Dead Advice

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

If the web means we'll never forget anything again, we might as well say something for posterity. Dead Advice is a site run by Chicagoan Felix Jung that publishes letters of advice from the newly dead:

The premise of the letters is that you, the author, have just died. The intent behind the letters is that they’re written from your point of view (as opposed to some fictionalized persona). Hypothetical and imagined experiences aren’t what we’re looking for here. We’re looking for your letter to be as autobiographical as you’re comfortable making it.

The only rule is that every letter submitted needs to start with the same first line: Now that I’m dead, I want to tell you a few things.

Jung says he was inspired by Thomas Lynch, who wrote, "The meaning of our lives, and the memories of them, belong to the living, just as our funerals do." Just as you can't take your material possessions with you, your wisdom is best left behind too.

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