The Grim Reader: Man trawls Weibo for accounts of the dead
Staff Reporter 2012-12-27 08:43
An undertaker in Fuzhou, Fujian province. (Photo/Xinhua)
An internet user in China is a fan of trawling Sina Weibo, the country's equivalent of Twitter, to identify accounts where the user has recently died. He has followed almost 700 accounts of deceased bloggers and made inferences about the person's circumstances based on their posts in their final weeks and months, Guangzhou's Xin Kuai Bao reports.
The newspaper said the man, known only by the name Lin, publishes obituaries of Weibo users on a daily basis. He began his hobby in July last year and to date has followed 695 accounts which will never see another post from their owner.
In order to verify that an account holder has really passed away, Lin observes the stream for a while to see if any new posts are added, and pays attention to any words of mourning and tribute posted by other friends and followers. Once the death is confirmed, Lin formally follows the account for two weeks to find out about the departed to share on his own microblog.
In his obituaries of only around 100 Chinese characters, Lin sums up what he has learned about the person in a concise sentence. A typical obituary reads: "[Name of the deceased], female, young, leukemia. She must have still been at school, I guess. Little girl had a simple life, did not mention her disease much on Weibo. Simple things made her happy, like winning money or having nice food. Snuck home from hospital on New Year's Eve for dinner, her brother carried her up the stairs. Cool!"
Another says: "Male, 29 years old. Sudden cerebral infarction. He was still 'acting cute' in January this year, saying he cannot be cute any more after his birthday in February because he would be 30. But I guess you will be 29 forever."
Lin's girlfriend reportedly does not know of his hobby.
