Facebook and the Undead

AVNER PARIAT ON #FACEBOOK NECROPHILIA

There are a multitude of reasons to discard Facebook and get back to mundane existence. I suppose this opening sentence does not sound very enthusiastic. Well everyday life is mundane, it really is. Facebook is addictive because of that sad fact of life. Between the shopping, the raising of children and our imminent deaths there are very few moments of singular sparkling tear-inducing Beauty. Yes, we probably need distractions like Facebook to save us from our subconscious thoughts of depression and self-imploding doom.  That and for sharing pictures of food and cute animals. But I digress.

I find this Facebook ‘disturbing’ and that is because when someone passes away, their online profile still remains! This terrifies me because that person has, in effect, become a ghost. We, the living that remember and these dead are stuck in a digital Purgatory. We cannot ignore these ghosts either as they are still our “friends”. We carry memories of the dead with us always, no doubt, but this is different. Facebook profiles are run by living breathing human beings. They become ‘living things’ in turn, imprinted by the lives behind them. Unlike books, documentaries, footage and other forms of ‘record keeping’, Facebook profiles have no completion. They end only when the person, behind them, ends.

Our relationship with films, books such and such are premised on the fact that we maintain a “disinterested” attitude towards them, the creators of such works are no longer able to control what happens to them once they are finished. But profiles are not like this. They are online personas of people. They represent our connection with those people with all their quirks and customizations. When they die, that connection is severed. It is different from the nostalgia of seeing an old photograph on a mantelpiece or opening a cupboard and getting a whiff of a once-familiar smell. Unlike clothes or perfumes, online profiles were those people and not just a simple extension of themselves. Those uploaded photographs mean nothing without the comments that were exchanged between creator and viewer(s).

[perfectpullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]To create these online “memorials” – which Facebook ‘wickedly’ supports – is probably not healthy. Not least of all because Facebook might probably charge a nice fee later for keeping these profiles ‘alive’, and/or beautifying them: some sort of digital funeral-home/graveyard. [/perfectpullquote]

I think that such sentimentalism is traumatic. On that note, are all our memories of people filled with happiness and joy? There might be some which deserve to be forgotten. I am not an especially fervent advocate of this because I do believe History repeats itself, more often than nought, so we ought to remember it. But I suspect a survivor of abuse, or rape might not want to be reminded of the person(s) who caused them pain and trauma.

The dead serve us best when they come fleetingly and privately – maybe to inspire, maybe to remind us to live – that is what distinguishes visitation from haunting. To construct a temple of mourning for them is grossly “Havishamian” to say the least. Facebook profiles of the dead are empty-eyed shells and like the remains of their owners should be consigned to Eternity. But what can we say about our global culture today? Indulgence, even of Death, is a juicy norm.

 

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Avner Pariat Written by:

Avner Pariat is a poet and chronicler of Khasi Jaintia Hills.

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