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Here's why your Facebook feed was filled with posts from 'Death Notices' pages over the weekend

The most Irish plea for likes and shares ever.

OVER THE WEEKEND, Irish Facebook users were met with arguably the most Irish plea for likes and shares ever.

A group of pages known as “Death Notices” started urging followers to like and share death notices from their pages and threatened to withdraw the service if they didn’t notice an uptick in engagement.

Death Notices operates pages for each county and typically shares death notices from RIP.ie. Over the weekend, each page shared a post lamenting the fact that people “don’t seem to use or follow the page” in an apparent attempt to ascertain how useful/necessary the service was.

C71X3_2W4AEefge Death Notices Waterford / Facebook Death Notices Waterford / Facebook / Facebook

Some counties offered a step-by-step guide for followers to turn notifications on so as to “stay informed of deaths in your area”.

deat Death Notices Limerick / Facebook Death Notices Limerick / Facebook / Facebook

(In the past, the pages have gone so far as to provide information on “death notices etiquette”. Invaluable.)

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Over the weekend, many of the pages were inundated with likes and comments with many users encouraging them to keep at it.

As a result, the pages shared this notice promising to “keep the page going”.

Over the past 12 hours we have been overwhelmed by messages of support. We didn’t realise people used service so much in the background. Needless to say we will keep the page going.

The sheer avalanche of posts had people confused, though. Was this a cynical ploy for more likes or were the people behind the pages genuine in their desire to keep people informed of deaths in their area?

Earlier today, DailyEdge.ie contacted Death Notices Waterford and spoke to a man who identified himself as Paul.

Paul told DailyEdge.ie that he started Death Notices Waterford in December after missing an old school friend’s funeral.

I set up the page and posted the deaths anonymously for the first month and people really appreciated the service because many people lead busy lives and don’t think to check rip to see who’s dead.
By setting up the page I could let people in the county know who died if they followed the page.

Shortly afterwards, he decided to set up a page for every county in Ireland and enlisted volunteers to help with the day-to-day management of them.

So there are now over 20 people running their respective pages. The pages grew quickly in likes but then levelled off in the past month or so.

Paul explained that the posts from the weekend were “ensure people are actually seeing the death notices and finding the service useful”.

“Otherwise it was a waste of our time posting,” he wrote.

He pointed to some of the positive comments as evidence that “people appreciate the service”.

It connects people who live away from home and many more and we hope to continue what we do.

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So there you have it. The story behind the most Irish Facebook like and share drive ever.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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