Death and MySpace

Posted by Rob Walker on April 19, 2007
Posted Under: Obituaries,War

This article in the Houston Chronicle looks at a particular aspect of the online reaction to the Virginia Tech killings:

On Facebook.com, many of the Tech students are using a black ribbon over the school logo as their icon. A quick search on Technorati yields thousands of blog posts on the subject. Beth 0319 writes: “I didn’t know anyone there but I just feel this tremendous sadness that has no where to go. It’s just all so senseless.”

Is the grieving process different for Generation Y, a group that has come of age at a time of world turmoil and a time when social networking has reached critical mass?

Monday’s tragedy, [the author of a book about teenagers and technology] said, is the first massive incident to occur after the revolution in social-networking technology. Now the dead’s MySpace pages become tribute pages, where friends and family continue to have a conversation as if they were still alive.

I’ve mentioned earlier, probably more than once, that we’ve gotten much more aware of Army culture since moving to Savannah, because there’s a base nearby that houses the 3rd Infantry Division, now in the process of embarking on what is for many soldiers a third deployment to Iraq. When someone from the 3rd ID is killed — there have been five such deaths so far in 2007 — it’s covered in the local paper, and we’ve noticed that such stories often mention the tributes that have appeared on the soldier’s MySpace page.

I suppose that a year ago it wouldn’t have occurred to me that soldiers would have MySpace pages, but many of them do.

And this practice that the Chronicle describes above is routine — people post messages to soldiers who have died (in what, if I may say so in passing, would seem to count as a “massive incident”), as if they’ll be checking MySpace in the afterlife.

This seems odd, at first, but I don’t think the urge to do this is so different from leaving flowers on a grave, or from “speaking to” the deceased in remarks at a funeral.

The Chronicle story also mentions a site called MyDeathSpace.com, which I’d never heard of. Among other things, the site publishes news of MySpace users who have died, and provides a link to each person’s MySpace page, so you can click straight through to read the tributes, or leave one yourself.

I am somewhat curious about whether MySpace itself has any kind of policy about what happens to a given page when a MySpace user dies.

Further diversion may be found at MKTG Tumblr, and the Consumed Facebook page.

Reader Comments

that’s been happening for years. the community site for bmezine.com has had several members die over the years and their pages are still up. people still leave comments.

I’m not sure what the official policy is for BME’s community site, but sometimes the pages of those who are gone are updated by friends or family to give info about memorial services, and sometimes nothing is noted on the actual page itself. I’m assuming it’s up to friends and family members to contact the owner of the site to gain access.

the first time a death was noted on the site many members changed their avatars to pay their respects. the girlfriend of the boy who died asked that we not – it was painful for her to see them.

(the first time anyone changed their avatars en masse on the site was to wish a community icon good luck with an impending surgery. it was very nice to see people do that for him, and he was touched by the gesture.)

#1 
Written By spunky on April 19th, 2007 @ 3:53 pm

Interesting. Thanks for that…

#2 
Written By murketing on April 20th, 2007 @ 4:40 pm