Likely Normal

Our biggest worry about dying used to be how our family would be taken care of and whether they would fight over the record collection. But in the digital age? You leave behind a forensic trail so detailed, future historians might think you were a recluse who survived solely on YouTube conspiracy videos and impulse eBay purchases.

So, I wonder if we will someday see an industry of postmortem digital forensics—where specialists are paid to scrub your hard drive cleaner than a crime scene after an episode of CSI. Because nobody wants Great-Uncle Larry remembered for his “unique” folder labeled “Tax Documents (Private).”

The process is delicate. A trained technician must comb through your search history like an archaeologist sifting through ruins, carefully deleting:

• That one Reddit argument where you insisted the Earth was flat.
• The 47 open tabs of “Is it normal if your elbow makes that noise?”
• Your Steam library, because your heirs don’t need to know you spent 3,000 hours playing “Goat Simulator.”

Then there’s social media. Did you really mean to “like” that questionable meme from 2014? Was your final tweet supposed to be a typo-ridden rant about mayonnaise? A postmortem cleanup crew can ensure your digital epitaph reads “Beloved Friend and Scholar” instead of “Guy Who Argued With Bots in the YouTube Comments.”

Of course, some things slip through. Maybe your grandkids will discover your “Notes” app full of conspiracy theories about pigeons. Or your Amazon wishlist, which is just 17 different types of tactical flashlights. But hey—nobody’s perfect. At least they’ll never find the fanfiction.

In the end, we must ask: Will digital legacy preservation be the next modern vanity or a necessary service in a world where your browser history outlives you? Either way, the real lesson is clear—start deleting now, before it’s too late.