I’ve written previously about online public grief and how I think that it is an inappropriate method to mourn. I have since then run into a phenomena that doesn’t exactly change my views, but absolutely does give more credibility that to the opposing side.
Enter gatekeeping. The Urban Dictionary defines gatekeeping as “when someone takes it upon themselves to decide who does or does not have access or rights to a community or identity.” Upon reading this definition, I realized that I’ve been seeing this online for quite some time now, and very often at that. The idea resonates very strongly with the concept of snobby, ‘elitist’ preferences. Have you ever heard someone berate music tastes? How can you say you like abc music when you don’t even listen to xyz?!?
The premise is that unless one meets some arbitrary rules or thresholds, they are not “allowed” to identify with a particular group or collective. A similar statement may be made of ‘grief police’, who publicly condemn those who publicly express grief online. You’re not seriously mourning! True mourners stay off the internet and express grief alone! While I still hold true to the assertions that I made in my previous post, I do concede that there is a non-insignificant amount of people who engage in grief policing that fall into the ‘gatekeeping’ category. These are individuals that want maintain a sense of exclusivity and elitism for the right to mourn. They come up with absolutely arbitrary cutoff points-which oftentimes, and very conveniently so, happen to just barely include themselves.
When I made my previous post, I alluded to the fact that while public online grieving might be inappropriate, it does not necessarily imply that the strong reaction that it garners is appropriate. In the lieu of having discovered (or rather, having become aware of its consistent presence in social interactions) gatekeeping, I definitely agree that those who bully people online into hiding their public online grief are just as bad as those I mentioned are milking the opportunity of loss for attention.