Ask Lemmy

I still have RiF installed on my phone. Does that answer your question?

I let it stay.

It is weird when someone that uses the number joins signal though... I want to reach out to them because I miss my brother but its a good reminder that life marches on with or without you. And we should let the ones who have left, go.

My Xbox friend list has a slowly growing number of gamer tags that will never be online again

Climate change will be reversed and billionaires will be abolished before I delete my grandparents contacts from my phone. Every time I pass my grandpa's, I hear Hello young man, it's your grandfather. like he said every time we talked on the phone regardless of who called who.

I can understand those who don't feel the same way.

Keep it if you want, don't keep it if you don't.

But never forget the people.

I add the ⚱️emoji to their name.

Makes them easy to search for and stop to have a moment of reflection on their effect on my life.

When the idea that we live on in the memories of the people who liked us, means sth to you, I would keep them. Every time you stumble over their entry this memory gets reactivated. I think that is a nice thing.

My grandmother died 40 years ago and she told me, when I was very little, to fold the seems of the coffee filter before you put it in. Everytime I make coffee I think about her because of that.

Absolutely I delete them. Can't have that kind of evidence lying around, loose ends sink careers.

I leave them in if it's someone i care about. I lost a school kid last year. Took his files out of my drawer today.

I used to have a 'extra set of grandparents' when I was younger. An elderly couple that lived downstairs who often babysat me and spoiled me like I was their own grandchild.

I knew their phone number by heart, this was pre smart phone(now I think of it, I can't recall it anymore,a shame).

They passed during my teenage years. When I went to university I had a job working call centre for a telecom discounter.

During a slow day I looked up their number, and they apparently had been clients. So I respectfully removed them from the database.

I’ve never deleted any saved contacts on my phone/s over the years so there’s likely more than a couple of people there who are no longer living.

I tell you what freaked me out - I was tidying up my contacts and my late sister's photo had changed to that of a nice-looking youngish man. She died of brain cancer in Jan 2020. I'd left her contact there out of sentiment, but of course her number has been recycled. Ooof.

Lost a very close friend 3 weeks ago way before his time and used to see him online on steam every time I was on. It hurts seeing his name and knowing he'll never be back. In terms of phone contacts they kind of get filtered out naturally when I move devices .

I saved them, adding death anniversary so I could remember them. Bit morbid but they meant a lot to me.

I usually leave them. Not really sure why.

I don't keep my contacts list clean. Deceased people are to be found in my contact list; not as any sort of memorials, but because it didn't even occur to me to remove them. A couple bits of data storage is free. Going in and deleting them takes effort.

I delete them. Numbers get repurposed after a while, and I don't want to scroll through my whatsapp contact list and end up seeing names of former loved ones with some blond girly in their profile pic.

I might export chat histories to preserve them elsewhere though, but not the contact itself.

Both of my parents are dead. It looks like I deleted one and left one.

I personally delete. Someone else will take that number anyways... I feel like there are so many other things to keep that remind us of whom we have lost

A friend of mine died three years ago and I still have his contact in my phone and on discord.

I'm not tidy in my contacts because it doesn't really take space anywhere, so there's a bit of that.

But, there is also this weirdness about deleting that person's last contact with me with forever.

My father died in 2022. I still haven't removed him from my contacts. I don't know when I will. It's not that it's terribly painful, but there is discomfort even thinking about something that feels so final. Grief is irrational.

Keep it. I still have my uncle on Steam over 8 years later.

I don’t think I’ve ever deleted a contact from my address book for any reason whatsoever

Huh... I- never considered this question.

My contacts list has been growing for 21 years. Very few people have caused me so much distress that I'd found removing them from my contacts to be worthwhile. I only found out about some of my friends deaths fairly recently.

On reflection, as I currently look through my contacts list I think removing the friends that have since passed would cause me more distress than leaving them in there. I won't be calling them.

I leave them. I've even dialed the super close ones a couple of times over the years on purpose just to (anxiously) see if their numbers have been taken 😅

As always, George Carlin has the right answers

I leave them, not for any sentimental reason, more of an ADHD reason.

Imagine my surprise when I got an alert that my dead grandma had just joined Telegram and that I should send her a message!

I have another address book I move them to that is a archive for past contacts. Past work contacts etc.. never had to go back to it, but good to know I can. Also don't have random people I have not contacted in 10 years still on my day to day address book.

I mean, why delete the contact? You could also demolish the headstone.

It costs you nothing to keep it in your phone as a memory.

lol. clean out my contact list. so funny. like im going to get rid of the old number people I know used to have.

I left a family member's number in my phone, but once I got a new phone I didn't move it over. I've got other things outside of their phone number if I wish for sentimentality.

I've gone through this recently and basically you wait a few months and then you delete it. If you don't it starts eating at you.

I let it stay untill I am ready to delete it.

When my grand parents died I kept the entry in my phonebook untill one day some time later when cleaning up the contacts I didn't see a reason why I should keep it.

I deleted it after I go to the wake. Otherwise, I just delete it.

I just keep them, occasionally call the long dead numbers too which is kinda sad but whatever

The contact list is there to be used as such. For sentimentality, I have pictures and letters and stuff. Maybe their birthday on my calendar.

And the reality is that if it's a super important person, I won't forget them. Or I'll be senile, but by then it's a different story.