I'm pretty sure my friend is dead

[Iwanttogo]

So I made a friend on a social media platform and we got chatting on discord (FB messanger but for gamers) about games and random stuff. We've been friends for a while now and talk maybe every 2-3 days between work and me having a young family.

I became very close to them, they are like an older sibling to me and put up with my nonsense alot of the time. However recently they've been acting strange vanishing for longer than usual. Fine, life is busy.

But a week ago now, they had a brake down on me. Mentioned wanting to die vanishing ect. How they could just move on be free the lot and I tried to be there as much as I could, dispite being in a different country. Held their hand virtually. And now they are just gone.

I know a week is to long to be thinking, I think they are dead. They could just be working or busy or just don't want to talk to me anymore. But after what happened Im very concerned and confused. The wanting to die, vanishing. I don't know their last name. I dont even know if alot of what they've said about themselves is true. I'm not nieve, the Internet is a place where people can fully hide who they are after all.

But I just have a horrible feeling after exploding on me about how much they want to be free, how they want to die ect. That maybe they went and did it?

You aren't "stupid" but the way you've described this situation, I think you have signs of serious relationship boundary issues that you need to address, and please avoid this situation in future.

You're referring to this person as being like a "sibling" despite you never having met them before, they don't even live in the same country as you, and you've just taking their word for however they are describing themselves.

Think of it this way, for all you know they could be a burly "6ft Rugby Player" type, not a young woman i.e. completely not the person you think they are, they could be spinning you a yarn, etc. Nothing wrong with connecting up with a 6ft Rugby Player but if they've lied to you all this time, that's not an authentic real-world relationship.

If I were you, I would take advantage of this opportunity to completely cut ties with them, step away from your screen and get back into the real world for a while, just to regain your composure. You're putting yourself in a position of serious risk, making on-line relationships with no substance behind them.

My BFF nearly fell for a scam, they believed the lies told by someone who sent her a photo of themselves. It was complete bs, they just wanted money, but that's how easy it is to mess with your mind. I managed to convince her before she "met" the person, as I knew how much danger she was putting herself in. She's never done it since, but it was a lucky escape.

They might take it on if OP has no luck

@BritWifeInUSA it's very possible I was being lied to. But thankfully I'm not the type to send money if it was a scam.

If it was then well... All the more of a fool I am then

Exactly what happened to my friend - I rescued her from the jaws of Satan before she got totally sucked in at a very vulnerable time of her life.

I'm sorry you're going through this, OP. Unfortunately, it's a risk of making intense friendships with anonymous people online.

If it's any help, I've had some similar experiences - not online friends, but people in forums I've frequented over the years - and whenever there was a disappearance like this, the person was never dead. Some people died over the years, sadly and inevitably, but there was never this kind of happening beforehand.

One of the perks of the Internet is that we can disappear and be "reborn" as we wish. Awful for those who care but aren't told, but that's the flip side of it.

I hope you get good news soon.

They may not be dead, just a bit embarrassed and keeping their distance if they think they had over shared.

Quite often it turns out it was an ex partner/friend or just someone they know that has a crush on them too. And then they kill the online persona off when they realise they've become too attached/there's no chance of dating ect...

If their profile has a picture you can use that to reverse image search on Google with. That'll rake you to other places that the picture has been used (eg: social media).

@pastabakeonaplate @daisychain01 I'm not going to MTV or anything. I'm not going to give money to some random person on line.

I already know another friend who is homeless and all I've ever done for her was send links to shelters. I'm not nieve. I'm not online every second of every day talking to these people.

I don't send money to people. If she turns up for money they well I'd tell her it's a real shame and do the same. Send links to places she can find help.

I'm just worried because I care about people and wanted to get it out and down somewhere. I'm not sat at home trying to call 911. Until someone said look up their name I didn't. Otherwise I'd have know about blackouts ect.

It's better I just get it out of my system and move on. I still won't beable to help wondering what happened ect but whatever.

I already feel better for posting it and for people telling me some probably hard truths.

You may never know. My friend gamed every evening with a group of global virtual friends, they all spoke about their lives as they played and knew each other well. My friend caught covid and died unexpectedly. I always wondered if his virtual friends ever knew or if they thought he just disappeared one day.

@Lemonella oh that's so hard!

Life can just be unfair sometimes. I've had friends online, gaming friends vanish before but not like this. Proclaiming they want to die.

I'm so sorry to hear this op, I'm sure you're so worried right now. I have never been in this situation but I have heard of others in the same position and I know of a few cases where this type of lead up has happened and then the person has just deactivated all their socials and ghosted for a while and then turned up like nothing has happened. As horrible as it is, it may just be this type of scenario. Sometimes when your mental health is bad you do shitty things like ghost your friends.
Try not to get too worried and just imagine that this has happened until you find out otherwise.
Alternatively, if you could check through their account and find local friends or family you could maybe reach out to one of them just saying you want to check everything is ok as you have concerns. Xx

If not then this is thread is virtually the same as a previous thread a week or so ago.

I am going to be blunt, with apologies, but if your friend is dead, then there is nothing you can do about it. I am sorry though if this is the case.

However, it is most likely they are not dead, and that they are either seeking help, or that they are taking some time away from the internet because it is quite an unsafe place when people are mentally unwell.

People who do die by suicide very, very rarely confide in anyone that they are going to do it. It is however very common for people to having feelings of wanting to die, but with absolutely no thought of a plan, or putting any action behind those feelings.

I have someone in my life who regularly tells me they are going to die by suicide - it's really horrible, and I do feel for you - however, as I have learnt with this person (and a lot of professional help because it became very stressful), this is the time I need to step away (actually usually happens when I cannot give them 100% of my energy), and usually over a few weeks they will attempt to reconnect and with a more positive frame of mind - sometimes they will have sought help, sometimes they will have gotten over the feelings themselves.

The most important thing though is that you put yourself first and look after you - it's completely normal to be anxious in these situations though.

This is most definitely a thing on the internet and its more common than you think, befriending someone v intensely and then saying they want to commit suicide or hinting at it and then disappearing. They get off on it. It happened to my teen and his friends and that's how I know. Would never even imagined such people existed. The advice was to block them. Tell them to get some help and then block them otherwise they are going to make you very very distressed. Which is sort of the point.

@dontcallmelen No I'm assuming you think I'm a troll ect and are probably going to post it on r eddit. Mumsnet trolls or whatever.
Well if you check true off my chest you'll also find I've posted it on there to...

If you spoke on the phone do you have their number?

@Unbearablebare @DeclineandFall

Thanks both of you. Both of what you said is true. For different reasons.

I'm just going to let what happens happen.

Unbearablebare your right there's nothing I can do if they were being true with me. I won't know. And that's that.

DeclineandFall there is also a chance I'm being nieve.

Id rather think they are just a troll rather than not. Yes that's hard on me but well what ever. I'm grown enough and ugly enough to move on.

How well did you really know your friend through Discord?

I say this as someone who got massively burned trusting someone on Discord. I now mod a pretty big server and see people get stung all the time. I also see a lot of people "disappear" dramatically only to get doxxed and actually end up a) fine and b) a completely different person to who they said they were online

As an example, a member was in a "relationship" with someone in our server who had some elaborate backstory (in this case a "dead wife" who passed in a car crash leaving behind single dad to three kids). Turned out she was very much alive, and very pissed off when some random on Discord got hold of her details and messaged her with all the shit her husband had been saying.

What I am trying to say is that you never really, truly know the person you are talking to on there. Trust me when I say I have heard and experienced some real shit on there, personally and through people coming to me as a mod.

I would take the good memories of your friendship and put this down to someone who has probably just stepped back from their online life because you don't know if this person was even genuine and yet you are very much overly emotionally invested.

@Iwanttogo There are also tiny towns and lots of woods and open spaces.

Washington State is not that big in the scheme of things in terms of population.

I think it's most probably an attention seeking thing, I don't think many would disclose to a stranger on the internet if that was true. Best to think of them just getting on with their life, taking a break from gaming. Did you get their personal number? check them on WhatsApp?

@ItchySnoof bang on the money there.

Thanks for your advice.

This.

A colleague of mine got into a romantic (same sex so somehow she felt safer than if it had been a man) relationship with someone in what at first sounded like almost exactly this situation, except they lived in the same country. She (colleague) is a sharer and told us all about it as it went along.

At first we thought it was an emotional scam (no money involved) and warned her off, but she and her online girlfriend actually ended up in a real life relationship, travelling to stay with one another and spending hours on the phone... Only this was actually an even worse outcome as the girlfriend, though not "fake" / a 50 year old man, was clearly extremely unwell and with no intention of or ability to seek real professional help.
Supporting her was more than a full time job and achieved precisely nothing beyond my colleague also taking lots of time off with personal issues, which were all related to the relationship.

If you have their real name , a location even if just a city then police will do a safety check . Last year I asked olive to check on a Facebook friend who send a post saying she was tired of life and was not returning . They checked within an hour

I play Words with Friends and started chatting to a lovely American lady. She'd had a stroke, playing was part of her rehab and she later added me as a friend on FB. We chatted for nearly 5 years, and I was so sad when she just appeared to vanish into thin air. A few months later, her family posted on FB that she'd had another massive stroke and had passed away after a long spell in ITU. I'm so glad that she found me on FB as I'd have never known otherwise.

It's perfectly normal to chat to people online OP, and I'm sorry you're worried.

Just to back this up, Discord is absolutely RIFE with people like this. The servers on there (big chat rooms with lots of channels for those not aware of Discords existence) are full of predators, mentally ill teenagers (and adults) and trolls all trying to be edgy and cool with the best fantasy story. There are normal people on there too of course but they get drowned out by the former.

Just FYI for parents who's kids are big into gaming you need to be on top of it and monitor this shit. Look up Discord and see what it's about and get ahead of it. They allow kids over the age of 13 on there and I have come across some very vulnerable 11, 12, 13 plus year olds on there that link their Discord profile to their personal social media accounts. You have no idea how scarily easy it is just to find someone, especially a naïve child even without them blatantly linking things in their profile, purely by googling the username they have on their because 9/10 times they use the same username for absolutely everything (especially Twitter and Instagram).