
A friend died nearly 2 years ago. I had no idea - alexcaps
https://medium.com/lessons-learned/917b8b63ae3e
======
noonespecial
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.

~~~
InTheSwiss
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 :(

~~~
matznerd
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 her online was an Etsy
account. She had a wishlist on there with a few items on it and so I bought
something she had picked and it is hanging on my wall right now.

~~~
dalek_cannes
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 scratched no matter how tempted we were.

Now we can. Not only that, we consider it some sort of obligation to carry the
burden. We scratch the wound just as it starts to heal and it's like
experiencing the loss over and over again.

or may be that's just my experience. I used to be in a permanent state of
melancholy because I always reminisced about past losses, even when the
present was good. I don't do that anymore. I've a rule, in fact: never replay
a negative experience more than once unless you have new data to re-evaluate
it in a different light.

~~~
matznerd
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...

------
Sukotto

      Around The Corner
    
      Around the corner I have a friend,
      In this great city that has no end,
      Yet the days go by and weeks rush on,
      And before I know it, a year is gone.
    
      And I never see my old friends face,
      For life is a swift and terrible race,
      He knows I like him just as well,
      As in the days when I rang his bell.
    
      And he rang mine but we were younger then,
      And now we are busy, tired men.
      Tired of playing a foolish game,
      Tired of trying to make a name.
    
      "Tomorrow" I say! "I will call on Jim
      Just to show that I'm thinking of him",
      But tomorrow comes and tomorrow goes,
      And distance between us grows and grows.
    
      Around the corner, yet miles away,
      "Here's a telegram sir," "Jim died today."
      And that's what we get and deserve in the end.
      Around the corner, a vanished friend.
    
      -- Charles Hanson Towne
    
    

I've had this happen to me. And it really hurts. Partly from the reality of
death, and partly because it's so easy to play the what if game. What if I'd
called any of the many times I thought about doing so? How would things have
been different?

As far as I know, there are no do-overs. So make a point of keeping in touch
with the people you care about.

------
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.youtube.com/watch?v=jhjiMx9SpnI))

([http://www.a-free-guestbook.com/gb/6tsinfo/1](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/_/event-news/va-va-voom-all-dayer-
happening-this-saturday-r1570))

([http://www.soul-source.co.uk/_/soul-news/sad-news-lynn-
davis...](http://www.soul-source.co.uk/_/soul-news/sad-news-lynn-davis-r478))

~~~
chimeracoder
> 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

------
weeksie
I come from a fishing town in Alaska and a year or so ago all of the people
from my hometown started to show up on Facebook. I had been away for a very
long time, lived all over the world, and only just started to get back in
touch with my roots.

Fishing is dangerous work. Over the last year I slowly learned how many people
had died. I learned about more when I finally went back up to visit. The
fisherman's memorial was a tough thing to walk by. It was even tougher to hear
that people I had loved had died one, two, five years earlier and I had no
idea.

Life is short. Maintain those friendships.

------
Timothee
Of course, this has happened for as long as people have been able to travel.
Before the Internet, you'd move to a different city, and maybe you'd keep in
touch with some people but for the most part, you'd never know what happened
to most people you knew. Because as soon as _they_ moved or changed their
phone number, getting back in touch was limited or involved a certain amount
of research.

The difference now is that people who are in the acquaintance-Internet friend
spectrum can still be reached easily with an email, a tweet, an instant
message… if you wanted to. So they always feel kind of "there" even if you
don't actually communicate with them. Until, like the author, you try to reach
out and they don't reply back.

It's kind of an interesting thing of online "friends": you can be in touch
with somebody in a chat room or a forum for years and feel like you know them
well (at least in the context, you've known them), but they can just disappear
one day and you won't know if it's because they died or just moved on to other
things.

I was thinking about that about a guy I've been playing Words with Friends for
probably three years. I only play with him because I know we're about the same
level and it's hard to find players like that. (we were matched randomly) But
I don't know anything about him except for his first name, most likely his
birth year (based on his username) and possibly the fact that he lives on the
East Coast based on the time he plays his turns. If he were to stop playing, I
wouldn't be able to tell the difference from him being dead. It's a strange
thing.

------
mangeletti
That was a really good article, and really sad.

This happened to me recently, as well. I hadn't spoke with my best friend from
Junior high in years (since I was 18), and I looked him up this past winter...
died in Iraq (in 2006!), in an attack on his convoy. The reports were mixed.
He either died by gun fire while defending the convoy after the initial
attack, which was a road-side bomb, or he died as a result of the road-side
bomb. It was the weirdest feeling, because I was sure I could have him on the
phone in less than 1 day, and we'd be reminiscing about all the fun times we
had back in the day, etc., and have some sort of "let's do that sometime soon"
plans before the call was over. I was wrong. What's more, he had a wife and
kid, which I never met. If I'd been a better friend, his wife would have had
another person to comfort her with anecdotes of his younger days... I was a
terrible friend. He was killed while fighting for our country (whether our
imperialism is justified or not, our soldiers are important to our country's
sovereignty), and I was busy vacationing in the Florida Keys.

~~~
chimeracoder
> I was a terrible friend. He was killed while fighting for our country
> (whether our imperialism is justified or not, our soldiers are important to
> our country's sovereignty), and I was busy vacationing in the Florida Keys.

This happens to the best of us. In itself, it does not make you a terrible
friend.

> What's more, he had a wife and kid, which I never met. If I'd been a better
> friend, his wife would have had another person to comfort her with anecdotes
> of his younger days.

You never know - she may be happy to hear from you regardless.

------
personlurking
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 when I got there, there was almost
nothing left of her things. I can't remember her voice anymore so, in that
sense, having a FB profile of hers wouldn't do it for me but a Youtube video
would. That would be nice.

~~~
kelnos
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.

------
stmchn
This happened with the first friend I ever made taking my CS degree. We were
in a lot of classes together and corresponded on a semi-regular basis on
Facebook over school breaks and things. I had talked to him a couple months
prior to this school year starting, but once I got back and noticed he wasn't
in any of the classes we were supposed to have together, a mutual friend of
ours informed me that he had committed suicide over the summer. It was so
jarring that just a few months had passed and he was gone. I looked back on
our Facebook messages. I had no idea he was in any sort of distress. The last
thing he had sent me was some funny cat gif and I hadn't responded. I know
it's silly but I wish I had replied, thinking that it would have made a
difference somehow.

~~~
chimeracoder
> I had no idea he was in any sort of distress.

> I know it's silly but I wish I had replied, thinking that it would have made
> a difference somehow.

In case you're still harboring any sense of guilt over this, please don't. You
are not responsible for your friend's death.

This is a common reaction when a friend or acquaintance commits suicide; it's
normal, but don't let it get the better of you.

------
United857
Sadly, this is a byproduct of a passivity in relationships that seems to be
more pervasive in the Facebook era. You don't need to reach out to your
friends anymore, instead, we just consume each other's broadcasts.

~~~
wmeredith
This was my first thought. If someone dies and you don't know until two years
later, they weren't actually your friend. Or maybe, Facebook just has their
buttons labeled incorrectly.

~~~
IvyMike
Surely there are people between "Friends whose lives you are involved with on
a day-to-day basis" and "Acquaintances that mean nothing to you".

Friendship doesn't need to be a black-and-white concept; there are close
friends and there are distant friends.

~~~
wmeredith
I agree. Now change the tile of this article to, "A distant friend died two
years ago and I didn't know about it." And no one clicks.

~~~
Osmium
There's emotional distance and there's physical distance. I have been very
close to people who are now very far from me. The fact that we don't get to
speak often these days says nothing about the quality of the bond. Still very
sad...

------
Afforess
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.

~~~
sliverstorm
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.

~~~
Loughla
Do you want your on-line account compromised with Viagra spam after your
death? Do you want your grieving family to receive BIGGER PENIS NOW
advertisements from you once you've passed?

~~~
sliverstorm
How exactly would my passing cause this?

~~~
jlgreco
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.

~~~
sliverstorm
We can never completely escape the echos of the past.

~~~
eropple
And your platitudes don't actually address the points raised.

~~~
sliverstorm
It's clear we disagree, and neither party will be convincing the other, so I
thought I'd just leave something to think about and move on. Alas, here we are
again.

------
tobych
Kinda had this happen. My ex-partner and close friend - "my rock" as I called
her - Amanda "Moo" Hearn died a few years ago, just a few weeks after being
diagnosed with ovarian cancer. I'd not called her for a couple of months. Kept
meaning to. Then I suddenly had this urge to know how she was, and called, but
the number had been disconnected, I think, so I called her sister who said
"Oh, I'm so sorry Toby, Moo died yesterday." So yes, that Charles Hanson Towne
poem (elsewhere on this thread) rings true for me. I email friends and call
them occasionally and flippantly say "Hey, you're alive!" (I moved to the US
six years ago and haven't been in touch quite like I used to be) and they
don't realize I actually mean it. I hold a lot of guilt inside, dreading
learning of another friend's death in a similar manner. Good to read this
thread.

------
kabdib
I lost a friend about a year and a half ago. He just stopped responding to
email, and I found out he had died about two months after.

Pancreatic cancer is a bitch -- he was gone in about three months, and he was
(a) busy as fuck wrapping stuff up and (b) very sick for much of that period.
He had all he could handle.

I did get to go to a memorial for him a few months later. I still miss him;
one of the best programmers I know, and he got me into motorcyling 25 years
ago.

------
NovemberWest
I tend to hate stuff like this. He closes with suggesting life is fleeting and
you should keep up to date with still living friends. There is no indication
he is actually doing that. People routinely have wonderful things to say about
the dead, often when they said (and did) terrible things to them while alive.

Maybe he isn't a hypocrite but I have seen this too often from people who are.

------
goshx
This reminds me of what I saw a couple weeks ago on Facebook. I saw a friend's
birthday popping up on FB. Then messages to that friend sending wishes of
happy birthday and good health, peace, and everything else people wish you on
your bday, started popping up on my timeline. The problem was: she died two
months ago. I didn't know exactly how to feel about that... The funny thing is
that this happened in a small town (13k people), where everybody knows each
other.

That's when I decided to remove my birth date from FB. That is about the only
time most of your "friends" will remember that you (may still) exist.

~~~
CodeCube
I'm fine with acquaintances that don't really correspond with me when my
birthday rolls around. However I explicitly don't wish anyone a happy birthday
over facebook. If it's someone that's important to me, I will make it a point
to either text them, call them, or otherwise arrange to meet up with them in
person. Otherwise, I leave it unsaid.

------
ChuckMcM
And on the other side of weird, I got a request from a person to introduce
them to someone in my LinkedIn contacts list that I knew had passed. I passed
along the information so they could be informed but realized that no doubt
this person was getting emails from recruiters and such. Got the image of
someone laying dead in their casket with their phone humming incoming
calls/texts.

I have stated in my will that my executor will put an indication about my
demise on any social media accounts that folks might visit. And I included a
signed letter authorizing said social media outlets to allow them to do so in
my absence. Strange thing to have to include but it is the new world.

------
snoonan
Too true and common. A friend of mine in sales taught me to make sure you
reach out to everyone who matters to you in some fashion on a regular
schedule. To put it on your calendar. I never gave it much thought outside
business, but it's something I'm going to start doing.

------
fusiongyro
I deleted and recreated my Google account recently. Some deceased friends of
mine have "added me". An unsettling feeling.

------
AznHisoka
I've had this happen to in the past. I may be cynical but I think most people
just don't care enough about cultivating friendships with you, especially
post-college. We just become too preoccupied with our jobs, family,
obligations, etc. Even when we do have time to connect, we rather just sit in
the couch and watch Breaking Bad instead.. too much effort. So yes, OP's
thoughts are nice, but in the end, most of us just fall back to old habits.

------
memsom
When I was in my early 20's I had an intense email friendship with a girl I
met in alt.music.nirvana. Her name was Michaels, and if you search hard
enough, you can still find her Usenet posts on Google Groups. We lived on
opposite sides of the world, but we kept in touch for over 2 or so years. Then
she moved out of home, had no internet access and we list touch. One of the
worst days of my life was the 10th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death. Not
because it was the day he passed on, but because of what I found. I tried to
look her up. I felt she must have found the internet again. It had been some
years since my last search. Sadly I discovered that I was never going to get a
chance to speak with her ever again, because she had died in 2001, 3 years
earlier. I managed to speak to her family, and her father told me that he had
often wondered what had become of me. It's still hard to deal with. I have a
reminder for her Birthday and the day she passed. It's a weird one really.

------
parsnips
Sucks. I had a friend/mentor pass and not find out for two years as well. I
went to his blog, and was wondering why he never finished his house remodeling
project... Found his wifes blog and found out about his year long fight with
cancer. Life is precious.

~~~
mathattack
Indeed. When my 10 year high school reunion came, we were surprised by several
"Who knew?" instances of people passing away. It was always people 2 removed.
With social media the amount of people 1 removed is closer, and it's easier to
contact folks, but it's still a surprise to hear about young folks in that
"see every year or so category" go. It's a shame when it's cancer.

------
DanielBMarkham
I've long thought that somebody should write an app called "recycle me" for
folks, like me, that post a lot on social media. It could just run your posts
again in a loop, much like TV does reruns. If you had ten years or more of
posts, it might even accomplish something like a poor man's immortality: you'd
always be interacting with people, even people that weren't alive when you
died. One can even imagine this being two-way: taking this to the next level
by analyzing your online conversations and extrapolating what sorts of votes
and comments you might make on new posts.

~~~
tjr
After playing with CleverBot for a while a few years ago, some colleagues and
I created a clone that we chatted with, training it for months.

Chatting with it now is a lot like chatting with one of us. Granted, it
doesn't always make sense, but the style of responses comes through.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
For people who post online heavily, I don't think this is as far away as some
might believe.

Sure, it's not going to convince folks you're still alive, but it might
provide entertainment to the great-great-great grandkids, let them know what
you were like.

~~~
socksy
This idea (taken to its extreme) is the premise for a Black Mirror episode:
[http://vimeo.com/61215171](http://vimeo.com/61215171)

------
skdjf
Really scared of this one ... [http://xkcd.com/686/](http://xkcd.com/686/)

------
TheSwordsman
I had the same thing happen with a friend of mine who had moved. Her and I
kept in touch periodically, and we'd always catch up and complain about the
dumb shit going on in our lives.

I hadn't heard from her in awhile, and her not responding back via text
messages was always weird. I then checked out her facebook and saw all of the
wall posts and lost my shit.

What I wouldn't give to just have five more minutes to complain about the dumb
shit one final time.

Now and again, I see stuff related to her show up on facebook and I just kind
of stop and think for a bit.

------
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.

------
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.

------
mildtrepidation
Having lost -- I think? -- a friend whom I had before the advent of "friend me
on FB," I can tell you there are more ambiguous, stranger ways to lose a
friend, and they involve _not_ finding out.

I don't actually _know_ he's dead. I only know that none of our mutual friends
have heard from him, and that he was fighting with almost-certainly-terminal
cancer to begin with.

The supremely interconnected world of social media has certainly created
problems. But there are other circumstances that people don't understand as
well, situated some time between "all we have is the postal service" and "all
we had was email" that don't even give you the closure of an obviously-defunct
Facebook account or the direct reassurance of other friends/relatives.

Many people here might not realize that before this sort of issue there was an
entirely different one, and it ends with... well, it doesn't end. Which is
really the problem.

------
jroseattle
This has happened to me a few times, now. Friends from high school and college
passing away far too soon. At the time, I knew them well and we were very
close. Of course, growing up and moving away and life progression takes you
away from those you knew early in life to those late in life.

My friends were all Facebook users, and I knew them before FB existed. We were
connected through those services, but we didn't really communicate. They were
wonderful people, all of them, and every time I learned of the news of their
passing, it was through Facebook.

My parents still read the newspaper, looking for the news about "who died".
(They are also interested in the weather, but that's about it.) Nowadays, it
seems social media is our generation's obit distribution system.

In the end, I'm thankful for their images on Facebook. Even though we were no
longer "daily" friends, I still miss them.

------
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.

------
shanselman
I have a friend who died a year ago and I still keep her in my Gchat. I don't
want to remove her.

~~~
stretchwithme
I have a friend that died 11 years ago and still have him in my address book
and have a birthday reminder for him too.

------
bandy
Katie Hafner wrote a book about online death about a decade ago:
[http://www.amazon.com/The-Well-Seminal-Online-
Community/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Well-Seminal-Online-
Community/dp/0786708468)

It was triggered by the sudden death of one of the Well's prominent/prolific
members, Blair Newman, which resulted in a lot of conversation about what
happens to one's digital presence after death. In Blair's case, he had removed
his content from the system and closed his account (as there were those who
were bullying him) before his death. It was decided to restore the content
(from backups) into a Memorial sub-conference for him not long after his
death.

------
badusername
I think it is quite insensitive, the way that post has been written. Scattered
with so many private messages and needless investigative fluff. I do think it
brought to discussion an important topic, but I'm not sure I appreciate the
way it did.

------
jbogp
I have had a similar experience with a friend who died very young (probably
suicide although I've never had confirmation). Anyway now every year a bunch
of people still post something for his birthday some comments are followed by
RIP others are not. I suspect some of these people still don't actually know
he's dead and post a message directly through their newsfeed without looking
at his profile. It's pretty awkward but it's not my place to go and tell them
(I don't know most of them) "FYI, he's dead"

------
spiritplumber
I wonder, what if I wrote a script to keep generating trivial updates to my
various feeds in case I die, maybe by sentence mixing and so on. How long
would it take for people to notice.

------
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.

~~~
gohrt
This is such a shortsighted and cruel thing to say.

~~~
MrZongle2
How so? I think eyeareque is correct.

In the days before the Internet, there were generally three ways to stay in
touch with distant friends: writing letters, making telephone calls, or
visiting in person. All three required varying degrees of time and effort on
ones part, but this was offset by the simple pleasure of conversing with a
friend. People didn't bother engaging in this sort of activity with
acquaintances or "rather pleasant kinda-friends", because the personal
_connection_ didn't exist. There was no "payoff" significant enough to offset
the effort.

The likes of Facebook remove most of this time and effort requirement. You can
"friend" people you haven't spoken to in years or even decades with a minimum
of difficulty. While I'm sure there are plenty of cases where the lack of
communication could be due to external causes (divorce, reassignment, death,
job loss, etc) there are undoubtedly many more cases where people simply
"drifted apart" because they found they didn't have strong common interests.

Many Facebook (and similar social media) relationships really _aren 't_
"genuine" (as eyeareque stated) for this reason. Neither party really is
interested in putting additional effort into the relationship beyond a simple
"like" button click every now and then, if even that.

The OP's story is sad, and while I agree with their summary that we should
treasure our friends and family while we have them, let's not pretend that the
Golden Age of Social Media has somehow provided us with a revolutionary
relationship tool.

Facebook is a dynamic, 21st Century version of the old "phone number and
address book": full of people to whom you might send a Christmas card, but
little else.

------
BigChiefSmokem
My aunt died last year and for a while I was getting requests from Zynga on fb
that she was inviting me to play games with her.

A lot like this thread, it hit me right in the feels :(

------
zimmru
When my sister died it was a source of comfort to read her FB wall and see the
nice things people wrote about her. I would think someone would have written
on the OP's friend's wall that would give a clue that he had died.

The other thing that's been nice is that we were able to find my sister's FB
password, and were able to post her obituary. We continue to post pictures of
her two young daughters she left behind.

------
dclowd9901
Says the guy who spends his effort and brilliance creating a site for
entrepreneurs to meet.

When I say things like, "Silicon Valley is a gigantic, worthless circle jerk,"
articles like this bring it starkly to light. I'm sure this guy feels many
things about the death of his colleague, but I doubt he understands the irony
of how it conflicts with the waste of his own life on efforts like his
startup.

------
meerab
One of my coworker died of heart-attach two weeks ago. He had accepted meeting
requests few hours before dying and had conversation with fellow co-workers.
We couldn't believe that he is no longer alive.

His name is still displayed on my frequently chatted contact list. The thought
of pining him or e-mailing him has crossed my mind so many times..

------
clarky07
I haven't had this happen, but something similar. One of my friend's dad
passed away while I was away for college. This was before Facebook and since
we went to different schools I didn't end up finding out for 6 months or a
year.

------
bbejeck
Great article same thing happened to me. I had an old friend that kept popping
up in my mind and we briefly touched base to get together for a beer. I
dropped the ball, and a couple of years went by, now he's gone for good.

------
jyz
Wow. This almost makes me want to reactivate my facebook. Powerful post,
bravo!

~~~
buro9
Strange, it makes me feel glad I actually phone my friends.

~~~
GFischer
Yeah, Facebook "friendships" are not the same (though it's handy for keeping
up to date with people :) ).

I at least have learned to post a "curated" version of my life online (after I
was shown it wasn't good to share everything, even though I do tend to be
quite open by default), and I assume many do the same, so you're not learning
what's really happening with peoples' lives.

------
Aldo_MX
I always thought to write instructions about how to delete everything I have
on the Internet and ask a relative to share that written instructions to a
friend. Now I'm unsure if I want this to happen...

------
Sam121
Some time we involve in busy life and forget to meet our lover one, No day's
Messaging,email,chat,FB decide our relationship. Why not we understand they
are just source of contact not interaction.

------
pstack
I don't use social networks and my family is separate from my friends are
separate from my colleagues.

When I die, I expect it to take a few days or more before anyone notices. Then
neighbors and immediate family will be aware, followed eventually by work and
then my colleagues. My friends (who are all out of state) will probably never
know.

I worried about it for like five minutes, once, but then realized that by the
time it mattered, I would be dead, so why would I care at that point.

------
PaulHoule
I've had people worry if I was dead when I stopped writing to certain social
media accounts.

------
alexcaps
It means a lot to see everyone's comments and thoughts. Thank you. - OP

------
tuananh
simplest friend test: remove your bday on facebook and count how many wishes
you get on your next bday ; )

You don't have that many "friends" as you think you do.

~~~
nyrina
I have a bunch of, what I would describe as, friends, but I know none of their
birthdays.

Does that mean I don't have a single friend?

------
ffrryuu
Be proactive about your health.

lef.org is a great resource even if they are selling stuff to you...

------
rpupkin
OP = attention whore

------
tyang
Good post, Alex.

------
djhworld
Man that last paragraph sent shudders down my back

------
ahoyhere
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 about whatever it is I
wanted to talk about -- what's wrong? Are you okay? Do you want to talk? Why
don't I come visit you instead of expecting you to travel?

Alas, the author just glossed forward with "Well if you decide you can make
it, let me know!"

The sick (now dead) friend expressed well wishes for health to the OP, only to
receive what kind of well wishes in return? _None_. Not even "good luck with
your doctor's visit that I don't want to ask about cuz I'm not comfortable
expressing feelings."

How self-centered do you have to be to not even wish a friend with obvious
health problems "good luck" or "feel better"?

> "Now you’re probably thinking I’m a real shitty friend."

Yes, but not because you didn't know he died. But because you didn't care
enough to notice or ask while he was alive.

~~~
sage_joch
It seems wrong to say both that he has the "social instinct of a cockroach"
and that he's selfish (implying his oversight was a choice). I'm inclined to
believe it's the former, given that he is making a post like this. Social
instinct is not easy for many programmers, myself included. Your comment
almost amounts to assigning blame via the butterfly effect.

 __edit: rewording my first sentence per comment below

~~~
awj
> You can't simultaneously say that he has the "social instinct of a
> cockroach" and that he's selfish.

I'm pretty sure you don't need social skills to be self-centered.

