MyEulogy or who do I look like?
This, of course, means nothing. Furthermore, if you asked me, without the assistance of the IMDB, who Kim Rossi Stuart was I would have no idea. Judging by the name alone I'd guess a female tennis player but--oh, look at that--he's an Italian actor. Like Myspace and Facebook, Myheritage is a trend in self-affirmation; we want so badly to know we are somebody, somewhere, in relation to other people that there's hardly any questioning, subconsciously, how stupid this is. Consciously we question it all the time. We overtly make a joke of everything and yet we still actively participate in it. People tell me all the time that they've deleted their Myspace or Livejournals, but they always, without fail, come back. The only people I know who no longer update their LJ or check their Myspace are the ones who truly stopped caring. They didn't advertise their departure from said site (as I once did and failed to commit to), nor did they delete their once thriving journals. They just stopped. And, I think, it's fine either way if you want to keep up with silly things like this or if you don't.
I find it hard not to care most of the time. I can now tell people--and consider how exciting this is--that 58% of my face (that's almost 60) looks like Brad Pitt! I am 58% Sexiest Man Alive 1995 & 2000. Equally as upsetting, however, is that somehow I am also over 100% Lord of the Rings star. Whatever, it's fine. This is all I'll ever need to know. For now.
For later is when I need to know what people will be saying about me when I'm dead. What a brilliant idea. I propose we build a site called MyEulogy.com in which users can set up a staged, online funeral where friends can post what they'll say to each other after they die. This idea inspired by one of my favorite sites, www.mydeathspace.com, where dead MySpacer's obituaries are posted along with what was once, well, their space. Enrique, for example, was a seventeen year old who drowned and look at all this goolash that his pal, also named Alex, wrote for him:
Henry dude you know how i am and the plans we had together shit even the kick back we were going to have at my house the following saturday for your birthday so you must know how hard this is for me to say but being so tuff and bad ass but i cant stop crying every time i hear see or think of anything that reminds me of you... i was supposed to take you under my wing remember dude you still owe me hommie i was supposed to go and stay with you at Cal Poly for a weekend and kick it. Like they say this shit happens for a reason i guess great people do a greater good were they are needed more guess you were needed more up there than here like they say God has a plan for all of us and this was his wish now that your're up there lean back and ejoy eternity cause we cant wait to see you again i miss u so much dude we all need u in our lives u were the good one the one that had the brightest future, you were doing it screw college you showed us you were going to a uneversity and acheiving your dreams and at the same time being the designated driver and taking care of us and you were the youngest one. Dude now i get drunk at home and not for fun anymore but for grief, despair, pain, loneliness and and well memories. We both had a van with a sound sytem member beaners heck yeah dam proud i will never forget that you will forever remain in my heart dude you were like my younger brother like you always said heads up high and look to the future remember our dream house well just keep looking down even if its the last thing i do ill do it for us that house its going to be a reality. I never got to finish your sound system in your van but the people that love you got a better idea, all that you must remember is 1969 Impalla thats right we're going to make sure ur dream comes true and its on my pride that im going to go physco with the system i just received the greatest inspiration i could have ever asked for YOU so dont worrie people will hear us coming from 15 minutes away lil bro you remain a part of us and your memory shall blossom will each of our breaths each of our thoughts may you rest in peace and if God allows me ill be there with you kickin it again but this time forever like we always said and shall remain MUY CHINGON thats you lil bro. Que Dios te bendiga i te tenga en su santa gloria lo mereses hermano te quiero Enrique te extrano RIP.
I don't blame you if you didn't read all this. I sure didn't. But imagine if you were Enrique. He'd probably read it four or five times a day. It would be one of the best things he could ask for. Too bad he drowned. If we had a MyEulogy, the living can experience the benefits of being admired without being dead. We could, somehow, express our true feelings about each other without sounding "gay." I've always wondered what people really thought of me. Not that I care too much; I get the fact that I can be annoying. My ego may even be a little inflated and, as such, I might put forth what may seem like a false sense of self-deprication. Or, to you, it may come across as the opposite. I get that. What I wonder is what sort of mystery, if any, there is about me. As, I'm sure, you do about yourself. In other words; what is it about ourselves that intrigues other people. It could be anythingl they way you or I manages our hands when we talk or the inflections we put on certain words when we talk. It could have nothing at all to do with talking.
Generally, I don't care what people say about me behind my back. If it's an outright lie ("Alex is an abusive boyfriend"), I worry, but often trust that most people I care about would belive such garbage. If it's a subjective truth ("Alex is a boring boyfriend, so I sleep around") I also don't care since that's just a stupid thing to think anyway. If it's an objective truth ("Alex is a disgusting boyfriend, look at that beard") well, whatever, I probably already know it. Subjective truths are tricky: if somebody likes me, but finds me annoying to the point of never wanting to hang out with me, it's likely better on both sides for this information to never be revealed to me, and kept secret through a series of very thinly-veiled excuses ("Oh, I can't talk tonight, Alex. I have so much homework tonight."). My ego isn't damaged and nor is the conscience of the person who thinks I'm annoying. Had my friend been honest, they'd feel eternally guilty for every vaguely suicidal LiveJournal entry that ensues for the next few months.
So assume I'm dead. Assume that somewhere online there is a place where you can post whatever you wanted to say to me my whole life but was afraid because it'd be "kind of gay." What would you say? Assume I could never reply back but that somewhere, in heaven or whatever it is you fool yourself into believing in, that I can read what you wrote. Wouldn't you feel good after saying that stuff?
I tried to look at the random MySpace's of the living in hopes I could find as meaningful comment, but most of what people write on each other's walls are either A)the goofiest pictures of the subject they could find of B)the poster's current or future whearabouts (i.e.: "The place with the free wine? It's called the Pacific Grill. Don't you feel better now? You two were, from the pancakes to the cheese, totally totally great." ). That's not to say that this isn't meaningful in it's own right, but it's hardly memorable. I'm even starting to forget my point as I write this.
Lately, I've been wrestling with the feeling that everything is pointless. Right now I should be in the library awaiting my next class. I should be writing a creative response to a short story I should have read or doing homework I should have finished by now or keeping up with a short story I should have started. I am doing none of those things. I don't even feel like reading the novels I shouldn't be reading for school; what's the point? A friend of mine told me the other day that he discovered the world to be so depressing and opportunity so shallow that he's going to dedicate his time to, mostly, drinking and getting as high as possible. It was one of the saddest things I've ever heard and he said it without bitterness or aggression, but also without irony. He just sort of grinned. Were this a science project, I would agree very much with the hypothesis, but I wouldn't follow along with the procedure. In short, I rather don't like feeling sick. I can drink quite a few beers without being drunk, but only one or two before my nose gets congested and I have trouble going to sleep. I haven't really done any hard drugs, but I can imagine they wouldn't give me much of a better feeling. My mother has taught me well to never smoke a cigarette, but even she, I suppose, can't give me a good reason as to why I should do anything.
If, say, nobody ever told me I did anything that pleased them, would you bet that I'd try harder to please them or try less? Keep in mind, it's never our own fault for personal failures, it's everybody else's. So if the girl with the subjective opinion that I am a boring boyfriend wants to sleep around for that reason, it is entirely her fault and is a horrible person. Why should it matter if I am, in fact, boring? Then again--why bother being interesting? It doesn't matter because I can't be any more interesting than Ms. hypothetical can be interested.
So say this whole encounter devastates me and I delete my journal, Myspace and Facebook. If anything, it's an attempt to not be boring. Why would he do that and how does it relate to me? Let's face it, if we were to reject the selling of ourselves to national corporations (such as News Corp., owner of Fox, Fox News and, you got it, Myspace), why not take it a step further? Don't just delete your MySpace; throw away those old pair of shoes with the huge Nike swooshes on them! Tear up all those "band" shirts! Burn every DVD you own.
The compromise we make in admitting ourselves to the world of cyber-communications and self-advertising is a loss in self-meaning. All of a sudden the faceless have faces, as well as 20 interets in common with hundreds and hundreds of other people. It's only after we're dead, however, that any meaning could come out of it. Somehow this small representation of our lives could come complete; every movie we ever kind of liked will be listed. Every picture we ever found that represented the best in our physical apperances would be displayed. Every thought worth writing down would be there for others to analyze. People could tell us about it, and it'd be soon after we'd no longer be able to hear it.
A MyEulogy, as I've proposed, could never offer that. Half the people commenting would write long letters, like the one by the aforementioned Alex, about how much so-and-so meant to so-and-so. The other half, would use it as an ironic way to prematurely piss on their buddies' grave. And we'll all have a little laugh about it sure, and then go out and get as drunk or, if you're into it, high as we can.