Verbosity 2.0 ~ Talking about life on Drupal

Today I had one of those weird experiences where someone reached out to me from the beyond on Facebook. Sure, you've probably heard stories about the dead living on though tribute profiles and/or groups on social networking sites. This wasn't quite like that. The kind of "dead people" I'm talking about is that associated with technology, ie, those whose accounts have been deleted.

So when I received a message on Facebook from a friend that no longer participates in Facebook I was a little worried. Had someone created a new profile with my friend's same name? A stolen identity? Would the profile not have been deleted when she left? How could someone break in like this?

Then I logged into Facebook. When I get into the site I took a look around and it was as if nothing had ever happened. At all. It was the exact same profile that my friend had before she signed-off months ago.

Awhile back my friend quit Facebook and the rest of us sat dazed and confused musing about why her profile could have gone away. It was nerve wracking. We browsed around the site looking for answers, but Facebook didn't mention a thing. Apparently bad news is not worth telling anyone about. When the story unfolded it was something miraculously dull. The same old excuses we all use when we dump a technology: "it's getting boring, I want to do something else."

A lot of people I know are coming and going from Facebook all the time. Some people I know have no Internet (yes, it's true, I do converse with the others) and most of them similarly reject Facebook, even if they know that photos and other memoribilia of themselves already exist on the network. Other contacts drop off because they have moved cities, others to keep work and private spheres separated, and still more leave just because they're bored. What's new about this situation is that someone is finally coming back.

Privacy advocates, beware! Simply deleting your profile on Facebook doesn't remove any of the information from their servers. They keep it around, silently managing it for you until you come to your senses and log back on.

So today, receiving this text message, I thought my friend had risen from the dead. And truly she had. Sort-of. Sometimes social and technology do not translate well to real life.