You hang him. You electrocute him with a toaster in the bathtub. You give him a fistful of pills and a handle of Jack and tell him to wait for you on the train tracks. This is the idea behind the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine – the Kevorkian method for logging out for the last time. I can’t believe we’re here already – but so far 891 people have elected to kill their web identity on all social networking accounts – Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn. For good. Once you do it, there’s no going back and apparently some people are only too happy to say Sayonara Suckers to updates, tweets, notifications, and requests. I can hardly blame them, but for good? Forever? You sure? That’s like getting those mustache-on-your-finger tattoos. Cute joke in a devil-may-care sort of way…but for forever-ever?
I’m completely entertained by the idea of interventions with pleading and handwringing. “Don’t do it ProgMaster428! What about all your pokes?” Or members of Farmville or Mob Wars holding wakes afterward, where they reminisce of the vegetables they’ve grown and the hits they generated. And then there’s all the metaphysical implications that are involved: If you’ve killed your own avatar, what kind of karma have you generated?
Interesting side note: Facebook is now blocking the IP address of the Suicide Machine. No Death Panels at Facebook so it would seem.
