It turns out there is a lot of ‘helpful’ advice on the web for faking your own death. Here are just a few:

• How to fake your own death from Everything2
• How to fake your own death from eHow (heavy on the etiquette and a little light on the practicalities)
• Faking  it: How to do a Reggie and get away with it from The Independent

I think it just got a lot easier thanks to Webwill. Unfortunately unless you speak Swedish you won’t get a lot from this site right now and might find it easier to get a little more background info in English. If I understand the premise correctly, you decide what you want to say on your various social media profiles in the event of your death and hand over the virtual keys to a trusted friend to actually click the final button.  There doesn’t appear to be anything to prevent the ‘friend’ from being your other gmail address so as long as you go to the library so the IP address doesn’t give it away, you could get the viral buzz going without having to go to the more traditional extremes of car crashes and bridge jumps.

Neither Twitter nor Facebook have anything regarding “death” in their Terms of Service although presumably Webwill requires the handing over of an account and password which does violate most everyone’s terms. Of course if you’re dead, or effectively dead in this persona I suppose you don’t really care.

For those not planning an illusory exit, now you not only have to figure out what catchy phrase to put on your tombstone but how say goodbye in under 140 characters which seems to me to require a great deal more foresight and planning than most Americans are prepared to do.  I think I prefer the alternative of getting through to Lisa Williams after the fact and hoping someone catches it on her monthly bulletin board.