The death of a Facebook user from Sacramento, California went unnoticed for nearly a week after she suddenly passed away while clicking the “like” button on her Facebook newsfeed. For six days, Nicole Butterton’s friends on the social network just assumed that she was being as supportive as usual.
“She was always very enthusiastic about things I posted, even if it was just a photo of a new coffee mug, or a complaint about traffic,” said childhood friend Kristen Moniker. “This one time, I accidentally shared a photo that my son took of a huge dog turd. Nicole ‘liked’ it. That’s just how she was.”
“I assumed that Nicole had gone into ‘like hyperdrive,’ that she was worried people were not feeling her intense love for them anymore,” said Butterton’s heartbroken cousin Lena. “It’s so sad. We should have known something was wrong.”
The 34-year-old stylist’s body was discovered after her boss showed up at her apartment one evening to demand to know how Buttertown was able to spend so much time on social networks while neglecting to call in sick.
“It was horrible,” said Ana Palencia, co-owner of Hair’s to You. “I got so pissed off with Nicole not letting us know what was going on, that I posted on our company Facebook page that we needed a new stylist to replace one who’d just been fired in absentia.”
“And Nicole ‘liked’ it,” Palencia said.
A representative for Facebook said that the company is considering creating an automatic police alert for anyone who ‘likes’ more than 500 consecutive posts during any 24-hour period.