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A friend died nearly 2 years ago. I had no idea

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Re: A friend died nearly 2 years ago. I had no idea

#81

Post by chimeracoder »

DanBC wrote: post #71

A very close friend died. I knew she died, she died while she was on the phone to me. I had my cell phone (to her) in one hand and my landline (to the police) in the other. They were saying "ask her about landmarks! Ask her for her address!" and she was saying "oh ho ho! You won't get it out of me that easily". The online stuff is a bit hard for me to deal with. She had a friendster page, but not Facebook. There's a…

> A very close friend died. I knew she died, she died while she was on the phone to me. I had my cell phone (to her) in one hand and my landline (to the police) in the other. They were saying "ask her about landmarks! Ask her for her address!" and she was saying "oh ho ho! You won't get it out of me that easily".

As someone who has been in the same situation (though in my case my friend survived), I am very sorry for your loss. I still have nightmares sometimes about that experience - hearing the authorities bark orders into the phone on one end, hearing her scream at me, calling me a "traitor" when she realized I'd divulged her plans that she told me in confidence[0]. I even remember the exact song that I had been playing in the background (to give background noise, so she wouldn't realize I was on the other line) - I haven't been able to listen to it since.

Back to the topic, though: I'm in the opposite situation. This former friend and I haven't spoken in many years (for unrelated reasons), and it would cause a lot of problems in our social networks if we reconnected. Still, every now and then (perhaps once a year or so), I am reminded of her and have the inclination to check in on her. We're not Facebook friends, but thanks to Twitter, her public blog, etc., it's easy for me to see that she's alive and well[1].

I'm not sure how I would react if I checked one day and found that she had passed on, whether by taking her own life[2], or from "natural" reasons. It would certainly be very difficult emotionally to handle seeing remnants of her life all across the Internet, almost all of which have been generated after the last time we spoke in person.

[0] I pride myself on my integrity in general, but I don't regret my actions here. (She apologized later, for what it's worth).

[1] for some definition of "well".

[2] given the aforementioned history, there is a non-zero chance of this

Re: A friend died nearly 2 years ago. I had no idea

#83

Post by tpurves »

noonespecial wrote: post #8

As one of the older folks on HN, I can tell you that death in the age of facebook is strange in that even when they are gone there's still a "there-ness" to them thanks to left over accounts. Its almost like at any moment, a tweet will pop up or an update to a wall... Perhaps that's the 21st century version of seeing ghosts.

I wrote this blog piece back in in 2006 when the social media trend was just starting to emerge about what to with the social profiles of the deceased. As well with my own experiences as a software designer.

What happens when your user is dead? are the kinds of special use cases we often fail to consider when rushing out the minimum viable product.

http://www.thomaspurves.com/2006/05/10/the-dead-sender-probl...

Re: A friend died nearly 2 years ago. I had no idea

#84

Post by sejje »

I had a friend die and I didn't find out for about 400 days. I was very upset, though I only knew this man via the internet...but we had been close friends for nearly a decade before having a falling out.

He had cystic fibrosis and went from perfectly healthy to dead in about four days.

His father and friends have taken up his various online presences--facebook, website, twitter. It's a neat little community that formed around him, even in his absence.

Re: A friend died nearly 2 years ago. I had no idea

#85

Post by eddieroger »

DanBC wrote: post #73
eddieroger wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can actually have a Facebook "friend" marked as deceased (in quotes, because it's actually pretty stringent on how to make this happen, and you have to be family), which prevents them from showing up places like feeds and likes and search. I had to have my grandmother marked as deceased, and it was one of the most difficult parts of the posthumous clean up tasks.

> and it was one of the most difficult parts of the posthumous clean up tasks. I have dead people in my phone contact list, because deleting them just feels weird.

My Grandma is still in my phone for that reason. I also couldn't wipe her laptop, so I just pulled the drive and replaced it. It's weird, the things that make death real.

Re: A friend died nearly 2 years ago. I had no idea

#86

Post by eyeareque »

This is why Facebook/Social networks cannot replace real life interactions. Maybe they weren't as close of a friend as you thought? If you don't hear from someone for two years and never make a phone call to reach out/or spend them with them, it sounds like they were more of an acquaintance than a real friend. I quit facebook back in April, and I can say that my friendships with true friends have been getting stronger ever since.

passive relationships are not genuine.

Re: A friend died nearly 2 years ago. I had no idea

#87

Post by sliverstorm »

jlgreco wrote: post #66
sliverstorm wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly would my passing cause this?

Your passing wouldn't cause it; and it could happen to anybody. However having it happen after you die is going to have an emotional impact on those who are still alive. How would it feel to open up facebook and see that you have a message from your deceased spouse? Not very good I imagine. I think it is entirely reasonable that some people would want to prevent this from happening.

We can never completely escape the echos of the past.

Re: A friend died nearly 2 years ago. I had no idea

#88

Post by philwelch »

stmchn wrote: post #23
LanceH wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the post-death messages that they like Ikea, or Chipotle, which are spooky, weird and tacky, all at once.

It really gives "famous last words" a whole new meaning since all your tweets and Facebook statuses are forever immortalized. It makes me wonder what seemingly mundane thing will be the last thing people see from me on social media and will in turn be the first thing people see on my page when they find out I'm dead. It reminds me of Cory Monteith's (from Glee) recent passing. His last tweets were, "what the crap is…

Especially since he (presumably) didn't actually die in a sharknado.

Re: A friend died nearly 2 years ago. I had no idea

#89

Post by rbanffy »

Years ago, when Facebook was new and Orkut was taking its first steps, I decided to, once more, look up a good friend of my early computing career.

He was one of my first BBS-friends, helped me set-up my first PC compatible, lent me an external hard-drive and taught me a lot about programming. By the time I finally found him, I realized he died six months before.

We take our friends for granted. They are not.

Re: A friend died nearly 2 years ago. I had no idea

#90

Post by PhasmaFelis »

sliverstorm wrote: post #59
Afforess wrote: post #16

This is why setting up a deathswitch with a trusted friend to manage your online accounts upon death is critical. Wills are nice and all but I don't trust my close family to be proficient enough to correctly close out my online accounts.

That's really not what I took away from this. Why do you... you know, care what happens to your online accounts? Web accounts are no more special than your library or toll road accounts. The only reason bank accounts matter at all is because the contest need to be disbursed.

Because (a) it sucks to be sending messages to an old friend online, wondering why he won't respond and not knowing that he's dead; (b) it sucks to get birthday messages and "reconnect" notices and spam from someone that you know is dead. Just like the article said and all the other comments mentioned, y'know?
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