Hachem Sadikki, a Ph.D. candidate in statistics at University of Massachusetts, predicted that the year the number of dead people on Facebook outnumbers the living is the surprisingly-close 2098. I could hypothetically be around to see that (assuming I still care about social media at that point – I’ll be 103). There are some understandable assumptions Sadikki had to make: he assumed that everyone who dies is memorialized, that Facebook’s exponential growth will eventually plateau, and he used the U.S. death rate (provided by the CDC) for the entire globe. But his results have been confirmed by others, such as Randall Munroe (of xkcd fame) who estimated that this outnumbering will occur in the 2060s (assuming Facebook’s growth plateau’s, like Sadikki) or in the 2130s (assuming Facebook continues to grow).
Sadikki’s results. Note the astonishing explosion of growth in active users from 2005-2016 and the intriguing slight plateau in number of deceased users around 2014-2016 (comments about reasons why are welcome!)
These numbers are intriguing but with the recent “death” of Vine, I wonder which will die first: Facebook or its user base? Meaning, will we reach this cross point of number of deceased users equaling the number of active users before Facebook becomes obsolete? Munroe briefly explores Facebook’s future in his post and his take-away is that either Facebook falls out of favor (generating the 2060s scenario) or it continues on its current path (the 2130s scenario). I like exploring the Facebook-falling-out-of-use scenario, envisioning a Facebook that eventually evolves into the memorial sites that we’ve chuckled at in class. What if Facebook becomes an acceptable, everyday, communal mourning site? People wake up each day get a reminder to write on someone’s wall for their “death day”, comment and reminisce on pictures and videos, perhaps even chat with family members of the deceased. The idea probably won’t catch on, but it’s an amusing future to envision.
Manu Saadia brings up critical points on societal and economic implications in his article “If death becomes optional, will only the rich get to live forever?” I cannot help but to think Saadia is right in inferring that the rich will have a monopoly, or at least much more access, on life extension technology. As Saadia pointed out, poorer people on average die younger than rich people. Additionally, data shows that there are disproportionate rates of queer youth and people of color who are poor and homeless. I cannot help but wonder how access to life extension that is limited to the wealthy will further perpetuate systemic and institutional oppression. Will life-extending advancements just be another way to maintain and gain power over others?
Saadia uses a quote from Steve Jobs to convey his opinion on the topic “death is very likely the best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.” I also agree; because the world and society is constantly changing (now more quickly than ever due to advancements in technology). I feel as though the youth will be in touch the most with what social injustices exist and how to fix them. For example, many of us have that well-intended uncle or bigoted grandmother who does not understand the gravity of police brutality on Black lives. Even our parents are out of touch from “hip” lingo and social media platforms. If people who are currently in power live forever (or for a very long time), they may push for initiatives and beliefs that are outdated, irrelevant, and/or harmful to those less privileged.
One of the things I found most troubling with this week’s reading “Enter the Grief Police” was my own reaction. This article hit hard to home and forced me to confront and examine my own behavior and perceptions when it comes to experiencing and performing grief.
When I read this piece, I found myself siding with the “Grief Police” to one extent, but also vehemently reprimanding them on the other. When celebrities die (shout out to the year 2016) or someone in the local community passes away, many people have taken to showing their grief in a very public manner, through the use of social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter. In so many of these cases, when I see the grief of my “friends” (are social media contacts really friends? That’s a whole different subject…), I cringe. Unless it’s a close friend or relative, I assume that their “grief” is superficial or all just for show — for attention. When a celebrity dies I think, “How on earth does this actually affect your life, dude? Get over it.” When someone posts concerning a community member that has passed, I’m likely to question what their actual real life relationship was with the person.
People all around the world mourned a man they had never met, and grieved him publicly. Source: Eyewitness News
But this is all entirely unfair of me, too, because I do the same thing. I grieve in public, I ask for the support and kindness (read earlier: “attention”) of others recognizing my own pain, and I express my relationship to those who have passed along via public social media, somehow seemingly desperate to prove that I am affected by their passing.
So why is grief something we (maybe just read: I) are (am) so judgmental about — especially when we have all experienced it?
Megan Garber suggests in a brief online article, “Enter the Grief Police”, that public, online forms of grieving are analogous to a virtual wake. Her primary points to support this argument are that:
The notion that to oppose online grieving is to support the claim that there is one true ‘correct’ way to grieve.
The notion that public, online grieving is a natural extension of what may be called a ‘deep, communal concern’.
To ‘grief police’ is to dislike newly emerging social rituals that would otherwise be acceptable.
There are many ways to grieve. However, a distinction must be made between real grief, and a 140 character hashtag riddled soundbite.
If you haven’t realized by the tone of my prose by now, I will now systematically disagree with the above points. Firstly, of course there is no true way to grieve. It is up to the individual in question, as well as the loved ones surrounding that individual. What is important however is that it is intensely personal, and could not possibly by defined by a certain method. It is because of this that online grieving should be taken with caution–because it is so public, and so accessible to others, there’s little barrier to both entry and reception. If a somebody did not want to see a deceased loved one’s face online, as outlined in “Inadvertent Algorithmic Cruelty”, it is up to them. But, the public nature of this act makes it difficult to avoid, thus making it both an inherently unpersonal act, as well as disrupting the grief of others.
Secondly, I do not believe that a deep communal concern over a death necessarily results in public online grieving. In the large cases such as David Bowie’s death, I do not think that there was a deep, sincere sense of loss for the majority of people involved. While certain individuals may have been personally familiar with Bowie, it’s hard to imagine that these people could be as affected as immediate family. And if there was concern, it seems that a primary motivator in making these statements of mourning public would be so that others may see them–in an effort to garner sympathy for their loss, to put it bluntly. The fact that the statements are public once again detract from the thinking that public online grieving reflects a deep concern.
Lastly, I do admit that public online grieving is indeed a social ritual as much as a wake or funeral is. However, once again the difference is the invitatory, much-too-accessible nature of public online grieving. People are invited to wakes and funerals. In these cases, the small scale of the mourning event is what allows for intimate consolation and condolences. No one in a funeral approaches a widow and yells their condolences loudly so that everyone may hear. It’s an ass move because it’s not about those invited to the wake, it’s about the recently deceased and those closest to them. If this was the design of the wake then that is a different story, but the point is that to take this decision out of the hands of the deceased and those closest to them should be frowned upon.
How to Sign the Guestbook at a Funeral or Memorial Service via Everplans
In her article “David Bowie and the Rise of the Grief Police,” Megan Garber argues that, sometimes, the act of grieving online (often publicly, such as via Facebook) does not have to be a “deeply insincere” act as Camilla Long tweets. Rather, it can be a “declaration of support to the deceased’s family and friends,” almost like a virtual “condolence card” for the loved ones (even if it is personally addressed to the deceased).
Plenty of condolence cards and memorial flowers come from people who did not have a close relationship with the deceased (or any at all). Though these condolences can be touching and personal, they may also simply express sorrow for the family’s loss–a universally human sentiment that can still carry some weight for the loved ones regardless of the sender’s actual relationship to the deceased. As Garber points out, that does not make them much different from memorial posts online.
In class, I brought up a similar idea in our small group’s discussion. What makes a memorial post much different than signing a guest book at a wake? On the one hand, posting on a memorial page is often in a more public forum, which certainly lends the post many of the negative aspects associated with other public posts–this is something that the poster wants you to see, something that is curated and meant to communicate a certain message or agenda.
On the other hand, we can focus on different aspects of a memorial post. If it’s posted on a page created specifically to mourn or memorialize a certain person’s passing, that page is often not ostensibly meant as a place for people to gain social capital; rather it may be created by family, friends, or loved ones for those affected by the deceased. Like a sizable crowd at a funeral, a mailbox packed with condolence cards, or a completely full guest book, a populated memorial page can help the loved ones of the deceased deal with the unendurable–it can comfort someone knowing that their deceased loved one had a tangible impact on so many different people.
From both commercial and personal perspectives, the internet and overall growth of social media platforms remain contentious in their public reception, expanding and encouraging new forms of social expression and communication but not without a troubling human cost. In her article “LOLing at tragedy: Facebook trolls, memorial pages and resistance to grief online” Whitney Phillips explores in depth the phenomenon of trolling, specifically on Facebook, unearthing the very tension between freedom of expression and harmful engagement within social media relationships and networks. From her extensive article one thing remains clear: trolling cannot be boiled down to the good guy/bad guy paradigm many use to unilaterally vilify internet trolls. While trolling can be downright destructive and harmful in its activity, this involvement equally reveals the greater hypocrisy of social media platforms themselves, which glorify and sensationalize human trauma for commercial or self-interested ends (not so different from trolls, after all).
What I find most interesting in Phillips’ article is her analysis of the different permutations of identity that appear online—a sort of shape-shifting which stems from a growing societal preference for anonymity and multiplicity (and the protection and freedom they afford). She notes in particular the rhetorical distinction between the use of first and third person on Facebook, observing:
For every “real” user who is continuously reminded of and interpolated by their own “I,” every troll user is continuously reminded of and interpolated by the “I” they’re not, an ongoing process of emotional repudiation that explains why Facebook trolls frequently shift to the third person to describe their own actions (and may also help explain the ease with which trolls detach from the havoc they wreak — in their minds, it’s not exactly them doing the damage).
Strikingly, the multiplicity of the self allows for a certain level of emotional distancing in these online relationships, further blurred by the impersonal digital environment in which they exist. As multiplicity within social identity becomes more commonplace, do we need to reimagine our definition of citizenship and social participation? To what extent to do these cloned or alternate identities possess authority and legitimacy? Where is the line between character performance and the “real” individual? And finally, at what point does this alternative identity become its own functioning entity, no longer an extension of its maker, but rather an individual actor with its own rights and responsibility?
With social media it is now possible to have multiple identities, creating virtual clones of ourselves and others. Source: “Cloning – A Useful Technique for Mankind.” N.d. Blogs. Web. 15 Mar. 2017.
Reading Phillips’ article I immediately thought of Yik Yak, a social media platform most simply described as an anonymous twitter, which initially gained popularity thanks to the liberating anonymity it afforded its “yakkers.” However, alongside this promise of freedom came an even greater cost, namely, that users were suddenly able to express harmful, offensive, and downright disgusting beliefs without any social consequence. Down-voting, a built-in protection within the app, allowed unpopular posts to be removed from the feed after five “downs.” However, this protection was limited at best, functioning to minimize damage rather than serving as a preventative measure. Any recipient of slander could still have their reputation publicly tarnished in the time it took to gather five downvotes. Trolling and Yik Yak posting may serve different functions and distinct communities, however their central reliance on anonymity suggests a more threatening reality within society at large: what humans are capable of if emancipated from society’s surveillance.
This leads us to a fundamental question: who do we protect and whose responsibility is it to do so? Phillips herself identifies this dilemma, stating, “Indeed, from the moment that memorial trolling took hold, Facebook has had to walk a very fine line between protecting its users and protecting itself.” Traditionally, crime within society falls under state and government authority. But what about when it occurs on digital platforms? Anti-trolling, itself a form of policing, is reminiscent of the lone ranger or even the classic cowboy—enforcing “justice” but with an unregulated, and arguably equally dangerous level of independence and subjective reign. So who is to blame? Most importantly, if a person has multiple identities, which gets persecuted: the social identity or the digital one? Where is this accountability located? Just take Phillips’ example of Sean Duffy, wrongfully arrested and accused of being the online persona, Pro Fessor. Can criminal justice accommodate the blurring of these identity boundaries? Unclear.
References :
Phillips, Whitney. “LOLing at Tragedy: Facebook Trolls, Memorial Pages and Resistance to Grief Online.” First Monday 16.12 (n.d.): n. pag. 5 Dec. 2011. Web. 15 Mar. 2017.
Megan Garber’s article “Enter the Grief Police” deals with a topic that I have mentioned in previous blog posts: the grief demonstrated online and more specifically on Facebook. She begins by presenting her belief that the Internet has allowed society to publicly display their feelings of grief once again. She cites 20th century culture as the beginning of a movement that encouraged grief to be kept to the personal self. Now, with Social Media features, such as Facebook’s “Remembering” preservation of a profile, we can express these emotions freely once again. However, Garber believes that this transition to previously held values is causing discomfort, and this discomfort is leading to push back against these expressions. While I do share Garber’s sentiment that there has been push back against this public display of grief, I would hesitate to call the movement a “Grief Police.”
I would like to start off by saying that my formerly stated belief is not rooted in history that dates back to the 20th century, but rather in my experiences as a social media user. I was not aware that it was possible to keep a person’s social media profile alive past their expiration date until a year ago when I saw a mass amount of comments being posted on a friends wall. That friend had been shot in a drive-by near the projects in Charlotte, NC and many of her friends could be seen sending supportive messages. I was not close to this friend, so I did not post anything but was still saddened by the news. However, I did see other people ,in my exact position, writing long-winded posts that described their love for the deceased person. That is not okay, and it is annoying. These are the generally held beliefs of those who push back against public grieving. I am sure that , had the dead person been witness to these posts, they would have reacted with “I’m sorry, who are you?” I believe that any human is free to grieve in their own way, be it private or public. But, when grieving becomes a false action that people engage in simply to go with the norm or fit in with everyone else, it devalues the action as a whole.
The Facebook profile of the friend who was shot in Charlotte, NC. Users are still posting on her wall.
Since my initial experience with public grievances, I have encountered many fake and real forms of online grieving. It is sometimes hard to identity the differences between the two, unless one is familiar with the deceased person. I have also encountered the people who share my sentiment, yet go out of their way to express it. These people are often very outspoken, such as Camilla Long was when she called out the fake grievers of David Bowie’s death . She specifically called out people who were sharing their “broken up” emotions over the death of an iconic artist, wanting them to articulate their feelings more efficiently or to create constructive discourse. I agree with her. People who do not know him or have met him are feeling emotional about his death. Can you imagine how the family feels? Can you imagine how those close to him, those who shared life with him, feel? I would pose this question to all those who engage in public grieving for the sake of social performance. Take a step back from the keyboard before you post that really long message describing how much you will miss someone who you did not well. This performance is annoying, it is overdone, and it is insulting for those who really wish to grieve online.
Posts describing their grief for the deceased patron that acknowledge the fact that many other comments have already been left on her profile. The massive amount of comments demonstrate how these actions are social performance.
I am in no way telling people not to grieve online, I believe it can be constructive and in some ways cathartic. I am simply saying that the faux “Omg I’m going to miss you so much xoxo” messages are unnecessary and should stop. Judging from the reading, Garber would consider me as part of the Grief Police, and this is where we disagree. I do not believe that the concept of a “Grief Police” is even real. Yes, there are individuals like Long who wish people would express their grief more privately, but these people usually keep to themselves. Long has sixty thousand followers on Twitter, and this gives her a stage on which she may express her views. The majority of this so called “Grief Police” does not.
In my experience, those who share my beliefs would think thrice before telling someone that they should not grieve publicly. We are all entitled to our opinions, and we have the freedom to post what we want. Is it annoying? Sure. But there is no massive group , at least not one that I have encountered , of social media users who try to dictate how grief is expressed. The use of the term “Grief Police” assumes that there is a group, and this group is consistently checking up on social media users to make sure that their feelings concerning a death are internalized. This is not the case. We just find these posts annoying and would prefer to not see them. This can be easily done with the click of a few buttons, so why would there even be a need for a Grief Police? Those who care enough about these types of posts will do something to make sure they don’t see them, but they will not go out of their way to offend those grieving.
If anything, Grief Moderators would be a better term. This term does not assume that there is a group of people trying to control what everyone says, but rather what they themselves see. They moderate their newsfeed to see, or avoid seeing posts concerning a death. These moderators are moderating their own experience, not that of others.
Two of the articles we read, “Inadvertent Algorithmic Cruelty” and “Enter the Grief Police” got me thinking about what we expect from technology as it relates to grief insofar as we can keep technology separate from the human people who use it. Eric’s chief complaint is that he was not consulted about his “Year in Review,” which Facebook’s algorithm selected an image of his deceased daughter to represent. He writes that those who have had years full of crisis “might not want to look at this past year.” However, I’d argue that some would–what about those who would share their year in review, even if it was a devastating one, as a form of mourning? The Garber piece in The Atlantic also touches on this territory–no one can establish what is and isn’t an appropriate reaction to grief (with the exception of the trolls Whitney Phillips elaborates on). As Garber phrases it, “The notion that there is but one way to grieve, and that the deviation from that way is wrong” has no place on the internet. Perhaps for every person who wouldn’t want to share their year in review, there’s one who does — one who doesn’t find Facebook grief to be “utterly insincere,” as Camilla Long’s tweets describe.
The kind of content we expect from the internet is changing. Eric writes that “The design [of Facebook’s year in review] is for the ideal user, the happy, upbeat, good-life user. It doesn’t take other cases into account.” I would argue that this vision of the internet’s / social media’s purpose is incomplete. Eric’s judgement brings to mind that the characteristics he describes are what we used to expect from content (importantly, self-advertised content) on the internet. But now, the internet is becoming an acceptable place to mourn. As Garber puts it, #RIPDavidBowie wasn’t just a trending topic–it was a digital funeral.
And standards. As cruel as internet trolls can be, there is such thing as “crossing the line”. There is a whole culture of trolling with various unspoken rules regarding who to target and “traditions” of content for situations, which fascinated me. Who knew there was a methodology what content was posted and who was okay to troll? Whitney Phillips delves into this subculture in her article “LOLing at tragedy: Facebook trolls, memorial pages and resistance to grief online”. She focuses on RIP trolls, which she defines as “online instigators [who] post abusive comments and images onto pages created for and dedicated to the deceased.” Recognizable by their profile pictures and names (like “Soveri Ruthless” or “Frank Bagadonuts”), RIP trolls friend each other and then lead organized attacks on a public Facebook memorial page. They specifically target “I didn’t know you but I’m very sorry you’re dead” posts, which they view as insincere and cheap. For RIP trolls, Facebook is never the appropriate place for grieving, especially for tragedies such as car crashes or kidnapping cases.
No, not these kinds of trolls. Internet trolls generally intend to ruin the intended conversation, via rude and insensitive comments or images. Dreamworks, accessed 15 March 2017.
No one should have the power to judge others’ behavior, specifically reactions to death, and determine what is appropriate or not. But hearing the trolls’ perspective made me wonder if their view of online expressions of grief has some credibility. Wilson Mouzone, one of the trolls Phillips interviewed, said that family members don’t deserve the disrespectful treatment by some of the most vicious trolls. Generally, these pages (often private) and users are left alone. But the “grief-tourists” with no real-life connection to the victim are considered free game. Will trolling help curtail these “insincere” postings? If so, are we amid a culture shift in online grief culture? Since experiencing death on Facebook is a relatively new phenomenon (as opposed to newspaper obituaries and funerals), we haven’t determined what is culturally acceptable. An analysis of public memorial pages over the past few years regarding the ratio of genuine posts to troll posts would be insightful to examine. Perhaps the RIP trolls’ behavior is having their desired effect and reducing the number of inauthentic postings. More likely, their derogatory comments only incite internal debate/attacks/rage on the memorial page regarding the trolls, not about the insincere postings.
A memorial page for Chelsea King. Note that the administrators of the page have done a better job of deleting troll comments (or perhaps the account was reported – in which case, all comments are deleted automatically) and so the discussion revolves around a comment that is no longer there. Screenshot of original page taken and edited by author, 15 March 2017.
The concept of recording an action is relatively new to us. While written history had existed for a time, it was only with the phonograph that an actual event could be played back, if desired. The class reading for tomorrow morning partially examined the impact of the first audio recordings. The concern, while now antiquated, seems warranted at the time. The idea of communicating with the dead seems understandable when one was to first be presented a human being’s voice played back to them through a tube. It is this disembodiment of what is normally considered to define ‘humanness’ that will be examined here.
The pinnacle of commercial technology then…versus the pinnacle now. technology’s come a long way just to incorporate another sensation (sight)!
Now, the prevalence of digital technology not only allows for high fidelity audio recordings, but also visual recordings. It might not be so unreasonable to then extrapolate and predict that digital technology will allow for further ‘recording’ of human experiences. I imagine the endgame to encompass something along these lines: a digital recording of a short event, completely digitally recorded to minuscule detail, able to be viewed in augmented, virtual reality. The next obvious step being that whatever may be recorded can also be fabricated. So the governments would possibly have a tough time with underground fake memory markets reminiscent of Ghost in the Shell!
Anyways, if the people of Edison’s time were to be presented with such a device, they would doubtlessly be bewildered by what should appear as communication with the dead. This is because the dead are associated with a disembodiment–few depictions of ghosts involve a physical, tangible body. They are usually ethereal or otherworldly in some other aspect. An audio recording is a disembodied voice, which is creepy and invokes the ‘am I talking to the dead?’ feeling. A picture might similarly have the same effect. But if all these senses were to be put together, one might have actually accomplished with Edison sought for so long–just with a little twist.
