Grief shaming and grief porn

I've got some thoughts about public grieving via social media and the way the media inundates us with 'grief porn' after a disaster, almost relishing our fear and sorrow. 

Today I heard Jonah Lomu had died, and I re-posted a video of him I'd seen on Facebook, adding RIP at the end, and I knew immediately doing so would leave me open to someone saying 'What about all the people who died in Paris? Don't they matter too?' even though I've shared plenty of posts about Paris (and Beirut/Syria/Iraq) on Facebook. When you express grief publicly, there's always the possibility that someone who deals with things differently will have something to say about it.

I think it's really difficult all round, the business of emoting on social media. We are people who (as a collective) may not engage with our neighbours and our communities, but care a LOT for people we've made connections with online. We might only see them on our computer screens but they're in our living rooms every day, and real life interactions can seem less supportive. I think some of the time we share the grief porn to show that there's actually something left alive inside us that still cares about 'real life people'.

When Sandra Bland was killed by the US police (I don't believe she died at her own hands) I fell into a cycle of sharing a huge amount of stuff about it because I was really angry, but at the same time it might've looked like I cared more, or maybe I even thought I cared more than others. Stupid. Someone wisely pointed out that sharing doesn't equal caring, and not sharing doesn't mean not caring. I've noticed a change in how people interact with each other on social media and on blogs over the last couple of years, and our interactions are less driven by connections with each other and more about the self. I think we DO care a lot more than we show, but we mainly share how human we are by constantly reposting soppy cat and dog videos, and I'm as guilty of that as anyone, if not more so. We emote through silly or sad animal videos because it's easier than thinking about things in the world going to hell in a hand cart.

A few years ago when that pond scum Anders Breivik went on a killing spree in Norway on the same weekend Amy Winehouse died I saw a lot of what I would call 'grief shaming' on Facebook. The sentiment seemed to be how could anyone care 'more' about Amy when dozens of young people had just died, but I think you can care about a famous person dying AND care about dozens/hundreds of people dying, but they're very different beasts. In some ways it's easier to focus on the death of one person than it is to think about the deaths of a huge amount of people at once, as when you open the floodgates to that magnitude of sadness it's easy to feel overwhelmed and to shut down emotionally.

And I think people with power - the media and Governments - LOVE to overwhelm us with grief porn because they want us to be overwhelmed and malleable. They want us to feel so scared that we'll agree to any plan - no matter how heinous - to 'protect' us. We are easily herded when we're afraid. They thrive off our fear. How else can you get a population who (more of less) cares about others to nod solemnly and say 'Yes Mr Cameron, please do take us to war. Sod the NHS, education and local services. I'm so glad you have billions of pounds to spend on war in these times of extreme austerity.'

I said RIP about Jonah Lomu on Facebook as he is a face and a name I know. I've seen some names and faces of people who died in Paris on Friday, and if I were to have a potted history of all of them and read an obituary for each and every one I'd be mired in grief for weeks. You can grieve for the loss of people collectively or individually, and there's no right or wrong way to do that. You can grieve for the dead in Paris, in Beirut, in Syria, in Iraq, in all the places of the world where hate runs unchecked, and it can be overwhelming to think about.

Having a face to focus on some of that, some displaced grief pushed onto Jonah Lomu (or whoever else may have recently died) can be a manageable way to deal with a bigger grief. Because of the internet, when the world hurts we are ALL starting to hurt. We are more connected than we know, and finding a way to deal with that in scary times - however we cope with that - should be OK. It's OK to mourn the famous dead amongst senseless loss. How we care shouldn't be the problem. The fact that we care at all is a good thing. Screw grief shaming.

Leah xoxo