Death, especially of a loved one or a public figure, has always been difficult for people to deal with, and always will be.  Living in this world and surviving to old age means a person will see their grandparents, their parents, beloved pets, idols and role models all die, and such losses usually require a grieving process.  Everybody copes from their own traumas in their own ways, but technology has opened a door to a vastly more public sphere of mourning than almost ever before.

The death of loved ones, while traditionally a private affair that would be told to those who were close enough to the individual to need or deserve to know, is now often shared like a family newsletter.  On Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, there are countless posts mourning the loss of loved ones.  Would you want such a public display of the event of your death? Shared to thousands of people, many of which you probably don’t know?  That isn’t a very appealing thought to me, but there are some benefits of this novel and nuanced grief platform.  There is a sense in which Facebook and other social media sites make your mourning, your call for support, more immediate than even an email or a letter.  In sharing with everyone at once, we intentionally, if subconsciously, abuse people’s Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO).  This usually leads to a greater influx of messages of condolences, which have some comfort to add that is, importantly, very easy to give.

But as we know, the internet is also filled with people who dedicate themselves to antagonizing other people, even over such sensitive topics.  We all know what trolls are, but where do they come from?  Why is grief trolling worth anybody’s time?  Phillips mentions a troll she met in her research who says that a “standard response to criticism of trolling is an emphatic HEY GUYS THE POWER BUTTON IS RIGHT THERE.”  Yes, a solution to avoid trolls is not entering the public spaces where they have some rights to say what they want.  But grief and mourning pages on Facebook and other relatively, for lack of a better phrase, family-friendly platforms seem like the wrong hill to take your stand for free speech on.  Do these trolls and their motivations say something about our society?  Are we just becoming less empathetic?  I don’t think we know enough yet about the situation to say, but there is clearly a big shift happening in the way we experience loss as a culture, especially the way we express our feelings and share our condolences.

Obviously I can’t say if this is true for everyone, but the cultivation of social media profiles involves the selection of specific images, phrases, and the aspects of one’s personality that they want to present to the world. The goal isn’t to present your whole self but a public self. Troll profiles are in an odd space between public and private in that the identities behind those profiles are anonymous even though the profiles themselves are highly public. The profiles may voice extreme versions of the troll’s ideals, or they may just say the most controversial possible thing. Phillips describes how trolls distance themselves from their profiles, referencing things the author wrote on their troll profile as if a separate, real person ran that profile. I wonder if the cultivation of social media profiles, especially when the viewer doesn’t know the person behind the profile, provide an extra sort of justification for trolls. The troll knows that one-sided profiles exist because the troll himself exists, and if the troll views social media as fake showboating, why should the troll believe in a genuine emotional response being expressed on that page? Everything posted by a certain profile contributes to a persona. Trolling evokes an emotional response that breaks that persona a bit using the trolled person’s anger.

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.

After reading the two articles for Wednesday’s class, I was immediately reminded of an incident that I followed closely this past summer. On July 18, 2018 Mollie Tibbetts went missing from her small town in Iowa after she was last seen on a run. From the time I saw the news notification about her disappearance until the day that her body was found on August 21st, I was constantly checking the news and the facebook page created to help find Mollie for updates.

After reading about the Chelsea King incident in Whitney Phillip’s article, LOLing at Tragedy, I began to notice both differences and similarities in their incidents. They were both young women who disappeared on a run and were unfortunately not found until they were already dead. Both young women also had Facebook pages made for them to help authorities, friends, and family help find them after their disappearances.

As we can see the basic facts remain similar, however, the specific use of facebook for each case differs vastly because of the eight year gap of their disappearances. As explained in the article, Chelsea King’s online presence after her death was extremely problematic as the emergence of “Facebook Trolls” arose. These incidents were insensitive towards her family and those who cared about her, even if they were just intended to be light hearted like the “I Bet This Pickle Can Get More Fans than Chelsea King” page.

Eight Years later, Mollie’s internet presence was much more dignified with a lack of “Facebook Trolls” exploiting her death for funny or demeaning comments. However, her death was exploited instead by politicians. When it was discovered that Mollie’s killer is an undocumented immigrant, politicians such as President Trump began to use her death as a platform to advance their anti-immigration platform. Mollie’s father was outraged and publicly shamed the politicians for using his daughter’s death for their political agenda.

Therefore, I believe that facebook trolls are not as prevalent on online memorial/remembrance pages as they were eight years ago around the time of Chelsea King. Instead, I think that the “trolling” has moved into politics and current events where people are using tragic deaths to advance their own personal motives and agendas.

Additionally, I also think that it is interesting to compare celebrities and non-celebrities memorial/grief pages. Megan Garber’s article illuminates what occurred online when David Bowie died, however, I think it would be interesting to do a direct comparison of how people react to a celebrity and a non-celebrity death online.