h a l f b a k e r yNot so much a thought experiment as a single neuron misfire.
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The death clock is an old relic of the Internet. It was probably created based on the promise of the world wide web being able to provide an answer to virtually any question. Unfortunately, the death clock, or death clocks, cannot precisely predict anyone's death, only an estimate based on some survey
responses.
The Social Death Clock can perhaps offer a similarly inaccurate service. Social death is an idea close to the sociological concept of anomie. That idea will not be defined here, but social death can refer to the pont when a person ceases to have an identity, or is not included in social groupings. For most people social death will occur in old age or shortly after death. But for other people social death will occur much sooner, or perhaps even later than that.
Questions:
1. What year were you born?
(This will sort survey takers into key demographic groupings that will be generally weighted for intensity of socializing).
2. What is your gender?
(Males will be given a lesser weighting than females)
3. Are you married single or divorced?
(Married women will recieve a deduction, married men an increase, divorced men a deduction, and divorced women an increase.)
4. To what degree are you involved in community events?
(Increases for more involvement deductions for less involvement).
5. Employed or unemployed.
(Increase former , deduction latter).
6. How many relatives are included in your immediate family?
(Increase for more deduction for less).
7. Do you think people are utter bastards?
(Deduction for yes).
8. How many friends and acquaintances do you enjoy?
(Increase for more deduction for less)
10. Have you had a prominent role in any major motion pictures, artistic works, scientific discoveries, or political events?
(Major increase for yes)
Etc. goddamn you
From answering these questions the survey taker will recieve an approximate time of social death between several years ago and in very few cases a hundred plus years after death.
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Annotation:
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Hmm. I would think that some instances of Question 10 would have been due to the free time afforded by social death. Does this mean that social resurrection is possible, and perhaps then a social zombie apocalypse would ensue? |
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I haven't connotated anything. Why not be socially dead! |
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Yes the zombies meme is an interesting possible conception of the socially dead. |
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Working it all out, including Question 10, it would seem
that I've actually been socially dead for some time, only to
be recently socially resurrected. |
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Question 9 is the one I'm having trouble answering. |
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The internet is a high risk factor in social death, I
suspect. |
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You can socially die, and then be reborn when, for example, you move to a new country, or are secretly relocated by the government in return for turning state evidence. Other factors that might affect your score might be your length of time spent in prison, and of that, solitary. Time spent fishing may have negative consequences on time-till social death, but conversely has positive consequences on whether you will care less. |
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I think there is a difference in being socially dead as a subjective state, and being socially dead in the eyes of others. Social death can only be truly complete if both criteria are met. If a person simply goes on vacation without telling anybody they have not suffered a social death. While gone people will invariably be asking "where's poochie?", or whoever, and still network through that person saying various things like "hey do you know where Poochie is?", or "that Poochie sure was interesting in various ways". Eventually social death will occur as those people invariably die, or accept the death. To really socially die people really have to will a person dead, and usually for that to happen some sort of social death has to occur subjectively, which is where anomie comes in, and routinely start violating people's group norms. |
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