Facebook Deals with Death

The high school I attended was pretty close. All of us were chums. Of course, after time passes, we lose that daily contact with our classmates. It's just the way life goes. Now in this electronic age we have Facebook to keep the perpetual class reunion going.

I must admit to being closer to some of my "friends" on Facebook than others. You know who you are -- especially if you read my lame blog! However, Facebooks harbors the casual acquaintences as well and people we just generally lost close touch with.

Now death happens. I got a phone call from a dear friend of mine back home stating that one of our classmates died suddenly. The guy who died was popular, smart, and good looking. I think all us girls had a crush on him or went out on a date with him at some point during our high school years.

Enter Facebook. Do I post something? I was certain my classmates would want to know, but how to tactfully and quickly spread the news.... hmmmmm....Before I could ponder the pros and cons of putting such sensitive news online, somebody already posted the news of the death.

The initial posting was from another classmate stating that one of his best buddies died and was very sad, but did not post a name. It was not long before there were status updates from other classmates who learned of the death spitting out the news -- including the name.

I guess I can appreciate people wanting everybody to know; however, I felt somewhat ackward reading some of the status updates and comments. Some of my classmates posted quasi-sympathetic blurbs like "gosh, so young" and "what happened" along with "where did he live" and the the like. They obviously have had no contact with him for a long, LONG time.

My point is that I'm not sure how I would feel about my death being posted on Facebook and having my classmates with whom I was not especially close with post flippant condolences on such a public media. I guess it would not matter because I would be DEAD! However, I would want people to know...

We are just developing ettiquite on these matters in this area, but I think I'm safe in stating that morbid details blasted to the general public are better left offline.