows these leave when profiles become inactive.

For those of us who have lost friends or family in the last few years there may be a digital trace of them on FB; A profile unaccessible because they do not exist anymore except in the virtual world. They can no longer log in to update their profile and their page becomes stuck in time...the last post evidence of when communication stopped. dead.
Their FB profile is no longer a playground but becomes a memory box - a pharoahs tomb that contains their identity, their history, their stories (their soul?)
A digital trace much like a pyramid full of treasure that is sealed off to the outside world and the passing of time, and left to gather dust, buried under layers of new civilisations.
How long does it take before inactive profiles just disappear? Formatted to make room for new people? I'd love to find out!  Or are we kept on the marketing database, even after 'death' as evidence of a particular consumer trend?

Is there really no value in the narratives of people that are no longer active consumers? In the world of Facebook if we are no longer commercially viable how long is it until we ceased to exist at all?
And if we do part with some sense of soul when we share so much of our lives and images with our chosen few (or many) FB friends, should the digital trace we leave after our FB death be valued as a social document that charts the narratives of a particular person in a particular time and place? and be left open for comment? or should it be sealed up like a sarcophagus and left to gather dust and legend...?