I feel like this is perhaps fake. The first post read well to me, seemed reasonable, at least the first time through. The second post, about the job, is what gave me suspicion.
The way he quits, the feeling of "liberation", it borders on sociopathic in some ways. Pretending you're going on holiday when in reality you're going to die, who has time for such games when they've got a 30 day timer running.
It reads like a movie, not like my experience with reality.
Isn't it presumptuous to say that this isn't a 'normal' reaction? I have no idea what a normal reaction to being told you have 30 days to live is.
Even if you have seen real (non-movie) instances of this, I would assume different people would have different reactions.
I'm a French native and I read the original 3 posts. If this is fake, which is a possibility, it still reads beautifully. Clearly the person who is writing this put a lot of thought into the idea he's expressing and for the record he does sound like a reasonably smart mid-to-upper management type he states he is.
These come up every day on reddit, and almost all of them turn out to be fake. There was a guy about two weeks ago that claimed to have Stage IV Pancreatic Cancer at age 24. He got thousands of upvotes, got a celebrity from the band Blink 182 to tweet to him, etc. Exposed as fake because he used someone's actual identity he found on Google who did not have cancer.
This line is an incredible clue that it is fake:
>I do not want to go into details about the disease. I do not want to go into the particularities of my life. And because time is short, there will be no comments, no contact address.
Hard to prove false when literally no information is given.
These two lines are interesting though:
>I am 58 years old and I never will 59. I will die in 2013.
>Yesterday, I had the whole life ahead of me. Thirty or forty years, at least. Today thirty days.
Either he's losing track of his lies, he's bad at math or he has unrealistic expectations about life expectancy. If a 58 year old had "thirty or forty years, at least" ahead of him that means that he was expecting to live to "at least" 98 years old.
EDIT: Here are links to Day 2 and Day 3 translations.
Agree, the second post is a giveaway - plus some words French professionals don't use such as "plan pension". Same for the thord. The first post is really good though.
You read the post and feel pretty bad. You load the comments. You see what the top comments are about and it dawns on you - this is why engineers are stereotyped as being emotionless robots.
Or people sick of some PR firm's bullshit stunts, jerking people around for a few more follower or clicks. When things don't add up, we take notice rather than just wishing it to the way it ought to be.
It may very well be that the story is true. But when you see obvious giveaways, not only is it valid to doubt what is written but in my opinion a damn public service. I felt sad after reading the post, reflecting on my own mortality, and fleeting times. Then I felt sadder that some A-Hole may be deliberately trying to manipulate negative emotions. Perhaps nothing is off limits.
Native French here, the original is beautifully written and the Google translation does not do justice to this (and sometimes even obscures the meaning). I would presume that people reading the original are more touched by what is said (be it true or fake) just because of the quality of the writing.
Me too. I didn't notice the "translate" in the URL, and just thought it was written by a non-native English speaker. I did a double take at the end when I realized it was translated. Does Google do a particularly good job on French to English? (Bigger training corpus?) I more often used it on Chinese or Japanese, and it didn't seem as good.
This is going to be revealed as a "public art piece" in about 45 days, with commentary on the morbidity of the media outlets that picked up on the story.
That's really bleak. I wonder what kind of disease can kill you in 30 days but otherwise leave you well enough to write and travel? It doesn't sound like he has a history of anything. Does anyone have any experience with this kind of thing and could hazard a guess?
One of my family members has just discovered he has pancreatic cancer. It usually has an extremely poor prognosis because it is often caught too late and the disease has already spread to other organs. 1 year survival rate is 25%.
If true my educated guess for the disease would be a form of leukemia, although in its acute form is unlikely that the affected are left well enough to travel.
Cancer can kill quickly but doctors rarely give specific timelines, at least in the US. "30 days" seems suspicious, if only because most doctors hate giving specific amounts of time. (If the person lives half as long, then the family gets angry because they thought there was more time. If the person lives much longer-- sometimes an order of magnitude more, given the complexities of misdiagnosis, new treatments, etc.-- then there's a different kind of blowback.)
I would guess that it's metastatic cancer. Mentioning the liver is an indication. Once the liver's involved, cancer gets very hard to treat. Typical chemotherapy is killing the cancer by flooding the body with poison, and doing that when the liver's compromised is often fruitless (and painful).
Most likely, the doctors have stopped treatment, in which case 30 days is a reasonable median, but he'll be essentially functional until the last 2 weeks. However, there are cases (although they're quite rare) of people living for months or even years after that happens. Spontaneous remission is uncommon (less than 1%) but it does occur. That's yet another reason why doctors don't like giving specific timelines.
I wonder about all this talk and arguing back and forth over whether "it's a fake".
What this man is expressing is real. I can confirm it is real, because as a human I can feel many of the same things, as I read it. Whether he will die in 30 days or not, we don't know. And you can, of course, argue about that all day long. You might even be quite put out if he does not. But whether he is having these thoughts and feelings because he is about to die, or whether he is simply exploring these thoughts and feelings because he is a human (and facing death like us all), they are no less real. You may call one fiction because the man does not die on cue, but after reading it, I say it is not fake.
Well said. Joseph Gordon Levitt isn't actually facing death in the movie 50/50, but I can assure you the anxieties expressed in that movie touch me profoundly.
I can't tell whether this is a fake or not. But ever since calling the one about the one night stand woman in Denmark that wanted to contact the father of her baby I've had a healthy dose of unbelief for anything that goes viral and that involves some personal tragedy.
Another couple of those and real people with real problems or calls for help will find it impossible to be heard.
If this is real I hope he makes the most of whatever time he's got left.
If you are told you have 30 days to live, you're much more likely to die tomorrow than someone expected to live another 60 years. The 30 days isn't an exact number, it's a guess, and whatever's expected to kill you in around 30 days might take a turn for the worse at any time. My grandmother died the day after the doctors said she had a few months to live.
[+] [-] orofino|12 years ago|reply
The way he quits, the feeling of "liberation", it borders on sociopathic in some ways. Pretending you're going on holiday when in reality you're going to die, who has time for such games when they've got a 30 day timer running.
It reads like a movie, not like my experience with reality.
[+] [-] sheri|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xutopia|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldtea|12 years ago|reply
You had much experience of being told you have 30 days to live?
[+] [-] 300bps|12 years ago|reply
This line is an incredible clue that it is fake:
>I do not want to go into details about the disease. I do not want to go into the particularities of my life. And because time is short, there will be no comments, no contact address.
Hard to prove false when literally no information is given.
These two lines are interesting though:
>I am 58 years old and I never will 59. I will die in 2013.
>Yesterday, I had the whole life ahead of me. Thirty or forty years, at least. Today thirty days.
Either he's losing track of his lies, he's bad at math or he has unrealistic expectations about life expectancy. If a 58 year old had "thirty or forty years, at least" ahead of him that means that he was expecting to live to "at least" 98 years old.
EDIT: Here are links to Day 2 and Day 3 translations.
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=fr&sl=fr&tl...
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=fr&sl=fr&tl...
[+] [-] esalazar|12 years ago|reply
[Edit] Link to twitter https://twitter.com/uncondamne/following
[+] [-] igor_k|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ppradhan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Killah911|12 years ago|reply
It may very well be that the story is true. But when you see obvious giveaways, not only is it valid to doubt what is written but in my opinion a damn public service. I felt sad after reading the post, reflecting on my own mortality, and fleeting times. Then I felt sadder that some A-Hole may be deliberately trying to manipulate negative emotions. Perhaps nothing is off limits.
[+] [-] aiham|12 years ago|reply
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=fr&sl=fr&tl...
[+] [-] antinitro|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adrianN|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a3_nm|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cschmidt|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coderguy123|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eschnou|12 years ago|reply
Many wonder if fake. Not much evidence pointing one way or the other.
[+] [-] conradfr|12 years ago|reply
But I guess almost twenty year of Internet can make you a bit over-suspicious :)
[+] [-] raphdg|12 years ago|reply
It's an interesting writing and life experience in any case !
[+] [-] swombat|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Numberwang|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prothid|12 years ago|reply
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=fr&sl=fr&tl...
[+] [-] oh_sigh|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jvzr|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jumblesale|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] junto|12 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancreatic_cancer
[+] [-] pier0|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lukevdp|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ziomislaw|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelochurch|12 years ago|reply
I would guess that it's metastatic cancer. Mentioning the liver is an indication. Once the liver's involved, cancer gets very hard to treat. Typical chemotherapy is killing the cancer by flooding the body with poison, and doing that when the liver's compromised is often fruitless (and painful).
Most likely, the doctors have stopped treatment, in which case 30 days is a reasonable median, but he'll be essentially functional until the last 2 weeks. However, there are cases (although they're quite rare) of people living for months or even years after that happens. Spontaneous remission is uncommon (less than 1%) but it does occur. That's yet another reason why doctors don't like giving specific timelines.
[+] [-] jterce|12 years ago|reply
What this man is expressing is real. I can confirm it is real, because as a human I can feel many of the same things, as I read it. Whether he will die in 30 days or not, we don't know. And you can, of course, argue about that all day long. You might even be quite put out if he does not. But whether he is having these thoughts and feelings because he is about to die, or whether he is simply exploring these thoughts and feelings because he is a human (and facing death like us all), they are no less real. You may call one fiction because the man does not die on cue, but after reading it, I say it is not fake.
[+] [-] dclowd9901|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|12 years ago|reply
Another couple of those and real people with real problems or calls for help will find it impossible to be heard.
If this is real I hope he makes the most of whatever time he's got left.
[+] [-] sasoon|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xutopia|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nijk|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] hef19898|12 years ago|reply
If it's not fake, I hope he keeps up like this until the inevitable.
Ah, and before I forget, he's certainly right with a lot of things, fake or not.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] itsybitsycoder|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gesman|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] l0c0b0x|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aiham|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] esamek|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shenanigoat|12 years ago|reply