I was just curious if anyone else has seen an example where family and friends post under a dead person’s facebook account or post messages to them?
I know of several such cases, the most creepy where the woman’s father? responds to posts in character as her :eek:
Is this a new sociological phenom?
A good friend of my wife’s died five years ago, and his roommate and parents have maintained his page since. He was incredibly popular (400 people showed up to his funeral), and they now use the page to manage a college scholarship in his honor. People still post messages to him on, though.
It is creepy when people respond as the deceased person, but those messages* to *the deceased person don’t seem much different to me from the “in memoriams” I see in the death notices section of the newspaper. Not the notices listing the date and time of services, but the ones that go " Dear Mom, Happy Birthday. You were called to Heaven recently, sooner than we knew. You were a truly special Mother, a blessing to all of us. We wish you eternal happiness with Dad and family. Your Loving Family"
Of my four deceased facebook friends, none has anyone posting AS him. two of them have absolutely no activity other than telling me when their birthdays roll by.
One of them is really only evr used by my friend’s fiancee. She post things to him. “Miss you baby” comes up a lot.
The one that I kind of enjoy is the page of a man who was a teacher. He taught earth science and biology. He also led a lot of student groups on adventures. His page gets posts from former students. “Mr. D. I finally climbed Mt. Ranier.” “Student teaching in Indianapolis. You made me want to be a teacher.” People also post anything new and bacon related to his page. I had known of his passion for all things living, and for sharing that with his students, but nothing of his apparently deep and abiding love of bacon. He would’ve fit right in here.
I think that’s Notokay.
New? Not really. People remember their loved ones.
Is it really so different from talking to a slab of granite a few times a year?
Don’t you mean not umkay?
I don’t think there’s anything strange about posting messages to someone deceased. It does seem kind of strange to me that a family member would respond in character as a deceased loved one, but if they feel better doing that, then I guess whatever they need to do to cope with it is all right by me.
NotOkay was the name of the puppet used to post her death notice here on the boards.
I have done this. I’ve lost a few friends who were very young and I found it helpful to talk to them on Facebook as if they were still alive. From the looks of their profiles, I’m not the only one. People post messages on their birthdays and other relevant dates too. I’ve never heard of a family member pretending to be the dead person, but one girl had a widget on her page that posts horoscopes and things every day. She still occasionally shows up in my news feed, which is really disconcerting considering she died last October.
More to the point, what’s up with people posting messages on FB to people who won’t see them? e.g. Happy Mother’s Day when their mothers aren’t on FB. Who are they posting for?
:smack: Forgot about the “sock”.
They are posting for themselves…my mom died two years ago,and I post messages to her on pertinent holidays,etc.I get support/feedback from my friends, so that is why I do it. Besides that, I miss her to death!!! 
Probably *the *most annoying FB friend of mine is a one that types messages to her dead father at least a half dozen times a day. And they are alway typed in ALL CAPS. This person is family, which is why I have not axed them from my friend list.
A friend of mine died and has an FB profile. Occasionally people go on it and make ‘I miss you’ type posts. I don’t find that odd at all. There are pictures of him on his FB and some writings.
As to someone else logging in and responding as ‘him’, I would find that very wrong.
I fired off an angry message to my Uncle’s MySpace account shortly after he died. I wasn’t the only one. It’s really not any different than visiting someone’s grave, or writing a letter they will never see.
The posting-as-dead-person seems super-creepy, and other things like the multiple-posts-per-day seem weird. But in general I see it as on par with occasionally going to a grave and saying something “to” the deceased.
I had a friend that died a couple years ago, and if you go onto his fb page you’ll just see messages here and there (a few more around his birthday) from people if something’s reminded them of him or they’re just thinking about him.
Last year I got invisted to an event on facebook by a FOAF I’d never met, and I knew had been dead for over a year.
That was a little odd.
There’s no indication anywhere on ‘his’ page that he’s dead either- having it run as a memorial is one thing, but given that someone else clearly has access to the account, you’d think that was a pretty important piece of info to leave out. I had to spend several minutes searching on a website we both used to post on to double check that I wasn’t getting him mixed up with someone else still alive.
Every friend I’ve had who has died and still has a Facebook has people posting to them. Just “I miss you” or “Happy Birthday” or stuff like that. For some, family members post using their name, but not in character as them.
I have had a couple of FB friends die over the years and somebody went into their account to make the announcement, but they did so as themselves (a.k.a. “This is George’s brother, for those who don’t know, George… etc.”).
I have never seen anybody posting as the deceased, was not even really familiar with it to this thread, and think it would creep me the hell out and make me ‘unfriend’ instantly if it was somebody I cared about. But, if it brings comfort, I can understand why others might not.