I am really going to try to put this as clearly as I can I don't want to offend anyone but this is really bothering me and wondering whether it is just my lack of experience. Before this year I had only attended one funeral and this was years ago when I was a teenager. This year I have lost 3 friends, all different reasons and all relatively young - 34, 52 and 48.
In each of these cases I have witnessed people who seemingly didn't know these people very well but launch into grief stricken posts on facebook etc. In my mind there is a vast difference between those who post on a page or a thread, something like 'so sad, sorry for your loss, thinking of family' etc and show empathy/sympathy - we can all do that with genuine feeling even if we do not know the person in question we are saddened by the loss and feel for the people who lose someone - I am not criticising these people at all. It is those who almost seem to then pretend to be really close to the person who died and want to mop up others sympathies. I feel I've seen a lot of this but strongest example is in the case of my 34 yr old friend who very sadly died of cancer. Another mutual friend who had not visited or even asked about her in the past six months when she has been in hospital, had not had contact with her for over 10 years, when I told her about the death kind of just said 'oh that's a shame' - then on FB page launched into an emotional rant about her loss and how much this person will be missed. She will indeed be missed but not by this person. I am the only mutual friend between these two (as far as I know) and watched in amazement as she got comments back like I am so sorry for your loss, and are you going to be ok, can Ido anything to help (all nice genuine comments) - and her replies that she just had to be strong and she'd get through it as that what X (friend who passed away) would want! I was really cross but gave benefit of the doubt as thought maybe they had a closer relationship than I knew, until I asked her if she was going to the funeral, and she replied - no I didn't really know her beyond being FB friends!
Thing is I don't feel she is the only one. In all three of the recent deaths I feel I've witnessed people almost jumping on the bandwagon of grief. Am IBU to think this is relatively, and very sadly, quite common - or is it just empathy/ sympathy in a different way. I've found it really upsetting, especially in the loss of my friend to cancer.