Will Facebook and Twitter Miss Me When I'm Gone?
This one might be better for a philosopher or a psychiatrist to try and tackle. However this topic has me so curious that I thought, “Why not just put something out there in a blog and see if anyone has any insight out there?”
I was on Facebook a while back and I noticed that a FB friend of mine had posted something about a friend of hers who had died unexpectedly. I looked him up by the name that she posted and I took a look at his wall. Not really out of morbid curiosity to see what happened, but mostly to see who he was. What kind of guy was he? Married? Single? Did he have kids? While checking out his wall I noticed that he had tons of postings from FB friends. He seemed to be a very popular guy. He had hundreds of FB friends and most of them were posting on his wall. I noticed that there were a few different kinds of postings.
A few of the postings were just mentioning that they just saw him the other day and then would ask if anyone knew what had happened to him. The other kind of posting that I saw was what I would call a “thoughts and prayers” posting that was meant for his family. There were a number of these postings. But the one posting there was the most of was a direct message to the man who passed away. They would say things like, “Dude I’m going to miss you”, or “I just saw you and I can’t believe you are gone”. Now I don’t know if I’m just an insensitive a-hole but this seemed really weird to me. Two things seemed odd to me right away. First was the simple fact that all of the people that wrote these postings knew that he wasn’t going to see them. Yet they felt compelled to take the time to write to him. The second thing that seemed odd was that there were tons of these postings. It wasn’t just a couple of close friends trying to deal with their sense of loss by writing a quick note. It was a lot of people. This leads me to believe that a majority of the people visiting his page did not think it was odd to write him a posting knowing that he had passed away. Not only did they not think it was odd but it was perfectly acceptable to them and probably even gave them a sense of closure.
The more time I spent thinking about this subject the more I realized that there are a lot of postings made on Facebook that aren’t really meant for the person they are referring to. “Happy Birthday to my son who turns 2 today!” “RIP (insert famous dead person’s name here)! You will be missed!” Actually Twitter is the big site for that kind of posting. You aren’t famous and dead until the masses on Twitter are tweeting about you.
What did people do before Facebook and Twitter when someone they kind of knew died? Some went to the funeral and gave their sympathies to the family. It’s just easier and more public on the Internet. Have you ever posted an “RIP” posting and if so did you ask yourself why or did it just seem like the thing to do?
I was on Facebook a while back and I noticed that a FB friend of mine had posted something about a friend of hers who had died unexpectedly. I looked him up by the name that she posted and I took a look at his wall. Not really out of morbid curiosity to see what happened, but mostly to see who he was. What kind of guy was he? Married? Single? Did he have kids? While checking out his wall I noticed that he had tons of postings from FB friends. He seemed to be a very popular guy. He had hundreds of FB friends and most of them were posting on his wall. I noticed that there were a few different kinds of postings.
A few of the postings were just mentioning that they just saw him the other day and then would ask if anyone knew what had happened to him. The other kind of posting that I saw was what I would call a “thoughts and prayers” posting that was meant for his family. There were a number of these postings. But the one posting there was the most of was a direct message to the man who passed away. They would say things like, “Dude I’m going to miss you”, or “I just saw you and I can’t believe you are gone”. Now I don’t know if I’m just an insensitive a-hole but this seemed really weird to me. Two things seemed odd to me right away. First was the simple fact that all of the people that wrote these postings knew that he wasn’t going to see them. Yet they felt compelled to take the time to write to him. The second thing that seemed odd was that there were tons of these postings. It wasn’t just a couple of close friends trying to deal with their sense of loss by writing a quick note. It was a lot of people. This leads me to believe that a majority of the people visiting his page did not think it was odd to write him a posting knowing that he had passed away. Not only did they not think it was odd but it was perfectly acceptable to them and probably even gave them a sense of closure.
The more time I spent thinking about this subject the more I realized that there are a lot of postings made on Facebook that aren’t really meant for the person they are referring to. “Happy Birthday to my son who turns 2 today!” “RIP (insert famous dead person’s name here)! You will be missed!” Actually Twitter is the big site for that kind of posting. You aren’t famous and dead until the masses on Twitter are tweeting about you.
What did people do before Facebook and Twitter when someone they kind of knew died? Some went to the funeral and gave their sympathies to the family. It’s just easier and more public on the Internet. Have you ever posted an “RIP” posting and if so did you ask yourself why or did it just seem like the thing to do?
"What did people do before Facebook and Twitter when someone they kind of knew died?"
ReplyDelete...call me old fashioned but back in my day we used to do this thing called "drinking"...the kids should look that one up on the Wiki-computo-mcbob if they're not too busy with their A cappella group sing-alongs...hell, make me an old fashioned.
cv...er, I mean Anonymous