28 Apr 2016

There are unspoken customs we adopt on social media. We don’t double post on Instagram within six hours, we don’t like our own status on Facebook and 99% of us don’t post on people’s walls unless it’s their birthday (take it to Messenger, please). These rules are obvious and most of us adhere to them without much thought or question… bar the people who still send game requests… can you not? 

But what about death?

When someone in our community dies, we rush to our status to write about how we remember seeing that person smile 6 years prior on their walk to school or how they were ‘really nice and very beautiful’ even though we have never spoken to them before. We change our profile pictures to that one photo we have of them from years back to show the world that we knew them well enough to share a captured frame.

Why do we do it? Is it merely attention seeking, to show the world we’re involved in a traumatic time? Can we be so public about it because it doesn’t directly impact our home life?

What is the etiquette in this circumstance?

I imagine all of the close friends and family members of the person who has passed looking at their child/friend/sibling’s Facebook wall thinking, ‘who the fek are you, and why are you claiming to feel the same weight of pain we are? I’ve never heard of you before–why are you looking for sympathy when you weren’t there for my child/friend/sibling’s pain?’

Or do they think more optimistically? ‘Look at all these people my child/friend/sibling affected in a positive way! Look at how the community is coming together to share all the love and joy my child/friend/sibling brought into their lives.’

Maybe it depends on the context of death and the way in which the family is dealing with grief–something everyone handles differently. If you know them, you will know the most appropriate way of interacting with their loss. Respecting and caring for them should be the priority, not you and your sympathy status likes.

Regardless of your perspective on all of that, it makes me sad that we have to wait until death before we can say what people mean to us, or tell them a quality that we like about them–especially on something as impersonal as Facebook. Somehow the statuses feel kind of empty and sad, full of words that people write wishing the other could see, but never will. Maybe we need to bring back ‘lms for a tbh’ (but a cooler version) so people feel the love while they’re still alive.

Death always reminds us that life has a beginning and an end, and that we must keep our loved ones close. While you hug them a little tighter, or send your parents a text message for no reason, or call your best friend because it’s been a little while, don’t forget to say something really kind, something about them you truly value.

My personal philosophy? If you won’t say hi to me in the street, don’t write a Facebook status about me when I die.