Every so often, Ireland gets a wildfire WhatsApp moment. Not a meme that trickles out from Twitter or a clip that builds slowly on TikTok, but something that arrives simultaneously in seemingly every group chat in the country, landing with that perfect mix of “how is this real” and “only here”. This week’s example came from the most unlikely of places: an online condolence book.
If you’ve found your way here after searching for “Martin from Roscommon RIP message” or something similar, this isn’t an exposé. We’re deliberately not publishing the screenshot, not naming the deceased or their family, and not including surnames or specific locations. The point of this piece is to look at what this moment says about how we use platforms like RIP.ie and what a site of its size and reach owes its users in terms of basic safeguards.
What happened on RIP.ie
A condolence message appeared on a death notice on RIP.ie in which a man, now widely referred to online as “Martin from Roscommon”, appeared to use the space to try to reconnect with a woman he had known roughly four decades earlier. He had spotted her name listed among the bereaved family.
The message, as widely described in screenshots circulating on Irish WhatsApp groups, saw him recall that he had always liked her, reflect on what might have been, and then sign off with his full name and mobile number, essentially turning a public condolences section into a very personal missed connections post. If you’ve ever read the classifieds of the Ireland’s Own – we’re in that territory.
The condolence has since been removed from RIP.ie. Nothing about the background story has been verified, and it is worth being completely clear about that. We do not know whether the two people were ever close, whether contact was welcomed, what happened next or if they even exist to a certain extent. What we do know is that a grieving family found themselves at the centre of a national in-joke at what is almost certainly the worst time of their lives, and that deserves to be acknowledged before any of the humour.
The reactions: gallows humour, discomfort and something a bit sadder
But, depending on the family, this could be the funniest thing to happen to them either. And to be honest, the Irish internet’s response has been predictably, gloriously unhinged. The jokes have been fast, dark and very funny in places, with people imagining RIP.ie rebranded, with “Mournhub” being absolutely top-notch comedy in my opinion. Classic Irish gallows humour, and hard to begrudge in isolation.
That said, a fair number of people have also found it uncomfortable. A condolence book is a space people visit while they are grieving, often within hours of losing someone. While almost certainly accidental, the idea of someone using that space for what amounts to a romantic overture, however wistful and well-intentioned it may have been, sits uneasily.
Then there is the third read, which is probably why this particular story has stuck. There is something genuinely melancholy about the idea of an older man, haunted by an old connection, finally working up the nerve to say something after 40 years and doing it in entirely the wrong place. It is funny, certainly. It is also a little sad, and that combination is exactly the kind of thing that makes something travel.
We’re going to get a Netflix movie about this, aren’t we?
What this tells us about how RIP.ie works
RIP.ie, which is now part of The Irish Times Group, has quietly become one of the most visited websites in Ireland. It is not just an obituary listing service at this point. It functions as a kind of national noticeboard, an inadvertent social graph that connects names, locations, family relationships and community ties in one searchable, public place.
The condolences section operates on free-form text. There is no automatic filtering to catch phone numbers, email addresses or other personal data before a message goes live. In most cases that is fine, because most people posting condolences are doing exactly that. But this week’s viral moment is a fairly clear demonstration of why some basic guardrails would be sensible.
A few straightforward changes could prevent this kind of thing recurring. Automatically flagging or blocking Irish mobile number formats and email addresses in condolence text would be a reasonable starting point. A clearer warning at the point of posting, something along the lines of “this message and any personal details you include are public and may be screenshotted and shared”, would help people understand what they are actually doing. Faster, simpler tools for families to flag and remove messages that overstep the mark would also make a meaningful difference.
To be honest, when a large group like The Irish Times Group takes over a platform like this, you’d like to think this will be thought of before it’s forced. Either way, it is almost certain that RIP.ie and The Irish Times will look at tightening this up in the wake of the attention this has received. These are not complex changes. They are the kind of common-sense UX decisions that a platform of this scale and sensitivity probably should have had in place already, and the good news is that none of them would require significant rebuilding.
The platform literacy problem
I want to build on a point I made earlier. “Martin from Roscommon” almost certainly did not fully understand that RIP.ie is a completely public website whose content can be copied, screenshotted and circulated in seconds. If he is older and more accustomed to local newspaper norms, where a condolence in a print publication might be read by a few hundred people in the local area and then forgotten, the leap to “this will be in every WhatsApp group in Ireland by teatime” is not an obvious one.
That is not an excuse for the choice he made. But it does point to something that platform designers need to take seriously. You cannot assume that every user understands the reach of what they are posting. A platform that is used by people of all ages, many of whom may be older, distressed and not particularly tech-savvy, has a responsibility to protect users from the unintended consequences of their own posts as much as possible. That means building the safeguards in, not hoping that people will read the terms and conditions.
The broader privacy picture on RIP.ie
This incident sits within a wider conversation about what RIP.ie makes possible beyond the obvious. When you combine full names, family relationships, locations and unmoderated free-text in one searchable public database, you are creating something that can be used in ways the platform never intended.
There have been accounts shared online of the site being used to piece together detailed information about grieving families, including cases where the specificity of obituary detail has raised real safety concerns. Most users will never encounter anything like that. But a platform of this reach and this sensitivity probably needs to be thinking about the edge cases more carefully than it has been, and not just in the context of phone numbers left in condolence messages.
When you think about it in terms of privacy and cyber security – an RIP entry can have maiden names and full family trees listed for those who are dedicated enough.
The very Irish ending
Only in Ireland could an obituary site become the backdrop for a viral “shoot your shot” saga, complete with competing pun-based rebrand suggestions and genuine national debate about the etiquette of online grief. That is worth appreciating, briefly, before returning to the point.
Behind every WhatsApp joke this week, there is a real family dealing with a real bereavement who did not ask to become part of a national punchline. There is also, in all likelihood, a very mortified man who made a misjudged decision in a public space he did not fully understand. A few smart, simple design choices from RIP.ie could make sure that the next time someone tries something like this, the platform catches it before the rest of Ireland does.
For now, poor auld Martin is probably dreading his next trip to the pub.
