The If I Die Facebook Application has been around for almost a year now so I’m surprised it hasn’t garnered more attention for being completely gross and completely weird. I guess everyone has seen those movies or TV shows where a character leaves a video message after their death relaying a message to the other characters but I can’t think of any good examples except The Man in The Moon with Jim Carrey – which is not a good example – and a recent episode of The League where Ruxin explains what he wants to happen with his Fantasy Football team in a video message upon his death, or as the case was if he fell into a coma. That isn’t a good example either because I don’t think anyone except for me has ever watched The League. Well yeah, forget about examples because the If I Die Facebook Application lets you do exactly that – record a message for your friends and family to see after your death.
The idea is you use the Facebook app to record the message then select three of your best friends as your ‘trustees’ who all have to confirm your death in order for the message to become active on your profile. I don’t know if anyone sees the potential danger in this as it wouldn’t be THAT hard for these three trustees to get together and just declare you were dead so they could see your message. That would be some practical joke – especially if you had revealed a bunch of secrets in your message as these crass If I Die adverts seem to encourage you to do:
[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdzCELofGgE’]
This next advert is even worse. It’s an animated funeral where the guy’s If I Die message gets played. He tells his wife that she was shit in bed and tells his best friend that he ran over his dog and buried him in the garden. I’m not sure if this is supposed to be funny or what? I guess it’s supposed to be funny but it really isn’t, it’s just kinda gross. In fact it’s so cringeworthy it kinda seems like a parody advert you might see on something like The Simpsons or Family Guy or Adult Swim. I would love to meet the marketing department that came up with these ideas:
[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DQPBgEHZkk’]
Unfortunately I’m not Facebook friends with anyone that has died and chosen to use this application so I can’t say whether or not it was funny/heartwarming/weird to see my dead friend’s message or not. Hopefully this article will encourage some people I’m friends with to get it though and I can see how effective it is in the future sometime. Hopefully a long time in the future though as I’m not encouraging any of my friends to die as a result of this article, or just so we can see how the If I Die Facebook App works. You can check out the app HERE.
