Willy Wonka, the fictional chocolatier, once said of death, “The suspense is killing me. I hope it lasts.”
Now there is a Web site that is doing its part to take the guesswork out of dying. DeathClock.com has been online for four years now, and by simply filling in spaces for age, sex, birth date and attitude, the site gives visitors the date on which they are going to die.
“The popularity of DeathClock is growing rapidly,” said Raymond Camden, creator of the site. “We get roughly 90,000 page views each day.”
Camden said he got the idea for the site about 15 years ago from a Sharper Image catalog. “The Web site was my idea. The original Death Clock was a toy sold by Sharper Image,” said Camden.
The methods used to determine the exact second of death are less than scientific, and depend mainly on your attitude. The four different attitudes to choose from are optimistic, normal, pessimistic and sadistic.
An optimistic female born on January 18, 1981, will live until May 9, 2074, or 2,281,685,543 seconds, but if she were sadistic she would live only until March 31, 2020, or 574,371,372 seconds, according to DeathClock.com
The site offers visitors more features than a countdown of the seconds until they die.
In a section of the site titled “Obituaries,” visitors can read the results of a celebrity’s birth date. Currently, the two people featured are President George W. Bush and former vice president Al Gore.
“The Mortuary” offers DeathClock screen savers, which count down the seconds until your inevitable death when your computer is idle. DeathClock shirts are also a hot item on the site — the all-cotton shirts can be ordered for $16.99 each. A list of quotes about death and polls on the subject can also be found in “The Mortuary.”
For those visitors inclined to write about their experiences on the Web site, “The Dead Letter Office” is a section where they can leave their comments (usually negative) about DeathClock.com.
Negative comments do not bother Camden, however. “I just ignore them or belittle them,” said Camden, who especially enjoys doing “The Testament,” a spot on the site were he can rant and rave.
Camden can afford to laugh. Despite his critics, DeathClock made him $32,000 in 2001 alone.
The popularity does have its down side, however. “Almost every time I present at conferences I get someone who comes up and asks, ‘Aren’t you that DeathClock guy?’” said Camden.
When asked what the point of it all was, Camden replied, “‘DeathClock, the Internet’s friendly reminder that time is slipping away,’ that’s our motto.”
