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Instead of suffering the pain of a real suicide, you can kill your virtual self in just five pain-free steps, and resurrection is possible with a simple log in to Facebook.
A new (anti) social network offers Facebook users to commit virtual suicide or seppukoo – as they call it. Seppukoo means ‘stomach-cutting’ and stems from the Japanese samurais who preferred to die in honour instead of falling into the hands of their enemies, which is why they violently plunged a sword into their abdomen to commit seppukoo. And now Seppukoo.com encourage you to do the same.
It all started earlier this year when a group of fictional identities haunted the Facebook network. Their identities had been stolen from notable personalities such as Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, Romeo and Juliet, Elvis Prestly and Virginia Wolf and their profiles spread rapidly across Facebook. Real Facebook users added, accepted, invited, quoted, commented and liked the deceased personalities and gave them a new life on Facebook – until they all performed a collective suicide on November 9th 2009 and disseminated the seppukoo virus all over Facebook. The campaign reached more than 50 thousands Facebook users who were all invited to join the suicide network.
To follow their example and commit virtual suicide the seppukoo network encourages you step by step to sign up, create your own customised Memorial Page and have Seppukoo send your last words to all your Facebook friends. When you reach Suppukoo you can read your friend’s comments on your Memorial Page and - if you want – go back to life by reactivating your Facebook account.
The whole idea of seppukoo is to prove that we are more than our virtual identities and that we need to liberate ourselves from our digital bodies The site puts it this way:
“The distinctions between the real and the virtual are becoming, more and more confused. Which is virtual? And where’s the real? Beyond all those questions only a fact remains: that our privacy, our profiles, our identities, our relationships, they are all – fake and/or real – entirely exploited for a sole purpose: to be sold as a product.
If you look at your online identity this way – there’s really no death as there’s no life.
As viral marketing strategies have been exploited by corporate media to make profit connecting people all over the world, Seppukoo playfully attempts to subvert this mechanism disconnecting people from each other and transforming the individual suicide experience into a “social” experience. With Seppukoo in fact it’s not important how many friends you have, but how much you influence them.
Although I’m very fascinated by the thoughts behind Seppukoo I must admit that I might be too attached to my online identity and haven’t got the courage to commit virtual suicide. If you do I’d love to hear about your experiences with life (or death) after Facebook.
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