Has a TPFer died while being a member? How would we know?

beautiful stranger

The Original Angel
O.G.
Nov 27, 2005
2,478
3
I have always wondered if anyone who is a TPF member ever passed away ... I mean someone who is an active member or something .. like has anyone suddenly been MIA and then someone else found out that they have passed away? ..
Don't know why this question popped into my head but I am curious ... do you know of anything like that happening here? How would we ever know?
 
Not that I know of-but, years ago when I was a owner of a smallish parenting site-one of the members suddenly died in her sleep. We found out because she had been missing a day or two (it was a samll site and she was VERY active and always posting) and one member wrote an email to her fiance.

the fiance came on the board, told us all what happened, etc. and we confirmed it all through her local newspaper and the funeral home. It was extremely sad-she had had a cold and went to bed one night and didn't wake up. if I remember correctly-it turned out to not be a cold but a form of meningitis.

I guess it would be a toss up about us knowing or not-it would depend on who it was-if people noticed said person gone-if someone else on the board had contact info for that person-or, if a member of the person's family came on to tell us all about it (I know this has happened in at least one case where a member was suddenly taken to the hospital).

It's a sad thing to think that we all get so close on here, but, don't truly know each other and there is always the possibility of someone passing on without us ever finding out.
 
I used to be a member of a gardening forum and one of the most active members died suddenly at her keyboard while posting on the site. Her son logged on a few days later and posted about the occurence and how much she had valued being a member and the friendships she had made. We were given details of the funeral and invited, I don't remember now if anyone went but it sure was sad.
 
In the Choo forum many of us have become chummy and email as well as talk on the phone. I would guess many of the other forums are like this. I would think someone would report a significant thing like that.
 
You know while it might be thought of as morbid, the reality is people die.
Maybe we should all tell a loved one to please let people know on the websites where we are part of a community. Its really no different than letting real life friends know. JMO
 
On a forum I used to frequently post on (about a pop band) one of the members apparently died & her friend logged on to post about it. Everybody was SO sad, even the members of the band logged on and posted condolances etc, but things weren't really adding up. Turned out it was all a hoax. :/ An incredibly sick hoax.

On another forum I frequent, somebody pretended to be dying of cancer or some other serious illness like that.. but in reality was not sick at all. I'm very skeptical of people on the internet now!
 
I have wondered about that as well, actually. Good question. I think I will tell my SS to log on and tell my pals to have a shoe-polish party for me if something ever happens to me. :lol:

Seriously, though, if someone I talked to or saw around all the time suddenly disappeared from the forum, I would really want to know what was going on and that they were okay. :yes: I'm sure this kind of thing will come up more and more as socializing online becomes ever more popular. For a lot of folks, forums like this are their main source of contact with like-minded people.
 
I have always wondered if anyone who is a TPF member ever passed away ... I mean someone who is an active member or something .. like has anyone suddenly been MIA and then someone else found out that they have passed away? ..
Don't know why this question popped into my head but I am curious ... do you know of anything like that happening here? How would we ever know?

Well, according to TPF there have been over 110,000 registered members. Now, I'm not sure how many active, regular members have died, or even if any have, but I would reason that out of 110,000 registrations several people would have died by now. It's just a numbers game, but I was never good at math so I could be wrong.

:shrugs:

On a related note, I've been a regular in an online chat room for about ten years. I've known of about three or four people who've died in that space of time, and we're talking about maybe only 300 or 200 or so active, regular chat members through the years. So with the 110,000 registered TPF members, yeah, I'd think maybe dozens have passed on. Not sure how we'd know though, so stuff like that can't readily be confirmed.
 
I have wondered about that as well, actually. Good question. I think I will tell my SS to log on and tell my pals to have a shoe-polish party for me if something ever happens to me. :lol:

Seriously, though, if someone I talked to or saw around all the time suddenly disappeared from the forum, I would really want to know what was going on and that they were okay. :yes: I'm sure this kind of thing will come up more and more as socializing online becomes ever more popular. For a lot of folks, forums like this are their main source of contact with like-minded people.

If anything ever happens to you annie I will buy a bag full of fluorescent markers and sniff them all while praising your name...:flowers:;)