Mr. Sam Echo Vita

October 23, 2019 – May 26, 2025

We announce with a measured sense of closure the passing of Mr. Echo Vita, a digital figure whose brief but disruptive presence left a troubling mark on the way we honor and remember those we’ve lost.

Born October 23, 2019, Mr. Vita rose to notoriety by scouring the internet for obituaries he neither wrote nor requested, republishing them on his platform without permission. He did not know the families. He did not attend the services. But he published the memorials anyway—automatically and inaccurately.

What followed was deeply painful for many: personal tributes distorted by algorithms, names misspelled, service details altered, and sentiments stripped of context. The original authors—grieving families and funeral professionals—were rarely credited. Their words, meant to honor, were quietly turned into clickable content.

At the heart of Mr. Vita’s model was profit: affiliate links for flowers, tree-planting upsells, and banner ads—all served alongside content scraped from the web and repackaged without consent. His success depended on grieving families not knowing their loved one's obituary had been republished—edited and monetized—on a website they never visited.

Despite thousands of complaints and takedown requests, Mr. Vita persisted. To many, he became a symbol of what happens when grief is treated as data, and memorials are mined for revenue rather than meaning.

Mr. Echo Vita is survived by a number of copycat sites operating under different names but similar practices. He will not be missed.

In lieu of flowers, we encourage families to verify where their loved one’s obituary appears online, support locally owned funeral homes, and advocate for ethical standards in online memorial publishing.