How To Become Significantly More Popular Than You Are Now

Spoiler Alert: You have to die first

Kristi Keller
4 min readJan 28

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Photo by Jarvik Joshi on Unsplash

An old friend of mine just died. She and I parted ways in 2017 and hadn’t spoken since. But the news was still shocking. She was only 45.

I was no longer connected to her anywhere on social media, therefore I probably never would have learned of her sudden death had her son not reached out to me.

He wanted to know if I could gather together any old photos I may have and give them to him.

Of course I’m going to oblige him. Firstly, because this young man tragically just lost his mother. Second, because I know first-hand how much old photos mean when you lose someone significant.

After talking to her son, I did what every normal person does — I marched straight over to Facebook and posted a link to her obituary and a tribute to a woman I once knew and loved. I owed her at least that…we were thick as thieves for several years.

Because she and I shared a wide network of common friends, news of her death spread like wildfire.

In fact, I’ve lost several friends in the past few years and the news of each of their deaths swept across the socials faster than a California wildfire.

When death happens, it’s all anyone talks about for days. Tributes pour in, messaging apps explode, and notifications ping for weeks.

Nothing you do is super cool until you die.

When was the last time your socials blew up in death-sized proportions over a new blog post you wrote?

Or, how about when you joined your latest MLM opportunity? Your announcements and posts sure as hell weren’t shared then, were they?

Nobody wants to help you sell Tupperware and health supplements but they’re fully on board to help you be better off dead.

We’re the same people alive as we are dead. You’re still Jennifer. You’re still Steve. But nobody cares about Jennifer and Steve’s news until it’s an obituary piece of news.

People are funny, aren’t they?

Death is like a competition.

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Kristi Keller

Write like no one is reading, because it might be true. Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story. https://wildhoodwanted.substack.com/