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The announcement of Terry Pratchett's death shows why you need a social media will

“Terry took Death’s arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under the endless night.”

One of the world’s greatest authors and satirists, Terry Pratchett, died on Thursday at his Wiltshire home in the UK.

He was just 66.

For the past eight years, Pratchett lived with an “embuggerance” – the name he gave his rare form of Alzheimer’s disease.

Pratchett wrote more than 70 books and, until the JK Rowling phenomenon, was the UK’s most successful author, selling 85 million books globally in 37 languages.

His last book, a new Discworld novel, was finished last summer.

His death is an enormous loss to anyone who loves to laugh at the world. Pratchett skewered our foibles with wit and elan.

But his passing is also a lesson in how to deal with that final moment in the age of social media. You need to have a plan to let your friends and followers know what you can no longer tell them.

You could say “I’m just going out for a walk and it may be some time until my next tweet”, but few of us get to predict our demise. Even if we know the end is coming, we’re otherwise occupied moving towards the light, even Pratchett, an advocate for euthanasia.

So we need a social media will, or at least to have a conversation, including passwords, with someone who can take over Facebook, Twitter, Instagram et al for what the Australian poet Les Murray called “last hellos”.

Last month Facebook released an option called a “legacy contact” someone authorised to manage your account when you die. Around 30 million profiles already live on after their owner’s departure.

Others, such as Twitter, make you jump through a lot of hoops to gain access for deactivation only.

The final four tweets on Pratchett’s twitter account are a perfect farewell: two tweets that set up the scenario of his demise in a typically Pratchett fashion, then a link to a statement on his death and like all great stories: the end.

With apologies to Shakespeare: nothing in his afterlife became him like the arriving in it.

PS: The character of ‘Death’, who makes regular appearances in Discworld novels, typically speaks IN CAPITAL LETTERS.

- Simon Thomsen for Business Insider, with reporting by Daragh Brophy.

Read: Author Terry Pratchett has died at the age of 66

Read: Terry Pratchett to present documentary on assisted suicide 

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    Mute The Divils Avocado
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    Mar 30th 2021, 6:24 AM

    No smoke without fire. An eradication of morale would fit with the recent reports on banning its members from partaking in a dance that every other emergency and voluntary rescue service in the country took part in. Publicising the organisation for all the wrong reasons. I don’t think I’d have much confidence in the management.

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    Mute David Corrigan
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    Mar 30th 2021, 6:17 AM

    “The official ‘Great Place to Work’ survey, commissioned by the Irish Coast Guard…”

    One would have to wonder if there are any connections between management and the company behind their own survey.

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    Mute Anto Curran
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    Mar 30th 2021, 6:56 AM

    @David Corrigan: wow that’s a fairly baseless accusation, one would have to wonder if there’s any connections between yourself and the unofficial survey that has no accountability or transparency (see I can do it too)

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    Mute David Corrigan
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    Mar 30th 2021, 7:02 AM

    @Anto Curran: Their own commissioned survey paints them in good light while the “unofficial” survey says that things are not so good within camp. Couple this to the fact that there is plenty of evidence of underhanded behaviour in this country means that there will always be suspicions around internally driven surveys.
    It’s not that hard to understand Anto is it?

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    Mute Madra
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    Mar 30th 2021, 7:21 AM

    @David Corrigan: those ‘Great places to work’ are a joke. A company I worked for won it once. They had more staff out on mental health issues due to senior directors and bully boy tactics.

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    Mute David Corrigan
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    Mar 30th 2021, 7:34 AM

    @Madra: Stone cold. There are a lot of people in this country who refuse to believe that kind of thing. It just couldn’t be true they say!!!

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    Mute Petulant mcbarity
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    Mar 30th 2021, 10:41 AM

    @David Corrigan: An unofficial survey might easily have a bias, being started by and forwarded to people with a grudge already.

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    Mute patrick boland
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    Mar 30th 2021, 12:48 PM

    @Madra: but it’s a great place to shop??

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    Mute Fintan Keating
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    Mar 30th 2021, 8:30 AM

    Why use a picture of RNLI boat and crew? Very different organisations.

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    Mute Mick McGuinness
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    Mar 30th 2021, 6:40 AM

    How many people actually use or know about the Coast Guard. Very few I’d imagine they do a great job when needed.

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    Mute flexfinn
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    Mar 30th 2021, 7:15 AM

    @Mick McGuinness: tbh here, everybody knows how good a job the coast guard and their volunteers do and luckily not many need to use their services

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    Mute Pat O'Leary
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    Mar 30th 2021, 10:21 AM

    Just as an aside, any sign of the official report on R116 crash in March 2017 (that would be fully 4 years ago) ever being published?? Not aware of any equivalent accident where within a couple of days they had the wreckage + a rough idea of what had happened, yet four years on people still waiting for the official accident report.

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    Mute Gavin Tobin
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    Mar 30th 2021, 10:17 AM

    Ask the right question, get the right answer?

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