Cousin
Hi Crystal.
I am sorry for your loss. This is a difficult topic to write about and not sure how to go about it. But I’ll just go ahead and try. Reposting your questions here with an attempt at answering them below:
- Have you ever commemorated the death of a loved one in digital spaces? What did you do? How did others respond to you?
- Whenever you witness someone sharing their grief on social media, how do you feel? Does it motivate you to respond to the person in particular ways?
- How can we use social media more conscientiously so as to create spaces for mutual aftercare? What can we do for each other in digital spaces whenever a global grieving event occurs?
Four years ago a favourite cousin died in a car accident. Her facebook page is still up and people use it as a memorial site. Sometimes her icon pops up unexpectedly in my feeds and it floors me everytime. I couldn’t go to the funeral: it still feels surreal, like she might show up at any time, and the “active” facebook account isn’t helping.
I am a private person- If and when I do post about anything it is with a lot of consideration. I rarely post about someone while they are alive if it is not to share something they themselves intended for public consumption. Posting about someone else’s death feels like a violation of their agency and privacy. They can no longer have agency over the narrative spun about them and it somehow adds insult to the injury for me.
When I witness others sharing their grief I usually get in touch via a PM. Asking how they are and offering a shoulder to cry on if they need it. Commenting feels to exposed, like participating in a spectacle orchestrated by FB. Did you ever watch “We Live in Public”? I did many years ago and it has definitely shaped how I feel about social media.
Using Social Media more conscienscously…mmm I don’t know. What immediately comes to mind is that the business models of commercial social media platforms is advertising based “fast” media. I ask myself what effect this has on the dynamics of grief, which are slow and somehow not very condusive to selling anything - except for membership in cults or possibly self-help literature.
In my parents cultures grief is a shared experience, there are a lot of social rituals for processing it have written about it in Life and Death at the UnMonastery. I recently came across something called Sunday Assembly. They have set up a secular equivalent to the sunday sermons at church to address the lack of spaces for social communion and other rituals which are key to cementing strong communities. Somehow I feel social media can be used to grow these kinds of movements and to connect a critical mass of people to them. So that when grief strikes, the individual is embedded in a nurturing local community that can help them heal.
My two cents…
I don’t know if it relevant to your work