THE
(EMOTIONALLY)
DARK WEB
“If I die unexpectedly and someone I didn’t like or know posts a photo of me with some sappy-ass caption, REPORT IT. But also encourage people to post as much as they want if they loved me.”
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Camille Bryan wrapped up her email with a cheeky, yet apt phrase. I caught myself smiling as I read this final sentence at the end of a long email of responses. Her candor is relatable—don’t allow anyone who doesn’t genuinely love me to pretend to on social media.
Cam had a friend named Bianca. They met in her 10:20 - 11:20 am, Monday-Wednesday-Friday International Relations class. Bianca had a radiant smile and warming presence—she was beautiful. They often adventured around Los Angeles and one day wound up at the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve.
The poppy fields in Lancaster, California are 1,700 acres of dazzling sunset orange flower buds. Imagine this, the poppies grow peacefully in place once a year, quietly awaiting their time to blossom, then some percent of Instagram’s 1 billion users unintentionally abuse their beauty. In 2019, what started as a safe haven for the blooms quickly turned into a thick trail of thousands of tourists crouching within and trampling over the poppies to get a “unique” photo amongst the burning orange petals.
The influence of social media was quite literally ruining something beautiful.
Less than a year after Cam and Bianca strolled the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve, Bianca took her own life as a sophomore in college.
“I was the third to find out she had killed herself and I must have been one of the first of her friends to post. I remember wanting to justify it to [my friend] saying I just wanted people to know she was dead so they wouldn’t ask me, which was true. I didn't think about being the friend of the girl who killed herself,” Cam said, “I just wanted people to know she died.”
Cam’s sentiment is common—wanting to tell the world 'Hey, this happened to someone I care about and I am not ok right now.'
“​It's tough to tell everyone when this kind of thing happens, so social media is nice in that it's easy to put it out there, a lot of people see it and it's kind of low trauma on the person [grieving].”
​I sat on the chaise by the window of my older sister’s bedroom as Brendan’s voice reverberated from my phone. I met him earlier this year. We led a retreat together where I learned much about his journey with loss—I was well-aware of his strength. He told me that when his older brother passed away about a year and a half ago, his first three calls were to his then ex-girlfriend and to two of his good friends.
“It was a tough three phone calls to make, I could not have made a fourth phone call about that. So posting on social media was almost easier to let everyone that I didn't really want to call, know.”
Cam and Brendan have never met, nor will they ever meet, but they both posted about their loss on social media for the same reason—to let their followers, composed of family and friends, know that this major life event happened without having to tell each person individually. Meanwhile, Lancaster residents watched as their home transformed into a landmark tourist destination overnight, risking the longevity of many poppies.
The same capacity for reach that ignited a stampede into an overlooked corner of Southern California provided an individual sense of relief for both Cam and Brendan.
Does social media destroy beautiful things, as it did with the reserve? Does it provoke ignorance in pursuit of attention? Or does it provide opportunities for connection?
Why do we post what we post? Why do we post about death?
I have to be honest, I hate social media. I think that it can bring out the worst in people, that it’s an addiction, that it can distract from the value of face-to-face interaction and that it can dehumanize. I was angry with social media for a long time until two things changed—for one, I started listening to others' experiences with it, and then, Coronavirus.
It’s normal to have a love/hate relationship with platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter because there is a fine line, one that Cam alludes to in her email to me.
I believed that these platforms were built on a desire for attention, but then I started to listen and something bigger revealed itself to me—the shapings of a prosocial community.
Virtual expressions of grief began with Princess Diana’s death.
In Steven Levy’s 1997 Newsweek article “World Wide Wake” he writes, “Literally within minutes of the tragic news, a spontaneous outpouring of emotion spilled through digital pathways, along with a flood of rage directed toward the paparazzi in particular and tabloids in general. Almost none of the mourners had ever met the princess. Yet the grief was palpable. The World Wide Web had become a weepy wake.”
The Princess’s death marked a turning point. The internet transformed strangers into direct companions with a public figure and, in the words of Levy, allowed people to “role-shift from spectator to, in some small way, participant.” Websites and chat rooms turned into places of solidarity and support groups. Each person who admired Princess Diana from afar was given an opportunity to bereave with others who felt similarly, yet that they had never met.
Of course, it’s challenging to pinpoint any one given cultural shift in our society, but this death rattled our world and brought people from all over together, bound by the length of ethernet cables.
It feels as though each decade brings a devastating loss.
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In 1997 we lost Princess Diana.
In 2009 we lost Michael Jackson.
In 2020 we lost Kobe Bryant.
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If the world wide web expanded with the loss of Princess Diana, it nearly erupted when the death of the Laker’s star basketball player, Kobe Bryant, was shared. In contrast to the loss of the beloved Royal, this basketball king’s death was entirely documented online.
It’s old news now that TMZ overstepped their boundary. Tripping in their rush to share the most exciting, news-breaking story they failed to realize that the Bryant family, among the others involved in the helicopter crash, had not yet been notified of the fatal incident.
Immediately thousands of responses were triggered online and soon after murals popped up along Los Angeles walls. 25,000 candles, 1,300 basketballs, 5,000 notes of love, 500 stuffed animals, and innumerable bouquets of flowers were placed at the foot of the Staples Center. There was an outpouring of love and loss unlike any other. Bryant’s death marks a new cultural curve as people rely on Instagram tributes, dedicated websites, and his live, broadcasted memorial service in order to survive this loss. People who felt a connection to Bryant were able to publicly participate in the mourning of his loss rather than sit on the sidelines, as they would have done in a non-digital world.
“Why do we have a funeral or a celebration of life or a memorial? Truly the answer is for us, right?” says Jill Cooper, the Intake Coordinator for Our House Grief Support Center in Los Angeles, with a soothing voice that washes over you like a wave of peace. “All of those rituals of mourning are for the people who are still living. To feel connected, to feel seen.”
Ultimately, we share grief for ourselves. We want to feel closure, we want this person to be remembered forever, and we want to avoid feeling alone in our emotions.
“As a parent, when you lose a child- there’s a huge anxiety that [they] will be forgotten like they never existed.” My focus was immediately drawn to this message from my cousin, Sofia Mathiesen, who had lost her best friend 9 years ago. Being a mother herself, Sofia could now understand the anguish of her friend’s parents in a different way than before. Her note was one of the multiple Instagram Direct Messages I received from my audience of about 1,500 followers. “Facebook is a very real reminder that she existed and touched so many lives. It’s been 9 years, and social media is still such a comfort to see memories pop up of her.”
​When I posted on Instagram, asking for my followers to share any stories they had relating to death and social media I did not expect the response that I got. I assumed that one to five people would message me, but later that day I opened the app to 17 + messages.
Where else would I turn but to social media to find stories of people who had both negative and positive experiences with it, in relation to death? I felt like there was no better place to start with my research than in the lap of the devil itself.
It revealed to me the deep yearning we have to connect with others and to make a presence for ourselves. Similarly, we want the presence of our loved ones to endure.
A prosocial community is one where no one gets left behind, especially in the face of death.
We, as humans, have a powerful inclination to lean into one another, especially with death because that is how we have learned to cope with something so entirely out of our control. This natural response of sharing grief has simply adapted to our digital culture. Social media is the one space where we are allowed to make every post, caption, or tweet about ourselves—what we are feeling, what we are doing, who we are with. In some cases, it feels much more natural to post about something so intimate on a platform inherently all about us, rather than calling someone up.
But as with anything, this new kind of community is not without its flaws and imperfections.
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This past year Claire Nakaki’s father died unexpectedly.
How? That’s for her to share when she’s ready to let uninvited strangers gaze into the most vulnerable part of her life—it is not for me to write about here. I would be a hypocrite to take any part of someone’s narrative away in a digital space.
“I think eventually, I'm sure I will end up saying something or doing something to let people know how he died,” Claire says to me, “But for now it's more like any time I try to slightly bring it up, it’s never fun. It's not that people don't care, it's not that they're not supportive. They don't want to say the wrong thing.”
Sometimes people are so scared to say the wrong thing, they say nothing at all.
In my earlier conversation with Jill, she mentioned some negatives when posting about death. It can make people feel isolated in their sadness if they don’t receive the kind of response they were hoping for, and it can make them second-guess their actions. “But if you do get a lot of support, you might also then wonder if those same people don't then reach out to you in person to have a more intimate connection.”
In Claire’s case, uncontrolled postings about her father’s death reached more people than anticipated. “A lot of people came to my dad's funeral that didn't really know him, [they] were families we knew when I was a kid, they were the parents of the kids I grew up with, but they didn't really talk to my dad at all, so it was just weird. I know that they came because they saw a post about it.” There was an adverse effect in regard to the postings that were not her own, leading to questions along the lines of ‘Why did you come to my father’s funeral if you were not fully part of his life?’
​Claire later decided to post on Instagram about her father’s death. She turned off the comments and was surprised by the small number of people who reached out to her, but this was not her first encounter with death, and sometimes having experience in this arena sets different expectations.
“I don't need the whole world to give me a hug. I need five people to sit down with me for three hours and just let me cry.”
We are brought back to that fine line that Cam talks about. Is posting on social media enough to foster the right kind of community you might need?
Ultimately, no. Support does not come in a one-size-fits-all.
“I always believe that truth is so much more than just the facts,” says Brendan. “The fact is my brother died,” Brendan mentions to me, “No one's going to get the truth from a few pictures and a paragraph on Instagram. No one's going to get the truth of what I feel, they're just going to get the fact and that means very little to me.”
Social media is an outline for a prosocial community. It’s the packet of seeds from which something could either blossom or be swept away in the wind and Brendan emphasizes this experience. You are not going to hear the cracking in someone’s voice as they talk about their loved one via a Facebook post. You are not going to see the tears stream down their face or be able to hold them and tell them that you love them. You can comment hearts and messages saying “sending you my love”, but the truth reveals itself in face-to-face interaction. Posting creates a foundation where friends and family can show support at the most minimal level, and then choose to take it a step further and connect with the person who posted in a deeper way.
In the late 1980’s JP Reynolds lived on the remote island nation Chuuk in the Federated States of Micronesia just east of Guam for three years. With one radio station and occasional mail service, JP became fully immersed in a new community that did not rely upon the internet or television. Upon returning to the United States, every person who invited JP over for dinner to share his experiences with them had the tv on in the background.
Fast forward a few years and he was teaching a Public Speaking course at Loyola Marymount University. His students were riddled with anxiety at the thought of sharing stories in front of the class. JP discovered the source for their anxiety—anonymity. These students didn’t know each other and had no idea how they would be perceived. They were strangers to one another. He assigned the class what was called a “Dinner Whack” where students paired up with a few classmates they didn’t previously know, and they coordinated a meal together without technology. Instantly anxieties dissolved as the classroom transformed into a group of friends, and thus the anonymity was gone. They knew exactly who they were talking to.
These students evolved from strangers into a safe community based on the simple practice of storytelling without distraction. This assignment demonstrated that while social media and the internet alike can act as avenues to foster a prosocial community, they can never replace the benefits of authentic human connection.
There’s something gorgeous about vulnerability, it brings people closer together under the pretense that we have more in common than we know because we share similar emotions. Social media can numb and normalize topics like death and violence, but it can also create space for connection when someone bares their soul.
Posting about death online can be an important juxtaposition or even contradiction for the photoshopped and perfectly posed-yet-not-posed highlight reel we all succumb to. These posts humanize our online presence, which can be scary. As one of my followers shared with me in response to my Instagram request, “Of course anything you post on social media is a risk because you risk being vulnerable.”
Alison Taplin understands this daunting act of sharing one’s most personal moments on a very public platform better than anyone else. I called her on the afternoon of March 31st. In her sweet voice, she gently warned me that she may still get emotional talking about her older cousin, Clare, who was tragically killed in 2015 by her ex-boyfriend.
“I share stuff about Clare still to show that gun violence is a real issue and it can happen to literally anyone,” she says to me. “If you had told me a year before this happened that this was going to play out like this, I would have never believed you. But that's why it's important for everyone to talk about it, no matter what, because it can happen to anybody.”
Alison posts to advocate for the fight against gun violence, she displays her vulnerability to bring awareness to a very real issue that affects tens of thousands of people each year. She is pushing beyond creating a connection with others and is working to build a resistance against easy access to firearms.
Every year on Clare’s birthday, Alison and her Aunt run 10 miles in Clare’s honor. She comes home and risks her vulnerability with the push of a button by posting about one of the most devastating moments in her life.
She has contributed to her cousin’s everlasting space online.
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Winnie Foster had the choice of a lifetime. Right in the palm of hands, she had the chance to live forever.
I could feel certainty coursing through my veins as I finished reading the beloved novel by Natalie Babbitt, “Tuck Everlasting”. I was positive that the stream of immortal water that changed the Tuck family’s lives forever was out there somewhere, and that one day I, too, would find it—and I wouldn’t make Winnie’s mistake and not drink the water. No. At 10 years old I had no doubt that of anyone, I was destined to live forever.
This was the first time I ever grappled with the idea of immortality. Then a year later, in my sixth-grade history class, we were learning about monarchs. “He wanted to live forever,” my teacher announced from the front of the classroom, “did he succeed if we are still talking about him today?” I was given yet a second chance to wrestle with immortality. Of course, the Tucks do not exist and there is no such spring, but maybe I could achieve immortality by forever remaining on the lips of humanity.
My young intrigue with immortality developed into two different things—a desire to make an impact and a fear of death. With maturity came the following side effects: I learned about our broken world and the ways we can attempt to fix it, and I developed a complicated relationship with control.
I work on letting go and trusting God. I work on not letting myself feel overwhelmed. I work on being patient. I work on confronting my fear of death, the ultimate loss of control.
I’ve experienced two major deaths in my adult lifetime, and I think that’s enough. I would be relieved if that was the end of my journey with death, but I know that there is no such spring.
I now sit in my third opportunity to grapple with immortality—social media.
When I chose this topic, the last thing I expected was to experience another death in my life.
Yet, on March 7th my aunt passed away, creating a constant loop of thoughts running through my mind as I struggled with the stages of grief and social media was not exempt. It was one of the only things I could think about.
What a sick joke God played on me. To be so fascinated with this topic and then throw me directly into the place of my interviewees.
I decided to post on my Instagram story about my aunt’s death.
I, personally, wanted the people of the far-reaching corners of my life to know that I was in a period of sadness and mourning, and to not expect much from me. I particularly remember hoping that my ex-boyfriend would see it. He is the only person outside of my family who met my aunt and I wanted to talk to him about the pain, but I knew I couldn’t reach out to him first.
He didn’t see it. He didn’t text me.
To quantify everything that Jill mentioned earlier, that’s the downside to posting something so personal on a public platform—you might not get the responses you hoped for that would lead to a more intimate conversation.
I couldn’t be with family at the time my aunt passed, but I was resolute in my decision to drive up to Sacramento on March 19th for her memorial service, until March 16th arrived.
On that day, my cousin posted a picture of the memorial service announcement writing in the caption, “Due to the current situation right now and limitations being placed on gatherings, my mom’s memorial service is CANCELLED. It will be postponed when the timing is better with the current situation (Coronavirus).”
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“I found out about Tyler’s* passing on social media. I first saw an Instagram story on my friend’s page and couldn’t believe it.”
I listened as my best friend, Abby Braccia, recounted her discovery of loss via Instagram. Abby is not the first person I’ve talked to who found out about a close death by way of the picture-sharing platform, but she was the first person I’d talked to who attended a virtual memorial service.
“It was interesting watching it online because you [can] pause it. It was a different experience than actually being there because a lot of it, like these stories, I remembered some of them [and], you feel that, and then you want to sit with it.”
Abby viewed the Facebook live video of Tyler's memorial from her bedroom. She watched the service from behind a sea of purple—the requested color of clothing as it was Tyler's favorite.
It was as if she were sitting in the very back of the church, listening to the funny stories and live performances from old friends and Tyler's family. The only difference was the stream of “reactions” popping up on her screen that live viewers had selected when watching earlier.
“People (were) putting laughing (emoji reactions) to stories and hearts and prayer emojis. It was an interesting way to be watching it.”
Then Abby shared that Tyler's mother went into surgery around his birthday which was soon after his death, and her Facebook timeline started filling with sympathetic posts. She didn’t want anyone coming to visit her in the hospital, for fear of them catching Coronavirus. So friends and family again turned to the use of Facebook to help her feel less alone on a challenging day.
On April 14th, I posted for a second time on my Instagram asking for stories about grief and social media experiences specifically related to a death caused by Coronavirus. This time I only got one response.
“I think the hardest part is the grieving process.”
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I called Allison Lane late one evening to hear about her recent experience with loss. She shared that one of her hometown neighbors, Nina, had recently died from Coronavirus. Her mother learned about the news from Nina’s son, whom they have a close friendship with.
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“They can't get her body for three weeks. It’s on ice and then they'll put her in the ground,” Allison said. “With the nature of how you grieve, usually people come together. They would have had a funeral and people over and whatnot, but all those normal aspects of grief are just removed. So I think that's probably the hardest, and that's what I empathize the most for them. It's like all the normal things that you would expect after a loss are gone.”
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There is very little that is normal about living through a pandemic because as much as we want the world to stop so that we can heal, it won’t. Babies will still be born, couples will still get married, loved ones will still die. We can’t control the natural processes of life, but we can attempt to control our online social environment.
Social media shifted from being a framework for the community to a house we built together.
It has its imperfections—we will never get the full extent of someone’s story without being able to hear their voice or hug them, some people will have selfish intentions when posting, and we won’t be able to predict how others will respond.
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Having life as we know it forced from our hands is unsettling, to say the least, but nothing will ever be able to shake our human desire to connect with others.
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Social media alludes to this longing of a prosocial community where we all support each other, and it has the ability to foster this space. We are seeing this now more than ever as our social interactions become almost entirely virtual.
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“It allows people to have the opportunity to share their feelings,” Claire mentioned to me in our earlier conversation, “It's almost like talking to a room full of people and seeing who raises their hand, but it's your whole following.”
The internet can feel like a dark void, but sharing authentically in a public space gives others permission to do so as well, and you never know who could be watching from the audience, waiting to raise their hands to support you.
*Name has been changed for confidentiality purposes
