If they had a significant role in my life I'll leave them and add a yearly calendar event so that hopefully they don't die the second time, at least while I'm alive.
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.
Ahhh I’m one of the dead xBox and PSN friends for many lovely people.
I have everything from the Atari 2699 to the PS3/Wii/360… the ps4 and xBone had terrible performance and loading times so I never got them. Now I just have a bunch of high end computers and no desire to get consoles again. But I did have some sweet friends who might still see my name as “last logged in 12 years ago” or something like that.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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 😅
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.
If the number gets reassigned after the grace period expires, the new owner might add a profile picture that then populates across linked services. I'd rather avoid that.
I leave them there until I stop thinking about their passing on a regular basis, then I remove the contact.
Id like to think they dont want me going about my business during the day and just randomly get reminded "Hey! incase you forgot, Josh is dead" while Im trying to call Joselyn about mundane work shit.
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.
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.
Apparently I delete them. I could think of one person I've had the phone number of that died 10 years ago or something. I don't have their contact details anymore.
I've not had any close family die the last decade so that answer may change.