Dead People on My Buddy List
 

Well, I just found out last week that a sort of friend of mine (more of a friend of a friend who I knew fairly well) committed suicide. A while ago, another person who I knew exclusively through the internet also died. I can't really bring myself to delete them, even though I'll probably never see the names online again.

Do you have any dead AIM buddies on your list? How many? Do you think it's weird or stupid to leave them there? Why or why not?

I don't have any dead buddies, fortunately. In fact, I haven't had to experience many deaths at all.

It's not silly to keep their names on the list. I have people on my buddy list that I either don't talk to or rarely talk to. So, keep them. They could serve as a good memento.

Not so tragic as dead, but moreso people I haven't seen or talked to for years.
I keep them because I get the impression that one day, "networking" will come in handy, and it would be nice to not have regretted deleting names off a list, especially if they don't really interfere with your daily activities very often.
It's somewhat disheartening that you'll never see their names online again if they actually die. Some people would consider it letting go to delete them, and others would say it serves as a memento.

It really depends on what it means to you. If you get all worked up over it, try to muster the strength and delete them. In case you'd like to keep something of them this way, you might want to look for things at least a bit more substantial (pictures, chat logs maybe?) and probably even backup this data to ensure that it will last.

Anyway, there are no dead people on my contact list per se, but like Acro-nym and Summonmaster a few I haven't talked to in a very long time (in some cases because we didn't leave off in the best terms, regrettably).

What do you mean "probably"? I would think that if you DO see their names online again it's either you hallucinating or someone out to play a dirty trick on you.

Either way, I probably would delete them. I've known plenty of people who have died and I take out their names from my address books because well... I'm not gonna talk to them again after all. :/

We use indirect language because sometimes, the reality of the death is too much to deal with, or sometimes seems insensitive of us to refer to them as "just dead."

We all have our own ways of dealing with it, and you and Minion are no different. (In that you are different.)

I'm pretty good at handling death, actually. Plenty of experience.

I was actually just talking about the possibility of someone getting control of their accounts somehow. That is actually a strong possibility for both of them.

I don't really have many people on my buddy list to begin with. And if any of them are dead... I don't know.

Whoa. What if they suddenly IM you? Now you have GHOST BUDDIES!!


internet is creepy.

I don't really see the point other than sentimentality. If it musters up some kind of negative emotions every time you see their screen names, then you should work up the nerve to just delete it and move on. If that's not the case then keeping them isn't really a problem.

I like to keep my buddy lists short and simple. I delete any one I haven't kept in contact with after a certain point.

reminds me of Serial Experiment Lain.........

Me I don't really notice the buddy list...I added my entire highschool batch..some of them are invisible..some just don't use their accounts or some just...sms mode or...some..are perpetually online...
but I would keep a dead person's name on the list...

I don't have any AIM friends who are truely dead. I have only 2 online friends anyhow and they are alive and well. However...should they leave this world and I find out about it, I wont remove thier email addys and whatnot. Instead I will keep them there for sentimental value. People who have had great positive influence in your life should not be erased.

I've got one dead online acquaintance on my AIM list and one... Deceased good friend on my MSN list. She died nearly two years ago, and I can't bear to remove it.

I've kept my ex's contacts, even though I still hurt just seeing her display picture. Part of me doesn't really want to let go of the memories, even though they weren't all nice, in retrospect. If you were friends of these people I'd leave them there... a memorial of sorts. I think it's touching.

Edit: Winter Storm said it better than me.

I haven't had an ex yet that I wasn't able to reconcile with, so they're on there, but I really have no reason to delete them anyway.

I don't want to threadjack, but I'd like to answer Minion ^^;.

I suppose I'm the sort who takes things really personally. I'd like to be like you, though. I just really dislike the "friend" speech at the end of a relationship... I'm not really good at friendships, and basically have "acquaintances I don't actively seek to speak to" and "really close friends I'd entrust my life to". An ex would certainly not fall in the second category after dumping me :).

It usualy doesn't occur to me to remove people from my list but if I do randomly spot it I get fairly bummed out and will go ahead and remove it. I just finally removed Phoenix from my list a few months ago and it's been how long since she died?

I don't have any dead buddies on my list, but if I did, I don't think I'll delete them. Actually, I would be too stunned with the fact that they died and deleting them off my buddy list would be the least of my concerns.

After my friend committed suicide I had to delete his screen name (illegalferrett) from my buddy list. I used to talk to him every day through AIM, so it was really upsetting to not see that he was signed on anymore. I know that some of his other friends kept it there as a way to remember him, but seeing his screen name in the Offline section all the time would have made me cry.

I imagine this to be - on a much smaller scale - like the woman who has to finally get rid of her deceased husband's clothes. (I say "woman" because women outlive their husbands almost always.) Some people do it right away, but I've heard of people who can never bring themselves to do it, because it's too final. It's a part of the grieving process, I think, and it takes some people longer than it takes others to come to full acceptance. You'll delete their names when you're ready.

To answer your question, though, I don't have any dead people on my buddy list.

Not so much on AIM, but in irc. I knew a guy (an operator) of #apprentice on efnet. I was a huge fan of Magic: The Gathering for many years, and there was a program which allowed you to connect to someone and play a virtual version of the card game. It was called Apprentice. I was even opped in there for awhile.

He was known as _Urza_ and he comitted suicide at the age of 16 or 17, I can't remember which. At the time I was 16. It was on the news, apparently. Nobody knew why he did it and his parents never revealed what the reason was (or if there even was a reason) to the public.

Him, myself and a few others were apart of a sub-channel from #apprentice. Sort of a "home away from home" place which I started up personally in 2002. The channel changed names a few months later, and around 2004 it died. People idled in it until around the middle of '05, but now it's empty.

Urza was one of the people who used to frequent the channel, along with #apprentice. After Urza died, another member left for the military, and it started to break up. It was really sad.