On The Internet, Nobody Knows That You Are Still Alive

First of all, I cribbed the title of this post from the person who gave me this link. When I read the article and saw under the caption that it investigated "suspicious deaths" of journal writers, I thought that it was like some sort of online CSI that solved murders or something. Then I read the group was called fake_lj_deaths and realized it was a group devoted to finding people who faked their deaths online. WTF?

Apparently, lots of people fake their deaths online, and they use the example of one online community where somebody faked a marriage/spouse, the miscarriage of that married spouse, the death of a cat, and finally, the fake death of his fake spouse. It made me wonder how many people on Mydeathspace.com are faking as well.

Being online a lot really gives lots of people a chance to become smarter, better looking, better educated, and more successful than they really are. On the whole I believe that when most people find a community online, they are for the most part honest, especially after an initial comfort stage comes in. Except for age; nobody wants to admit that.

There will always be people who jump right in to a community, and some will always lurk. For the most part, people online are fairly normal and share what happens to them with their online friends like they would with anybody they knew in real life. Therefore, I find it bizarre that a person who could enjoy augment so many parts of their personality would do something so strange as to fake their deaths. With so much real tragedy out in the world, it just seems kind of fucked up.