Ay yi yi. Simply awful.

And yet if not for that friend there are people who never get remembered to be told. It goes both ways.

The friend should have waited or asked before posting if you ask me. JMO though :-)

People don't think! The same situation happened when a recent high school grad passed away in college. My daughter saw RIP on Facebook! She was very saddened and confused and of course, had to piece together what happened.

Yes, unless you are a direct relative it is not your business to post news such as this.

Exactly what Dawn said.

It happened to me twice, when my mom died and then when my dad died.

I'm an only child and went into a bit of a shock for a little while when my mom died first. My dad was still alive and I guess I was thinking about him, and overwhelmed with all sorts of stuff.

Next thing I knew, my Facebook page was getting flooded with condolences from everyone. Which was nice in a way, but she'd only been dead less than 24 hours and the word was out. We had multiple family members find out by reading it on Facebook. Some of them ended up very mad at me for not telling them before they read it online.

So then when dad died a few years later, one of the first things I did was put the word out on Facebook. And you know what? Then I had some family members end up mad at me for announcing it on Facebook....

Fortunately (I guess?) I'm out of parents so presumably what little family I have left can find other things to get upset about.

My take away was this - life is hard. Death of a close family member is a brutal thing to experience. I try to remember when someone loses a parent, or a sibling, or a child, their pain is so immense that they need to do whatever they NEED TO DO, to get through it. How that makes me feel is my issue, not theirs.

Same thing happened to someone I know. He was killed in a pickup truck- farm sprayer accident here in SD. His DD lived in Texas and she found out about it on facebook before her family could even call her. I guess that's why I don't do facebook.

if that person knew a bunch of people that the son didn't know who would want to know about his mother's passing... volunteer to contact people PRIVATELY!!

Indeed, as Dawn said, just as courtesy, they should wait until the or a family member posts something. Even condolences!

I am really, really getting sick and tired of the oversharing on social media. It's a narcissist's wonderland. Everyone wants to be the first, the important one, the noticed one. Even when it's not any of their business (or ours).

Condolences on the loss of your friend.

I think it is beyond rude to pass on someone else's news without asking them first and having their permission. When my DD called me to tell me her now husband had proposed, I straight out asked her, "Am I allowed to tell the rest of the family?" As they were then travelling in Europe she said yes, that would make her life easier. But if she had said no, I would have honoured her wishes.

Posting other people's news on Facebook is a whole new level of rude.

Same thing happened to myself and my son when his grandmother,my late MIL passed away just February past.

He read it on FB ...ya.....that went over well.

Different situation. I posted last year that I found out my great aunt died because of FindAGrave. I was having a conversation with one of my kids about how names had been passed down through the family. I looked up my grandmother.'s memorial Her sister who had just died the previous day already had a memorial.

adellabedella there are people on findagrave that "troll" the obituaries just to make memorials. They want their numbers & recognition to go up, up, up! It's absolutely disgusting.

A news story in today's paper says the Facebook refused to cooperate with police who were trying to locate groups of criminals who post there. They were looking for groups who traffic women and trade in stolen goods (including guns).

When Facebook learned that police had initiated accounts, trying to lure these individuals, Facebook took down the police accounts. They also refused to cooperate with police in any way in their search for these criminals.

So, it's OK to engage in criminal activity using Facebook, but not OK for the police to try to catch you using Facebook?

I'm sorry about your friend's death but you know, people do what people do. When someone dies, close family and friends usually have more to deal with than to try to find the decedent's phone book and spend the immediate aftermath on the phone calling contacts. It can take awhile. I wouldn't look for things to get upset about.

Having said that, I think watchme's "narcissist wonderland" description of social media, especially Facebook, says it all. Many people I know who are Facebook junkies are bored with their lives and it gives them something that passes the time. But in a narcissistic way all the same.