The articles read for this Wednesday’s class designated the phenomenon of technological grieving, and its responses like grief trolling, in binaries. Male/female, white/non-white, strong/weak, communal/isolated, and traditional/new feature here, not to mention the obvious digital/analog and dead/alive. Though these simplifications are often faulty, they remind of a more, for lack of a better word, primal framework.
Entering a new situation makes one aware of their vulnerabilities. Further, they must adapt toward function in order to survive or thrive there. While these changes could and often have been physical, like expansion of human civilizations, they also include abstract developments– like the internet and social media. So, too, death exists as a change that we fear (or at least think about) nearly universally often because we cannot adapt to, as far as history’s and the current world go.
So, as humans feel we have become comfortable and safe in the digital world, we use it as a tool to mitigate the effects of that other challenge, death. Megan Garber in particular wrote about the ancientness of our tendency to gather when faced with the death of someone. For millennia, versions of funerals and wakes have prompted communing to cope with death.
The digitization of those rites has made them less visceral and therefore less threatening. Too, death in a modern, American context of course still looms, but lacks the constancy it might otherwise. So, people begin to respond, or are perceived by others to respond, to death in a superficial and ultimately meaningless way nowadays. Throwing together a social media post, much less commenting on or liking one, takes less time, energy, and effort than organizing or participating in an analog memorial. The nature of social media emphasizes the performance aspect of grieving– I’m also reminded of the draconian dress and behavior codes for mourning Victorians–and in doing so clouds the motivation of mourners. Is that person posting out of real sadness, or to show off how sad they are? (The answers interconnect, as per the previously-mentioned instincts of humanity to seek out each other for comfort, but can be construed as immoral).
Thus, grief trolls emerge. I find their premise and actions abhorrent, but believe their motivation may stem from a distrust of the changing, vulnerability-inducing landscape of dealing with death.