A short piece outlining some key points concerning death and social media sites. The writing itself functions to clarify and hone my practice around the subject. It is presented as a text cycle on a webpage, an inherently unwelcoming form for an essay that demands concentration and patience from the reader (qualities not usually engendered by contemporary technologies). The background of the site comprises grid a design representing the number of Facebook users who have passed away since the site’s inception – a visual proposition that is flawed and thus provokes questions as to the suitability of the internet as a site of remembrance.
The site is under construction.
https://deathandfacebook.cargo.site
Working Draft.
A few thoughts on Facebook + death. Each icon on this page represents 1000 Facebook users who have died since the site’s inception. At the time of writing, a number estimated to be more than 30,000,000. An inelegant representation for sure. But given the bandwidth restrictions in making this site, it shall have to do. At the very least, you’ll have something to doing with your hands whilst reading this text.
We tend to think of digital spaces as permanent. Once you put it on the internet, it’s there forever! In reality, such spaces are far from eternal. Indeed, they are contingent on a vast range of variables including (decaying) hyperlinks, (outdated) markup languages, (unmaintained) servers, and many more. This reliance on such an expansive infrastructure begets the involvement of corporate supranational organizations in our everyday lives. One does not order a takeaway, message a lover, or pay for the bus without invoking the invisible network that underlines our existence. Now its seems, that even death will not spare you from participation in the hyper-globalised free market. That is not to say that your loved ones may not simply delete your profile. Though they cannot always do so. For the purposes of our (oneway) conversation however, let us imagine your Facebook / twitter / instagram (insert site here) page is maintained. In addition to aforementioned corporate collusion, interesting aesthetic questions arise.
Whilst the materiality of a gravestone may succumb to physical decay, it will retain a shadow of its form until time claims it. The (most likely serif) typeface on one’s headstone does not change. The form of one’s memorial page, in contrast, is subject to the whims of web designers. You may indeed find yourself memorialized under the banner of a corporate style guide. All of this begs the question – are digital spaces really suitable for memorializing the dead? Given the direction or world has been / is / shall be heading in, such is a impotent line of enquiry. Besides, in many ways digital spaces provide fertile grounds for personal and vernacular modes of mourning. Once upon a time, the traditions surrounding death were the exclusive domain of (religious) institutions. Muttered words and sweeping solitudes proclaimed from a pulpit. Now-a-days the internet allows for a secular and personal space in which communities can remember loved ones together in their own ways. This being said, the technological restrictions through which we access the Web 2.0 also present many drawbacks.
To begin with, the same screen unto the (cyber)world which we use to engage with a (web)site of mourning is also the same screen we use to engage with other sites. When the write-up of a family member’s tragic passing exists on an interface, a mere click away from a delightful cat video in the next tab, a certain sacrosanct quality is lost. Moreover, as each person’s Facebook / Twitter / Instagram (insert site here) is viewed in isolation from all other pages on any given site, the communal aspect of traditional places of mourning is somewhat compromised. The immersive web 3.0, as characterised by the ever-approaching metaverse could offer solutions to this. Ever-expanding digital cemetery sites could situate digital memorials to whole communities side by side. But space is infinite in the context of 3D digital worlds, and as a result the objects contained within such space become inherently cheapened by their replicability and scalability. Take this very webpage as an example. The multitudes of people represented therein form but a backdrop to this text and by virtue of sheer number lose all meaning. Digital spaces are not physical, and without a certain level of physicality these spaces remain at a distance from ourselves. Mediated, enclosed within, and contained by a screen.
Arnold, M, Gibbs, M, Kohn, T, Meese, J, & Nansen, B 2017, Death and Digital Media, Taylor & Francis Group, London. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [17 May 2022].
Greenfield, A. (2017) Radical Technologies. London: Verso.