The story of two suicides

Just finished reading this (link) story of about two suicides. All forms of narration (novels, movies) are replete with instances of using two parallel stories with distinct similarities. But to observe that in real life is very disturbing. As the writer observed,

They had so much in common: Two young researchers obsessed with simulating common sense. Both Canadian. Both Net-savvy.

Both of them, though with contrasting fortunes, driven by the same objective, working on two very similar projects and finally ending their lives in uncannily mirrored fashion.

The article links to their personal blogs, official pages, pages on the web where they have left a trail of their lives, which makes the whole experience of reading about them surreal. When you usually read about lives gone wrong or suicides, you can suspend reality and read the account as a work of fiction. But in this case, they talk to you through pictures capturing moments in their lives when they were happier, letters that aren't crumpled and discarded but are on the web as live evidence you can scan, blogs recording trivialities and visions of changing the world - all this making them more like you and me.

It reminded of a play that was a modern interpretation of Vikram and Betaal.

Today, you are there in Orkut smiling with friends, your scrapbooks replete with snide and 'similed' remarks, your pictures in front of Eiffel and the one with you in a leather jacket bearing the winters of Wisconsin. But when you die, what happens to your online identity? Does it remain forever as a memory haunting your loved ones of times gone by? Does that make it a ghost? An identity that will last forever?