To dislike it when people act like they were best friends with someone after they die.

[tryingmybest29]

Trigger warning.

I have a friend (not a close friend more like a friend of a friend) and every time someone dies young or in tragic circumstances locally she acts like she's knew them very well posting it all over her social media even before their family has. Mainly for sympathy for her. But the thing is most of the time she doesn't know them

I love how in terrible circumstances that the local community rally together for the family, raise money for the family for a funeral and pay their sympathies. That is lovely in sad circumstances.

This friend will act like she knew them really well when she does. Gets dressed up for the funeral etc when she barely knows them.

It could be that it's her children's friends cousins aunt or something - just got an example or she may have seen them before in the street but she does not know them.

I know this because it happened recently. She was messaging a friend asking who it was saying she didn't know her etc. Yet an hour later they were supposedly friends! It's like she likes the attention. It's bizarre.

I don't get it? Aibu to be annoyed by this and think it's dam right disrespectful the grieving family and friends?? Maybe I'm just in a foul mood but I just feel the family when she posts it on social media with the 'gossip'.

I kind of know what you mean...it's odd if she didnt know them.

I hate this too . Slightly different but I was involved in an awful situation that was reported in the press. Cue loads of people (that I didn’t know well at all ) posting on social media making out that they knew me and were so worried about me . It made me really angry.

I dislike the feeling that people are only interested in someone when they die.

Grief tourism

Yes , grief tourism.
I hate it.
It seems like a way of getting extra attention.

I didn't realise it had a term.

I have no issue when people come together even strangers to be there for the family. People want to help it's just when people take it too far!!

She is very similar in other ways too. For instance over sharing and sharing things that to me should be left private!

Totally agree.

There was a young woman who lived in the local area who died suddenly, very tragically.

It was terribly sad but at least 2 people I know posted comments all over Facebook about how sad they were that she had passed and how much they miss her etc. They went to school with her but they weren't friends, in fact only a month before she died they were going on about how much they hated her and how annoying she was!

It's the 2 faced-ness of it that I hate. So disingenuous and quite offensive to people who were actually her friends.

YANBU, my sister does this!

When the shootings in Tenerife took place, she was all over social media saying about a close family member losing their life.

In reality, it was a cousins in law that she wouldn't know if they sat next to her. She hadn't seen the cousin herself for 30+ years, so probably wouldn't know them!

She got loads of "sorry hun" and "are you ok hun".

Disgraceful behaviour.

I hate this too. I've made my best friend promise to police Facebook if I die, and if she sees anyone doing this about me she's to say something. If anybody that I don't really know writes what a lovely person I was she also got permission to state that I wasn't!

I know one of those. She's got a personality disorder and is extremely attention seeking.

Someone I went to primary school with did this when my aunt died. She worked as a nursery nurse at my cousin’s nursery, so the person I went to school with knew my aunt slightly because of that but not enough to say they were friends. It was about 2 hours after my aunt died, when this person jumped on social media with ‘OMG heartbroken, another angel gone too soon 💔’ Of course, all her friends jump on her status with ‘omg hun, you ok’, ‘omg hun, you ok?’ ‘OMG hun, I’ve messaged you’. When this person was asked who had died, she said a ‘friend’. My aunt couldn’t ducking stand her.

We were still trying to get on top of social media and tell those who we didn’t want to find out over social media. She didn’t start the social media frenzy but she fanned the flames. One of my aunts colleagues had gone to work and not been told yet but social media had gone mental. A customer told the friend in the middle of her shift about my aunts death. We also hadn’t managed to tell my aunts colleagues and so they had to find out through Facebook.

I’m so angry with that person from my primary school. I will never talk to her ever again. Getting her need for attention from someone else’s grief is sick. All the grief tourists came out for my aunt’s funeral and I didn’t feel I was able to grieve because it fed into the attention for everyone else. This is why I’ve said that if I die, people will need to name my dog before they are admitted. Anyone who can’t name my dog, doesn’t deserve to be at my funeral and getting off on my death. And I’m going to get my best friend to tell these people to fuck off.

Yes, I have a friend that does this all the time too. Don't understand why

Yes, it's very odd and off-putting behaviour. I'd resent it, too, if someone I barely knew pretended to have been close to me after I'd died.

At least most people probably see right through it and will think poorly of them for it. It's embarrassing for them, though they don't realise it themselves.

I think we all must have a friend like this

These are the same people that check in at a hospital

Also they can never spell.

Awful behaviour.

Ah grief tourist. If you get some together they will also start competitive grieving.

About ten years ago, my demise was announced on Facebook ( no idea why) and the outpouring of grief from people I only vaguely knew, hadn't heard from since school, or cannot place was huge. Along with cringey " RIP Angel" type messages.

I had a pre teen in the family do this. A girl of 11 sadly killed herself. It was awful for the family and well documented in the local paper. This pre teen family member of the same age proclaimed this had been her best friend. I had never heard her mention this girls name before and had my suspicions but kept them to herself. She never mentioned her again after a couple of days and her mum admitted she barely knew her. Even though this was years ago, this girl has sought attention in various other unsavoury ways and I blame her mum for never pulling her daughter up on this disgusting behaviour

YANBU
I had a mate at school, she was so funny, kind and sweet. But we both, along with another girl in our friendship group, got horrifically picked on. The comments and actions were truly vile. She had a birthday party once, and her well off parents insisted she invite all the girls in our year group. She was mortified and thought they wouldn't show up, but a group of about 10 of the worst ones said yes.
They then proceeded to ruin the party, were rude to my friend, her mum and dad and then threw food everywhere. They then went upstairs to her room and spilled cola in her bed, they then went home. Monday at school they were telling the others about her shit baby party and her sad bedroom and said her dad tried to touch them up. It was awful for her.
Well, she passed away when we were 30. She had a health issue for many years, and then a secondary illness killed her as a result of the other illness ruining her immune system. She had been in a wheelchair for a few years too.
When she died, Facebook was quite new and these scummy fuckers all wrote how sad they were, what a beauty girl she was. I was so fucking angry but her Mum was handling her page and so I bit my tongue. But God, I wanted to punch every single two faced little bastard who dared be all nice after being scummy shitbags.
It's social media I think, it's competitive grieving. It's sickening actually.

Some people just have to make everything about them, nit in a malicious way, just their personality has grown such that they need that extra attention.

I do feel sorry for people in that situation.

I hate it when people change history because a person has died and they think the person is not here to correct them. (Or maybe that's just my weird family ) I always need to correct them.

@LadyofTheManners

YANBU I had a mate at school, she was so funny, kind and sweet. But we both, along with another girl in our friendship group, got horrifically picked on. The comments and actions were truly vile. She had a birthday party once, and her well off parents insisted she invite all the girls in our year group. She was mortified and thought they wouldn't show up, but a group of about 10 of the worst ones said yes. They then proceeded to ruin the party, were rude to my friend, her mum and dad and then threw food everywhere. They then went upstairs to her room and spilled cola in her bed, they then went home. Monday at school they were telling the others about her shit baby party and her sad bedroom and said her dad tried to touch them up. It was awful for her. Well, she passed away when we were 30. She had a health issue for many years, and then a secondary illness killed her as a result of the other illness ruining her immune system. She had been in a wheelchair for a few years too. When she died, Facebook was quite new and these scummy fuckers all wrote how sad they were, what a beauty girl she was. I was so fucking angry but her Mum was handling her page and so I bit my tongue. But God, I wanted to punch every single two faced little bastard who dared be all nice after being scummy shitbags. It's social media I think, it's competitive grieving. It's sickening actually.

Fucking ghouls. How dare they

Yes, I agree.
I can get that people can be upset by someone they knew as what my dd would have called "friendish" dying, but equally well it can be quite upsetting when you open FB to find a post along the lines "Goodbye my beautiful friend, you were always there for me" from someone who you knew might just about have managed a "hello" if they hadn't been talking to someone else first.

@Witchend

Yes, I agree. I can get that people can be upset by someone they knew as what my dd would have called "friendish" dying, but equally well it can be quite upsetting when you open FB to find a post along the lines "Goodbye my beautiful friend, you were always there for me" from someone who you knew might just about have managed a "hello" if they hadn't been talking to someone else first.

Absolutely. There is nothing wrong with paying your sympathies even if you didn't know them well. People like to help the family and let them know people are thinking of them which is natural. It just bothers me when people take it to an 'extreme' just for attention!

I know one of these vampire types, she's the older sister of one of my friends and she removed me off Facebook after their brother told her I had said she thrives off other people's misfortune, but it wasn't untrue.

A woman we all knew growing up nearly died in childbirth and was touch and go and comatose for a good while later.

Friends sister posted relentlessly about "my best friend" tagging her "devastated, thoughts and prayers" and other gushings.

They were never best friends, didn't even attend the same high school and didn't socialise even semi regularly. But no, her "best friend" was dying.

The woman in question finally commented in a bemused way on all these posts when she recovered and you could feel the second hand cringe through the computer screen.

My friend did this. Her ex best friend moved away and they lost touch, didn't speak for 20 years. She found out by chance that the friend had died a whole year before. That didn't stop her, she was laying flowers at the grave, visiting the grieving parents and had a photo of the headstone as a screen saver on her phone. For someone she had not spoken to for 20 years.

I fucking hate grief tourists. I find it highly disrespectful to those who were actually close to the deceased.