Dear Hoaxer, thanks for the poems

[snaky_poet]

‘I write very good poems / when people die,’ I declared recently. Those lines were the start of one such poem, one of several I wrote in mourning for an online friend who had died from a brain tumour not long after her 18th birthday. I also blogged about the experience, but have now removed those blogs.

I was not the only one intensely grieved, nor

Comments

[asakiyume]

Shortly after I joined LJ, I became aware of an LJ community called something like "Fake LJ deaths." (Not sure if that's the actual name.) Apparently this is a thing some people do: create a persona (or use their own life) and then pretend to be ill and pretend to die. It struck me as very, very strange--but apparently it's common enough for there to be a community of people who expose the frauds.

I think you're attitude is the best one to have under the circumstance. Your experience with your friend, creating a persona in an online community is very enlightening. Someone I knew who had their own small press, back in the days of bricks-and-mortar stores only, created staff personas to swell the apparent numbers of people involved in the press. That is, he'd sign letters as being from so-and-so, the administrative assistant, and have another person in "marketing," etc., even though it was just him, working out of his house. Well, a guy started sending letters to the administrative assistant, whom he apparently had become fond of due to the tone in her notes. So the person I know who had the press had to gently explain that the administrative assistant was just a persona--but at least the press owner did so as soon as he realized what was going on.

[snaky_poet]

Goodness, my mind is boggled all over again at the thought of there being so many. Although, I did wonder if it's a syndrome with a name.

Ha ha, I too had a small press back in those days, but everyone knew it was just me. I was quite proud of achieving so much on my own. But I think that is obviously the difference between something entered into without thinking it through properly, and something which has been planned in every particular. We thoughtless hoaxers are quick to rectify the situation when the ramifications begin.

[snaky_poet]

I found the fake deaths site, thank you. Which led me to Munchausen by Internet, see my new postscript to this post. Interestingly, I had already started to have the words 'Munchausen syndrome' floating in the back of my mind, but I didn't know the half of it.