To Pic or not to Pic - About Me or Memorials

    So as of writing this, everyone has been dealing with the coronavirus in many different ways; these ways can either be productive like exercising or not so productive like stuffing your face full of junk food. One commonality it seems that we share though is the use of social media. Though everyone might use it a different type of way (just scrolling, posting, keeping up with friends, etc), it is clear that many are turning to these platforms as restrictions and social distancing continue to be set in place.

 Who are we Posting for?

   As we think about social media, we must realize that we post so much content that we forget who might be looking at it and what we are posting. There is a question of whether we are conceded in our social media ventures as it is all centered around well... you! Think about it for a second, even if you do not post about yourself directly or post pictures with you in it, you are still posting about your adventures, what you like, what you find funny, what you agree or disagree with, etc. All of this culminates into who you are, or at least, whatever you select to post on social media. With that said, it should be a no-brainer as to how selfish social media is right? After all, if it just about your interests and desires it is to be it would seem. However, the social media rabbit hole goes a bit deeper than that when we realize that social media expands the idea that we use to memorialize beloved memories and the ones that we love so that we can cherish them even past death.

I had to have a bad dad pun in here somewhere - Meme from starecat.com

 The "Good Times"

    Sorry if I brought the atmosphere down a notch from my usual snide and facetious humor. We must examine the usage of social media and how it can be used to potentially debunk the myth that social media is fully about you and your selfish desire though. First off, we must realize that we are documenting essentially history and capturing people at a certain moment to create a snapshot of their lives during that time period. I am sure you can go through your camera and social media posts and find some friends who you used to know fairly well back in school or work, but now you are not nearly as close to them anymore so you use these photos to reminisce and think about the "good times" as we often think (though, this is often clouded by nostalgia, but still a good feeling nonetheless). If we dive deeper though, we can see that we also passively document our memories with people to remember them even past death. Death is obviously a hard topic to discuss, so much so that even the thought of seeing someone dead or hearing of someone's passing makes people uncomfortable. As Lee Humphreys, tells us in her book, The Qualified Self, "by the mid-twentieth century, memorial photography was taboo" but she also describes a turnaround as it is now standard to "offer professional photography and footprinting in situations of perinatal death (a child who comes out stillborn)" (Humphreys, pg. 79). This is quite grim to even imagine, but it does seem that we as a collective society have begun to accept that sharing such a traumatic death is therapeutic and almost necessary to do at this point. At the very least, many people feel as though it is important to notify your audience and followers on social media that a death has occurred in the family.

Jacksepticeye posts about his father's unfortunate passing

Coping with the Death of Loved Ones

    Since my last post was mostly centered around Jacksepticeye, I felt as though this was appropriate to also mention since he made this public information. Everyone copes with their loved one's death differently and as we can see here, Jacksepticeye wanted to inform his followers of what happened but did not want to go into detail about his father's death. Some even take it a bit farther like Scott Simon did as he documented his mother's death in its entirety. As sad as this might be, this was Simon's way of coping with the death of someone very close to him, and many people empathized and related to this raw use of social media posts. In these circumstances, we can see that these posts and use of social media do not come off selfish in terms of the poster expecting some type of clout or for people to put them in the spotlight as they are putting their deceased ones in that spotlight for social media. In a twisted way, some people might make the argument that these posters simply want attention and pity from people, but this is improbable to think about since many of these posts use rhetoric to suggest the unity of another person via familial or friendship type bonds and they use their platforms to express grief for someone they love dearly. This is why you will commonly see people use their own similar stories to relate to people, not to try and one-up them, but because that's how people empathize with others as one of our biggest skills as humans is the use of storytelling. With that in mind, it is not impossible to imagine social media like Facebook as a sort of virtual cemetery. In fact, within about 50 years, dead profiles will soon outnumber ones that are active and alive! Since these numbers are increasing every day, it is imperative that we discuss this issue and address these memorials for our loved ones in a healthy manner.

    Whether we are comfortable with it or not, we know death is inevitable for this physical plane. People are often trying to find many different ways to cope with the loss of their loved ones, some healthy and some of course not so healthy. Social media seems to be a huge outlet for coping and posting about their losses. With the original question in mind, are we selfish on social media? Well, the answer is that it is mixed it seems. We like likes and favorites on pictures of us and want people to pay attention to what matters to us, but there are times like posting about the passing of someone you love where a new community blossoms past the selfish self. We see that with the rising number of dead profiles and with people being more comfortable about posting about death, we invite others into our lives for the purpose of remembering someone we held dearly onto so that they might also be remembered and loved by others because ultimately it is nice to know that others care about someone that you cared about so much.