QUOTE:

Your Basic Template for a Fake Online Death
By Bruce Sterling June 9, 2009 | 10:04 am | Categories: Uncategorized
*Gosh, Wired UK is kinda rocking it. Glad I took the time to limp by on my last legs (coughing uncontrollably).

www.wired.co.uk/news/archi...-death.aspx

(…)

“In two investigations between 2007 and 2009, I encountered countless examples of fake deaths in all corners of the online world. A contributor to a knitting forum, for instance, faked her death rather than provide patterns she had been commissioned to design. A member of an online art gallery discovered that the 18-year-old, gay, male, lead-singer of a rock band, with whom she had developed a close friendship before he was killed in a car crash, was actually the work of two 14-year-old girls, who had entirely invented his life. A teenage British boy broke up with his real-life girlfriend to marry a 16-year-old online friend, later discovering (on her “death”) that his deceased wife-to-be was a 12-year-old fantasist who had been sending photos of her older cousin and inventing graphic details of incest and rape.

“A LiveJournal community, known as fake_lj_deaths, has more than 6,000 members committed to investigating suspicious “deaths” reported on the social networking site. The sleuths are motivated by a desire to spare credulous readers the all-too-real grief and bereavement over the imaginary passing of a sometimes-imaginary friend. “I would venture only one in ten deaths that we are asked about turns out not to be fake,” said Anne Soffee, the moderator of fake_lj_deaths, the community that has investigated, and exposed, hundreds of such frauds. (((That’s really pretty good, eh? You have to wonder which of the major social-media sites is the fake-deadest. I’d have guessed LiveJournal, but you never know without some crisp, firm evidence provided by formerly employed print journalists.)))

“The motivations of the fakers are almost as opaque as the fictions themselves, but one clue may lie in the power granted by online communities to quantify the sympathy for an illness or the shock of a death via comments boxes or replies to a journal thread. During a lengthy battle against terminal illness, blog writers can attract support from thousands of friends who follow them through treatments, and who cry real tears when they die. In more than one example, bereaved online friends have created tribute websites where they have posted poetry and photographs in memorial books that stretch to hundreds of pages. It feeds the desire of the narcissist and provides the lonely with the attention that they may never previously have known.

“I have never felt more loved and cared for in my entire life,” wrote one faker, named “Sara” in an astonishing confession of a life filled with online deaths. “I suddenly craved for everyone’s attention, love, care, concern and affection … People posted messages about how they were very concerned, they were keeping “Sara” in their thoughts and prayers, and so many things. It became more interesting to me. It became very appealing to me. I decided to play with it more. I do not know how or why, I just did.”

Any investigation into fake online deaths soon encounters the name “limeybean”, the online moniker of one of the most notorious and far-reaching fakes, which originated in the UK in late 2005. Limeybean was the 18-year-old daughter of immigrants to London, with a family history of tuberculosis. She was a popular and prominent contributor to a Harry Potter fan community, and a prodigious writer of journals, on which she announced one day that she too had been diagnosed with the same rare strand of untreatable TB that had killed her father and twin brother.

As limeybean struggled gamely with her illness, she garnered a huge following of admiring, concerned readers, who offered their support via email and in comments on her blog, sometimes even talking to her in conversations punctuated by coughs and wheezes. When limeybean eventually succumbed to her illness, news relayed on a confidante’s MySpace page, there was an unprecedented outpouring of grief from numerous other friends who had drawn strength and inspiration from her battle.

One of their number, however, was not so credulous…"

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One clue that an on-line death was faked is when there continues to be activity on the account. I have noticed this in several tribe.net reported suicides. The continued activity is usually reported as a friend or partner having been given or obtained access to do some "housekeeping" on the deceased person's account, but I find this highly improbable. Or it is reported as tribe.net employees actually having gone into the account for some kind of administrative or housekeeping reason. Also highly improbable.

In my view, if there is any continued activity on an account of a person who reportedly died, the reported death is likely a fake. The likelihood that anyone was given the passwords by the deceased, could find the passwords, or was granted access by the administrators of tribe.net seems remote to me.

Having said that, I have no knowledge or opinion on any particular death or suicide that has been reported on tribe.net. I did not know any of these people or interact with them.