Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

When the dead outnumber the living on Facebook

XKCD asks a good Infocult question: "When, if ever, will Facebook contain more profiles of dead people than of living ones?"

Three answers appear, starting with the idea that Facebook's popularity peters out over the next few decades:

Next, and perhaps more scary, assumes Facebook retains its large user base:

More terrifying still is the quickest option:

Of course, if there's a sudden rapid increase in the death rate of Facebook users—possibly one that includes humans in general—the crossover could happen tomorrow.

Perhaps Facebook is now so normalized that we can only see it becoming fearsome in the future.

(thanks, Annette!)

Grim reaper by drone

Halloween prank of the year may go to this flying Grim Reaper gag:

Comedian Tom Mabe and a friend decided to build a flying reaper to spook people. Little did they know how successful their device would be.

The reaper was attached to a small helicopter device and, when airborne, is nearly silent.

Can you imagine being out for a jog and seeing this specter chasing you?

 

(thanks to Steven Burnett)

Clowns are scary, claims newspaper

Kentucky.com realizes the truth:

(photo by Christel Broady)

Horrific porcelains

Terrifying, lovely porcelains come from the studio of Maria Rubinke.

Reddit points to a similarly creepy artist, Jessica Harrison.

(thanks to Annette)

Raising the dead

A movie about bringing the dead back from life, Deadraiser, is being produced by a Christian sect.  

The branding for this is very Gothic, from the mixture of fonts and use of black color, not to mention the dead people bit. How often have Christian groups made this cultural move during the 21st century?

It might be worth considering this movie, or at least its promotion, as a response to the zombie craze.  Here the group can pick up that meme and repurpose it.

(thanks to Charles Cameron, your man for new religious movements)

Ink from the beloved dead

Canadian Gothic: that country is seeing a new tattoo style, one which combines black ink with a loved one's ashes.  Call them "ash tattoos".

Trish Rodgers filled a small bottle cap with her dead aunt’s ashes and emptied it into a vial of black ink. In her apartment, the tattoo artist used the combination of human remains and tattoo pigment to draw the outline of a rose into her cousin’s shoulder.

"Morbid Ink", others call it.

On Tuesday, Ms. Rodgers had her cat’s cremated ashes used to create the tattoo of a paw print on her leg.

(thanks to Randy McCall)

The sugar spoon of death

How about a spoon which reminds you of death?  Behold the Sugar Skull Spoon,

born from the happy realisation that with a simple twist, the humble tea spoon could become the perfect home accessory for fans of the macabre (and fans of hot drinks!). The Sugar Skull tea spoon is the perfect gift for those who need reminding to take a little less sugar in their drinks...

"Gvie me some sugar, baby." 

This Kickstarter project seems to be fully funded.

(thanks to Todd "Sweet Guy" Bryant)

One horrifying parasite

Here's another example of Nature as Gothic monster: rhizocephalan barnacles. One of these little parasites injects itself into crabs to take them over, using brain control to turn the victim into a spawning platform.

There are all sorts of horrors involved, starting with how precisely the name describes the creature:

the adult female...mostly consists of a network of thread-like extensions penetrating the body of the host.

Or this stage of the takeover, as the article imagines the reader is a crab:

Just when it seems it couldn’t be worse, your abdomen explodes. You’re now sterile, and her gonads are erupting out from where your genitals are.

And the mind control bit:

She has woven her threads through your brain. She’s been secreting chemicals to control you–you’ve forgotten who you are. You now believe you are female, and the bulge in your abdomen is a brood of your own eggs. Moreover, you are about to give birth. You care for and clean these eggs, as if they were your own.

Read on!  There's more.  Pleasant dreams.

(thanks to Mike Sellers at Facebook)

Ghost village in Turkey

Kayakoy is an old Greek town in Turkey, but it has stood empty of people since the 1920s.  Now it is a ghost town.

Stairs lead past ruins:

Walls erode against the sky:

(via Ed Webb on the Twitters)

Zombies of government

Here's another twist in zombie political language: governmental programs as the living dead.

Headline: 

Zombie Government Bodies Spread Nationally;

Occasional Victories Require Difficult Budget Shot

J.D. Tuccille has in mind certain agencies of the "local government [which] often fl[y] under the radar..."  Each one is busy

spreading its reach, hassling its subjects and outliving its usefulness while we remain largely unaware of the growing problem. It's the attack of the zombie government agencies, and victories against them are rare and hard-fought..

Tuccille does keep the metaphor going:

The special districts are almost impossible to kill, since they have entrenched defendes in the form of patronage hires and their own lobbyists, while most taxpayers don't know they exist. These seemingly unkillable government bodies do take an occasional head shot.

The article does consider other monsters, briefly:

We all know how intrusive, bloated and expensive the federal government is—the not-really-a-shutdown provided us a glimpse of just how far the beast on the Potomac has extended its tentacles into everyday life.

Zombie politics: has this become the representatie political meme of our time?