My Death Space

In much the same way our elders go eye-to-eye with the looming haunt of their own mortality by making a daily ritual of paging immediately to the obituary section to see who they’ve outlived, the equivalent exists for the burgeoning virtual global community, MySpace. For a bit of existential shaudenfreude, MyDeathSpace trolls like the Grim Reaper himself at the fringes of the most popular Web site in the United States (and moving up fast with the rest of the world) posting obituaries as they come in of former habituates, helpfully supplying the link to the MySpace profile of the deceased in happier days. Seeing as that the dwellers of MySpace are for the most part youngsters, the deaths are invariably violent, suicidal, drug-related or of their bodies turning on them. Apparently, there are also a growing number of murderers who meet their victims on the site (also helpfully linked). Perfect Internet trolling for the morbidly inclined.