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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

#71

Post by DanBC »

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 memorial, and some other snippets floating around. There's a glimpse of her in a Moloko video, and another (shorter) glimpse in the video of the Smith's last concert.

I get no comfort at all from that memorial page, and it left me pretty much anti the idea of them.

There's quite a lot of misinformation about her life, and her death, but she's dead and people close to her were grieving so I just ignored it and kept quiet. But it makes reading that stuff very hard.

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhjiMx9SpnI)

(http://www.a-free-guestbook.com/gb/6tsinfo/1)

(http://www.soul-source.co.uk/_/event-news/va-va-voom-all-day...)

(http://www.soul-source.co.uk/_/soul-news/sad-news-lynn-davis...)

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

#72

Post by [deleted] »

pizzeys wrote: post #30
surge wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long thought of a start up that would offer a kill switch service. Something that you checked into every so often to verify you were still alive (by email, text, or it just monitored your social feeds). If over a custom set period of time 30-365 days, if it hadn't heard anything it would attempt to confirm you're still alive either by notifying you directly or a friend to confirm if you weren't. At which point i…

I wrote this for just me a while back, and everyone I talked to about it thought it was morbidly weird. I'm glad there are others who think it isn't, but that might be something a startup had to contend with.

[deleted]

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

#73

Post by DanBC »

eddieroger wrote: post #34
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.

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.

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

#74

Post by silencio »

conanbatt wrote: post #65
InTheSwiss wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When my girlfriend died I could not bring myself to remove her from my friends list. She is still there. Her beautiful smile looks at me nearly every day. Some days I am glad to see that little profile picture of hers and others it is painful. Her family could have the account closed I guess but I think they feel the same as me and closing it is like deleting a little part of what we have left of her :(

I got the birthday notification one my most beloved teacher, and he passed away more than a year ago. It is a bitter sweet moment indeed. Im kind of glad i got the notification really.

I eventually had to fish up an obit for a friend that passed away after Facebook and Linkedin both suggested to me that I should "reconnect" with him after a couple of years.

Birthday notifications were sad, but the reconnect business drove me up a wall. I would pay anything if I could to reconnect with him now, but they don't know that.

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

#75

Post by surge »

pizzeys wrote: post #30
surge wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long thought of a start up that would offer a kill switch service. Something that you checked into every so often to verify you were still alive (by email, text, or it just monitored your social feeds). If over a custom set period of time 30-365 days, if it hadn't heard anything it would attempt to confirm you're still alive either by notifying you directly or a friend to confirm if you weren't. At which point i…

I wrote this for just me a while back, and everyone I talked to about it thought it was morbidly weird. I'm glad there are others who think it isn't, but that might be something a startup had to contend with.

Wills and life insurance are morbidly weird, but like it or not people need them. People have "digital" estates now, that need to be managed just as much as one's physical affairs once they die.

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

#76

Post by chimeracoder »

personlurking wrote: post #50

My mother passed just after I graduated from high school in the late 90s and although it was pre-FB (et al) and she wouldn't have been into social networks, I do wish there was something that recorded who she was...her moving about, her voice, something. A bunch of her friends ransacked her house for her things, which I was told they (my mother and them) had previously agreed upon in the case of her death, and so whe…

> I can't remember her voice anymore

This has to be the saddest thing I've read in this whole thread.

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

#77

Post by surge »

kaeruct wrote: post #70
pizzeys wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote this for just me a while back, and everyone I talked to about it thought it was morbidly weird. I'm glad there are others who think it isn't, but that might be something a startup had to contend with.

Any change you could publish it? I would love to have this myself

I don't know about this person's service, but someone else posted something similar: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6471713

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

#78

Post by kelnos »

personlurking wrote: post #50

My mother passed just after I graduated from high school in the late 90s and although it was pre-FB (et al) and she wouldn't have been into social networks, I do wish there was something that recorded who she was...her moving about, her voice, something. A bunch of her friends ransacked her house for her things, which I was told they (my mother and them) had previously agreed upon in the case of her death, and so whe…

I'm in a similar boat. My mom passed away in 2001, and I have very few digital reminders of her (mainly just a few emails, but she never really got into the whole internet thing). She wasn't one to be photographed often, and even if she had been, I didn't get my first digital camera until a year or so after her death. I'm trying right now to recall her voice, and I'm having a lot of trouble doing so clearly.

As much as a posthumous online presence could be unsettling, I really wish I had more tangible things to remind me of her.

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

#79

Post by ToastyMallows »

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

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