The Persistence of Memory Online: Digital Memorials, Fantasy, and Grief as Entertainment

Abstract

This chapter will discuss the ways in which various new technologies have been incorporated into the pedestrian mourning practices of survivors over time, focusing on how today's technologically-evolved memorials-digital content posted, shared and viewed through social media and online memorial sites-occupy a new, uneasy place in media culture that sees every topic, no matter how solemn, as a possible form of entertainment. Aspects of fantasy and fictionalization come into play, similar to what is seen in Victorian postmortem photos that portrayed the subject as resting peacefully, creating a permanent visual record that appeared to deny the reality of the death. Historically the bereaved have yearned to maintain an ongoing relationship with the dead and the ability to interact with or contact them, illusions that become more believable than ever before when experienced through digital content. Mourning the dead online has moved a private and intimate ritual once limited to intimates of the deceased into a public realm with a wide and unspecified audience, who may have a far wider range of motivations to seek out the memorials in the first place. Facebook RIP pages and other online memorial sites appear to represent a safe common ground where people from different parts of the deceased's life can gather to mourn together. Yet these sites can become populated with comments from those who had no real-life contact with the deceased, and with upsetting, inappropriate content posted by trolls deliberately seeking to cause mischief and emotional harm.