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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

#181

Post by chmike »

Damned impressive and I can imagine how chocking it can be. In old times we had necrology announcements in newspaper. Family would publish an announcement and people would read the necrology. The locality property of the information would make it some how work.

But today with the so powerful communication means we have, there is no excuse that people can't be informed of such major events.

It looks like there is a missing Internet service there. I don't think this should be charged, so I don't expect the opportunity for a big business there and a so called startup.

But there there is definitely a need there and Internet solidarity or ISPs service should probably be the way to go to offer such type of service.

Probably country administrations could be involved as well because we want to be sure there won't be fake death announcements.

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

#182

Post by dspillett »

nostromo wrote: post #36
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.

A story from a friend: His friend died and all of his accounts went silent along with some grieving notes. Then, a few months later, the deceased's account was compromised by a spammer. Posts from a spammer posing as a dead friend is about the worst kind of spam I can imagine.

I still have a dead (as of 15 months ago) friend's facebook account in my contacts in case his family (none of whom I knew) wish to contact people again (it is through accessing his account there that they let us know what we had heard/guessed was true and let us know what the funeral arrangements were.

I've had to reduce the size of the "contacts" square on my Windows phone though as the larger sizes it flashes up pictures culled from various address books and for some reason picked his more regularly than anyone else's and having his face pop up almost every time I looked at my phone felt a tad odd.

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

#183

Post by matznerd »

dalek_cannes wrote: post #174
matznerd wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel you. A girl I dated passed away and her family deleted all of her social media accounts. I was already still coping with losing her in the real world and then she instantly vanished from the online world too. There were pictures of her and me that I no longer have access to, and our conversations now show up with a blank face (Facebook chat was the last way we communicated). The only remnant I could find of he…

Perhaps this is a good thing? (Forgive me if it's not and I'm being insensitive) Before human beings developed external memories (photographs and now digital records of everything we do), trauma and negative memories were supposed to slowly fade away, and they did. Only mildly emotional residues remained. Our psychological itch to keep experiencing sights and sounds associated with a thing or person lost could not be…

I share your sense of not replaying the negatives, I let those go long before she passed. What about the good memories? Those are the ones I want to re-live. I want to replay the highs, the wild times, the experiences we had with and of each other. She has the other half of all the memories we created together. If I forget something, she is not there to remind me, and if I no longer have anything else to remind me, that memory can potentially be lost forever. Her social media disappearing just made this effect worse...

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

#184

Post by morazow »

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.

One of my friends died couple of years ago, sometimes people would like or comment to his photos on facebook and it appears on my timeline, and it reminds all the great times we spent.

We exchanged passwords with my best friend on these social sites, he is being funny and joking guy asked me to update his status something like "hell is hot" if he dies first.

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

#185

Post by Cthulhu_ »

dspillett wrote: post #182
nostromo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A story from a friend: His friend died and all of his accounts went silent along with some grieving notes. Then, a few months later, the deceased's account was compromised by a spammer. Posts from a spammer posing as a dead friend is about the worst kind of spam I can imagine.

I still have a dead (as of 15 months ago) friend's facebook account in my contacts in case his family (none of whom I knew) wish to contact people again (it is through accessing his account there that they let us know what we had heard/guessed was true and let us know what the funeral arrangements were. I've had to reduce the size of the "contacts" square on my Windows phone though as the larger sizes it flashes up p…

That probably won't happen unless either he had his FB password written down somewhere in his will (if any), or if FB gives access to accounts of the deceased to relatives - which, I can imagine, would be a big hassle for FB.

It wouldn't be a bad idea to take up instructions for one's online life in one's will; Facebook accounts to make announcements on and close, domain names to transfer or disband, projects to close / reassign, online contacts to inform, etc.

I should get to that actually. If I died, nobody of the close friends I have online would have any way of knowing, and the RL people I know (few as they are) don't know them either.

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

#186

Post by lmm »

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…

Death rarely waits for a convenient moment. http://xkcd.com/791/

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

#187

Post by lmm »

GrinningFool wrote: post #67
scott_s wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Modern communication, such as Facebook, email and phones enable us to maintain friendships over time and distances that previously was unrealistic. Twenty years ago, this would have been an instance of "someone I used to be friends with died." The difference here is that because of the modern communication available, there's an expectation that we can maintain the relationship over time and distance, even…

An argument can be made that if people have disappeared from our lives entirely that indicates neither party was truly interested in maintaining that relationship. A friendship worth maintaining is worth maintaining even when it's not easy or convenient. So we keep in touch with these people we would ordinarily have forgotten about, or perhaps had an occasional thought about but not cared enough to pursue. Is this ch…

>A friendship worth maintaining is worth maintaining even when it's not easy or convenient.

False dichotomy. Friendships come on a continuum. If facebook shifts some of the marginal ones over the line from "not worth maintaining" to "worth maintaining", surely that's a good thing.

One day I saw on facebook that an old acquaintance was looking for company at an interesting-sounding dinner. So we went there and had a good evening. We've been in very little contact before or since, and would probably not have been in touch at all without facebook - but that was a nice evening nevertheless, and well worth having facebook for.

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

#188

Post by goblin89 »

dalek_cannes wrote: post #174
matznerd wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel you. A girl I dated passed away and her family deleted all of her social media accounts. I was already still coping with losing her in the real world and then she instantly vanished from the online world too. There were pictures of her and me that I no longer have access to, and our conversations now show up with a blank face (Facebook chat was the last way we communicated). The only remnant I could find of he…

Perhaps this is a good thing? (Forgive me if it's not and I'm being insensitive) Before human beings developed external memories (photographs and now digital records of everything we do), trauma and negative memories were supposed to slowly fade away, and they did. Only mildly emotional residues remained. Our psychological itch to keep experiencing sights and sounds associated with a thing or person lost could not be…

I remember reading about a study indicating that thinking about what isn't here causes unhappiness (and vice-versa, we're generally happy “in the moment”).

Remembering good things (and apparently the past tends to be seen in positive light, regardless of whether we felt happy at the moment) causes the mismatch between our memories and the reality. Possibly because we're very social species, a deceased person causes the worst pain.

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

#189

Post by junto »

ToastyMallows wrote: post #79
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.

Google actually has a form of this, called Inactive Account Manager. You can pick an amount of time and who you want to control your information when you die (or go into a coma?). Pretty awesome, I set mine up already. https://www.google.com/settings/account/inactive‎

Thank you this. I didn't know about this feature. I'm glad my wife could now get access to all of my email, contacts and photos once I'm gone.

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

#190

Post by wisty »

ahoyhere wrote: post #116

Surely I'm not the only one who read the screenshotted exchanges and thought: He just told the OP he's waiting for "answers" from the doctor. He can't make travel plans. He says it's long, gruesome, UGH. Guys. In case you have the social instinct of a cockroach, this is what they call A SIGN. Not a subtle one, either. That is when you LEAP to care for your friend. Here's what you do. You ask: Wait a minute, forget ab…

> We were hardly best friends, but we were meaningful in each other’s lives.

They weren't really good friends. And he did wish him the best, and asked if he could help.

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