Shoop a Dupe Dupe

Couple years ago, there was a big ol’ brouhaha regarding a blogger friend who accidentally walked into a bathroom door, busted an eye socket, got methicillin-resistant Staph aureus in the eye, which had to be enucleated, which didn’t stop the infection, which eventually killed him.

It was sad, so very very sad. Many of us who ‘knew’ this person were sad, and mourned the loss of a creative, fierce, funny, forthright individual. While we’d never met him in person, the pain of the loss of one so young (only 47!) and our sympathies for his family were keenly felt.

Not long after, a MetaFilter board lit up somewhat with the story, and many people there had the ‘holy shit’ moment. Then, as the suspicious and cynical will, people started doing some digging, doubting the story, casting aspersion on the reality of it and the convenience with which the tale unfolded. Foreshadowing, rapid turn of events, high drama, and the lack of an obituary were all put on the table as proof that the events were faked. Some said that the blogger ‘killed his persona’ in a way that took all his friends and most interested parties for fools.

Some of us joined MetaFilter to protest after their snark started leaking onto our comments, took the hit of outing ourselves as one of the possibly duped, tried to rebut their doubts, and accepted the occasional condolence on behalf of this person and their family, who we assumed were in too much shock to repsond appropriately to the smearing of the blogger’s name. All in the name of friendship and a sense of chivalry that we thought was the right thing to do.

(It was perhaps the only time in this blog’s history that hit counter approached 500 a day. Such is the power of Metafilter. Shame that none of those folks stuck around and became a follower…..but I digress.)

Two years ago, the death of this person that many of us considered a friend was a shocking force, a reality check, a sobering notion.

As it turns out, we likely wasted our efforts, as the death may in fact have been a huge fake.

Just....take a minute to wrap your head around that one. Consider please as you do that during this time there was post after post about the injury, the hospital treatment, the enucleation, the medicines, fevers, worries, anxiety, the ultimate collapse and death, sometimes written by the sufferer himself and, at the end, by his family, his wife and son, his poor brave family….

So it appears now that dude and his family, if new information is to be believed, went about faking his death on the interent. Faking death instead of just signing the fuck off of whatever new secret blog was invented to ostensibly escape the notice of your awful bosses. Faking death instead of simply disappearing, or shutting down, or leaving a final cryptic message. Faking death, involving the hearts and minds of people far and wide who will mourn for your family’s loss, put themselves out into a harsher sphere to stand up for your good name.

Faking your own death is one option if you want to be left utterly alone (because really - who’s going to call a dead man?). It’s a bad one, but not unforgivable. The unforgivable one would be if someone who has some vicious twisted streak is now attempting to resurrect someone who really honestly truly IS dead. What if some bizarro Bob or Betty is hinting at the the hope that this person is still alive by creating fake websites with pictures, creating fake YouTube ‘stations’ with videos, creating fake comments on people’s sites with notifications that the dead have arisen. THIS would be the unforgiveable thing, the sick and wrong thing, the head-scratcher to end all headscratchers because DAMN, if this is the case then there are people out there with way too fucking much time on their hands and need to find a dang job or write a book with all that creativity or maybe come see me because after I’m done ripping them apart boy have I got shit they could do with all the time they’d otherwise spend tearing the WTF out of people.

So now I’m not sure which is worse: 1) someone faking their own death and leaving their circle of virtual-world friends to make fools of themselves in mourning and THEN coming back and admitting the lie (oh and hey, ‘sorry’ probably isn’t enough, an explanation would be lovely), or 2) someone who is creating a fake resurrection (in which case NO explanation would make anybody feel better because that’s some sickass shit).

Whatever the case may be, herein lies my overall response:

WHATEVER.

If they’re alive, yay for them. If they’re not, them that’s too bad.

WHATEVER.

Dude, you know who you are. If you’re really alive, take the multiple personnas and your massive capacity for duplicity, and don’t let the door hit you on your way out of my life. If in fact the dead are lying in their grave being lied about, then the perpetrator of that bit of nastiness can go pound sand.

WHATEVER.

I for one am done with you. Whoever you are. Ain’t enough hours in the day to spend more than half of one responding to whatever drama you’re trying to stir up. That burner’s cold baby. Have a nice life.