And another...

[jducoeur]

Is it just me, or are we seeing something like ten times as many death notices within the SCA this year than ever before?

I'm not sure there's anything surprising here: it could easily be simply a factor of the SCA gradually aging, or that it has implicitly become more socially acceptable to post these brief obits on the worldwide forums. But it's a tad unnerving...

Comments

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

Little of column A, a lot of column B, I suspect.

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

More aging, more penetration of worldwide fora (it's quite recent that I would see, even secondhand, a death notice from Trimaris).

[jducoeur]

It's not just penetration, though. I mean, the Rialto's been around for a *long* time now. But it seems to have become normal to post obits on these fora...

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

I think it's the blogging thing. People are more willing to share personal details electronically. Theirs or someone else's. Even if there's little chance that someone not from Trimaris would have heard of Whomever's birth, death, laureling, accident, theft, marriage, or outbreak of cows.

And once it's out there, it gets forwarded.

[vairavi.livejournal.com]

The past few years I have noticed a distinct spike during the winter months. Sure, there's a few in the spring, summer and fall, but winter seems to be more than just a metaphor for death...

[cellio]

Some is propegation, some is probably aging, some is probably a greater inclination to post (as others said). I find myself wondering whether there are more deaths or just more death notices. I also wonder how the SCA's current demographics compare to when we were in college; it feels to me like the average age has gone up, but of course that's a biased impression. And since what I care about is participants, not people who send money to Milpitas, getting the data would be hard.

[jducoeur]

I can't speak to the SCA as a whole, but I know that the average age around *here* has gone up considerably. At a hand-waving guess, I would have put the mean when I was in college in the upper 20s; nowadays, it's in the upper 30s. (Although the new generation of kids throws that off -- I'm not sure how to factor them in...)

[baron-steffan.livejournal.com]

Folks are attributing this to "the aging of the SCA", but I don't think it's that. Nor is it just wider communication. No, folks that I know are dying, and they're (relatively) young. That's what's been so especially unnerving.