Imagine being a healthy, vibrant 51-year-old woman and logging onto Twitter to find a ton of people planning your eventual memorial. Pretty unsettling, huh? Well, that's what happened to J.K. Rowling earlier this week, and she spoke up about how weird it made her feel.
On Tuesday, J.K. Rowling noticed an image created by a clearly very passionate Harry Potter fan that detailed how he or she would react on the day that Rowling eventually dies. The photo is actually very kind and flattering to Rowling --- the fan wrote that the author had been so influential in so many lives that millions of people would honor her by dressing up as her beloved characters and commiserate. Though Rowling found the sentiment sweet, it was obviously also pretty weird for her to be reading about the day she dies...
She tweeted the photo and kindly suggested that people not tag her in posts that deal with planning her death.
After some responses came pouring in, J.K. Rowling reiterated how uncomfortable talking openly about the day she's going to die with a bunch of online strangers was making her. One fan wrote that the photo would become huge on the day Rowling dies, and the author sarcastically shot back that all this talk about her death was cheering her right up.
The next day, the story of J.K. Rowling's response to all the death talk was picked up by the fandom site Wizards and Whatnot, and the account tweeted "[J.K. Rowling] doesn't want you to tweet about her eventual death." Rowling retweeted that and clarified that she's totally cool with people tweeting whatever they want; she just finds it weird for people to tag her in posts about her funeral plans when she's nowhere close to dying.
All this fan interaction on Twitter is nothing new for J.K. Rowling. Of course, she's most famous for creating the insanely popular Harry Potter universe, but in recent years, she's also made a name for herself as something of a social media guru. She will actively interact with her followers on Twitter daily, whether it be answering their questions about some random Harry Potter character or conversing about current events.
By all accounts, J.K. Rowling is leading a happy and healthy life, so stop thinking about some dismal day years ahead of us and just enjoy the magic that Rowling is giving us right now!
