The New England Classic
Spooky! Four Students Found “Literally Dead” In The Comments

Spooky! Four Students Found “Literally Dead” In The Comments

Spooky October 25, 2017 The New England Classic

FOSTER STREET — Late Tuesday night, juniors Annie Kelly, Patrick Lee, and Trent Masters, and sophomore Jack West were found “literally dead” in the... Spooky! Four Students Found “Literally Dead” In The Comments

FOSTER STREET — Late Tuesday night, juniors Annie Kelly, Patrick Lee, and Trent Masters, and sophomore Jack West were found “literally dead” in the comments section of a Facebook meme.

Screenshots of the incident show Kelly declaring her own literal death in reaction to the meme, which she had been tagged in by a friend earlier that day. Lee, Masters, and West all expressed their own respective deaths in response to her comment.

“OMG i’m literally dead,” read Kelly’s comment, a reply to her roommate Morgan Nagrom (CSOM ‘19) tagging her in the post.

The comment didn’t even receive any likes or “Haha” reactions, which some mourners are saying is an insult to Kelly’s memory.

Dr. Gregory Hostein, a psychologist at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center and a self-proclaimed “meme specialist,” took some time out of his busy day to speak to The Classic.

“This is a new, perplexing phenomenon that the medical field is just beginning to look into. Facebook memes are killing Internet users, particularly those in the 18-24 age group, at an alarming rate. It’s known colloquially as ‘literal death’ and often has a domino effect—when one person is murdered by a meme, many of their Facebook friends are likely to meet the same end soon after.”

Dr. Hostein continued, stating that “Literal death is often triggered by a particularly humorous or relatable meme—something that causes you to say ‘me’ or ‘same’ when you look at it. It can also be caused by other online content, like Buzzfeed articles or Vine compilations, but its effects are most prominent in Facebook memes.”

Although we here at The Classic would like to include the death-inducing meme in this article, we have been advised by our legal team to refrain from doing so for the safety of our readers.

At press time, several witnesses were refuting reports of the group’s literal death, claiming that they had seen the allegedly deceased students simply “exhale slightly harder through their noses” at the sight of the meme, before continuing to scroll through their news feeds. Spooky!