When I set up this blog/site I vowed I’d try to tackle the most difficult subjects, and cater for people who find it difficult to get the necessary information elsewhere. Obviously the subject of this post is quite a niche topic, but it’s one which unquenchable attention-seekers everywhere will, I’m sure, regard with great importance. So, if you've always wanted masses of attention, but can't actually be bothered trying to achieve anything, gently recline (but not so much you fall off the chair, break your neck and literally die, obviously), and absorb this, the definitive guide on faking your own death in the online world.
WHY YOU WANT TO FAKE YOUR OWN DEATH ON THE INTERNET
You want to fake your own death because you’re so desperate for attention that even the prospect of never updating your Twitter again seems a small price to pay. You want to make the nasty people regret all the horrid things they’ve said about you and cry themselves to sleep. You want everyone who implored you to "get off the Internet!!!" to feel a level of guilt that ruins the rest of their lives.
Whether in reality that will be the result, or whether they'll just roll their eyes, go straight back to Farmville, buy a new pretend cow and instantly forget you ever existed, is another matter. But you want to give it a go.
THE PROBLEM
Of course, the fatal flaw in this is that if you employ the most realistic tactic – i.e. stop using the Internet and never post anything ever again – no one’s gonna take a blind bit of notice. If you do what a real dead person would do, the people you want to think you’re dead will instead just think you’ve been banned from using websites because you’re such a massive dickhead. In fact, people will think that by default – even if you are dead.
THE SOLUTION
So you need to set up at least one fake account. You will adopt the identity of a caring neighbour – ideally one with sufficient medical knowledge to properly relate your status when he/she “finds you throwing yourself in front of a bulldozer to save a puppy dog’s life”, and immediately logs into the networking sites to report your fate. Posting your death on a forum takes priority over calling an ambulance, naturally.
Your fake neighbour will need to know the basic symptoms of death, because some know-all, on some appalling forum, is bound to think he’s God’s answer to the medical profession and that he can officially pronounce you dead or alive based on the details your fake neighbour provides. But once it’s been established that you’ve stopped breathing and someone’s standing over you with a tape measure, DO NOT LOG INTO ANY SITES... Unless they’re spiritual sites where everyone thinks dead people can still log in and post stuff, obviously. Although frankly, if you use sites like that you can probably just advise everyone of your death using your own login and they’ll quite happily believe you.
WORST CASE SCENARIO
The reason you’re doing this is so people will publicly mourn your tragic loss across a wide array of sites. So the worst case scenario is that people will instead organise some sort of celebration and set up a special page whereby gladdened foes can ‘like’ your death on Facebook. Then, basically everyone with whom you’ve ever come into contact in cyberspace ‘likes’ your death. You pop onto the Facebook page expecting reams of protests expressing disgust at how anyone could possibly consider ‘liking’ your sad demise, but it’s just wall to wall backslapping and your death has been ‘liked’ 75 times.
That’s the worst possible number of ‘likes’ your death could get. Any fewer and it would mean some people didn't actually hate you. Any more and it would suggest the public at large had some vague idea of who you were. 75 ‘likes’ means everyone who’s got a clue who you are hates you, but aside from a small pocket of web users whom you’ve severely annoyed with your whining, whingeing and me-me-meing, no one knows you or gives a flying stuff.
BEST CASE SCENARIO
The best thing that can possibly happen is that two or three people describe your death as “interesting news”, and the rest ignore you, just as they have during all your other attention-begging spectacles. But then, no one said attention-seeking was easy.
