My news feed is a slew of uninteresting comments and photo albums of my not-quite friends, periodically updating every few minutes. Out of the ordinary, mundane blue haze of activity, an enormous banner draws my attention to a page that apparently 56 of my friends have liked, and whose three big, bold letters capture my attention: RIP.
Even in an age where more and more of our lives are online, I still feel uneasy with the idea of a live-streaming memorial on Facebook. The page is littered with emoticons and grammar mishaps, as new posts pop up every few seconds; each commenting on what I learn has been a young girl’s suicide. The over-stimulating effect is unsettling while the posts suggest that a few of these very emphatic users knew the girl personally. This makes the comments seem like empty words rather than genuine grief or grateful relief to the girl’s parents — whom I doubt are on their deceased daughter’s Facebook page hours after her death. It seems the bustling online community is walking a fine line between sympathy and self-gratification, creating a spectacle of suicide in an attempt to appear compassionate online.
This isn’t to say the motive behind creating a platform for mourning and memories to be shared is a negative thing. But what online obituary pages have taught me is that the sobering effects of the event are rarely felt with a Facebook post. After offering condolences, many feel exempt from repeating the senitiment with those affected in real life because the commenters have made their appearance online. In a way, there is a desensitization transpiring between the computer screen and the real world. It seems the majority of posts on these pages is somewhat absent — they may give the poster a sense of participation, but in reality their presence doesn’t extend beyond the screen.
The Internet is not merely creating a community for the online world — it is inventing a no-man’s land between congregation and isolation. Acting from behind the pixilated masks created from our relationship statuses and profile pictures, we keep our distance while upping our friend count. Ironically, these friends are hardly accounted for — approximately 57 percent of us talk to people more online than we do in real life. With over half our interactions now scripted in Facebook’s custom font, the connections the site was created for are now struggling to escape the cyber-sphere.
Regarding sensitive topics like suicide, I can’t help but feel that bringing such life-altering events down to the blasé level of Facebook is an exploitation of death in an attempt to humanize the online world. It is embarrassing how the posts deal with this grave subject — one reads, “I think she would be so happy to know that she has over three thousand likes on her profile picture and over 200 people telling her how pretty she is.” Is this what Facebook has conditioned us to believe is important? To cheaply suggest that she would have been happy enough in life if more people typed how they thought she was pretty in a certain picture?
This is an indication of the shallow lives online communities lead us towards. Even when well-intentioned, the overly casual, all-inclusive, immature site diminishes natural emotional repercussions in exchange for a demeaning charade of falsified sympathies that never leave the Web page.
A version of this article appeared in the Thursday, Sept. 13 print edition. Sasha Leshner is a contributing columnist. Email her at [email protected].
