Hey guys! The ‘thoughts’ section on our site has been pretty empty, and since it’s the new year already, we’d like to change that and post more about our opinions and thoughts. So here is our first thought of the year.
We live in a day and age where we use social media to fulfill our desires. Our desire to feel important, to appear more interesting. People would do anything and everything just to rack up a few hundred likes or retweets for the sake of gaining attention, popularity or sympathy. Whether it’s posting NSFW photos on Instagram or tweeting every step of your life from the moment you wake up until you got to sleep. People would do anything for social fame, even if it is a sensitive subject such as death.
A lot of people see death as an opportunity. An opportunity to elevate how highly people think of them. For example, many would rush to their Twitter to break the news of a celebrity death for the sake of being the one to break the information. It makes them feel important and in the know. Regardless of how close they are to the deceased, some people in society nowadays never miss the chance to publicly mourn the loss of someone.
Let’s be honest, public mourning is one of the most shallow, narcissistic and attention-seeking ways of grieving someone’s death. Even in death, social media is just that: It’s social.
It’s obvious that technology has changed the way we mourn deaths; and some would say that it has evolved for the better. But grief itself is already sensitive in nature and some people just have different agendas behind their public grief: some of it is to draw attention to themselves.
Social media has given us the opportunity to make someone’s death about ourselves. There is now a very thin line between showing your support and claiming digital attention from someone’s death. Sharing your love and condolences online is starting to become less about the expression of grief and showing support to the mourning families and more about proving that we are in the know and we are affected by it as well.
This hunger that we have to be alike or in trend takes the attention away from what’s important. It makes an occasion that is supposed to be saddening and about putting someone to rest, shallow. But maybe this is how people nowadays mourn; by filling their feeds with excessive acts of empathy. And you can’t blame them for it. We were all born with the urge to be socially accepted. To be liked, to be loved. But that shouldn’t be an excuse.
We were never taught the “proper” way to mourn. It doesn’t exist; but you don’t need to put it all over your Facebook or Instagram with unnecessary #hashtags. Especially if it’s as insensitive as a photo of a burial. Posting pictures of that nature goes beyond the lines of TMI , respect and general decency towards the deceased and their families. Doing it for the sake of attention defies your #RestInPeace.
Maybe it’s better to just be quiet about death. To keep to yourself. To share it in private. Doesn’t that feel more intimate? Rather than connecting with those online, you get to connect with the one you lost. You mourn in peace and they will rest in peace.
Note to self: You don’t have to be logged on, to move on.
