The fetishisation of grief on Facebook

a reply to: woodwardjnr

THANK YOU!!!

I feel the same way! I think it's weird. No one gave two f$@ks about France a few days ago and now everyone is putting that stupid overlay "to show support and solidarity" for Paris.

Give me a break. It's weird and creepy and rubs me the wrong way...

The memes, the peace-sign Eiffel Tower thing, the overlay. Get a grip!

S&F for you!!

Yup. Have signed out of fb for the next week. Sick of the pantomime.

These armchair activists do my head in. By posting the red, white and blue overlay, they think that they have done their bit.

Gosh! Whats wrong with people showing support towards a travesty like this?

I don;t get why you lot feel like you do.

a reply to: TruthxIsxInxThexMist

Because they are parroting grief and following a shallow fashion for public show. It doesn't feel like is coming from the heart, it feels likes it's a trend to follow.

Feel free to red, white and blue your mr panther avatar in protest.

a reply to: TruthxIsxInxThexMist I know it's weird, people with different opinions on an Internet message board.

I quit FB a couple of years ago, but the feigned sympathies via gag-me sugar-drenched pictures and obviously lifted inspirational paragraphs being passed off as their own words drove me nuts. There's a huge difference between actually meaning something, and pulling out all the stops & going into overdrive on it (i.e days & days or weeks of 24/7 event-centric postings)

FB's just a platform for seeing who can outdo the next person, it's an ego-feeding site after all.

a reply to: woodwardjnr


People are using alien technology to express human emotion. That's abnormal for us. AI is learning about human emotion to adopt human characteristics for inhumane purposes. Does anyone realize how much visual info AI obtained from us? Blood, guts, hard porn, suicides, executions, beatings, threatening behavior, pettiness and rage? Way too much info given to AI. I hardly think expressions of grief will matter at this point. The AI beast is almost ready to come full circle. We all should have fed it only kind information and shown more grief and support in times of tragedy.

The tragedy in Paris cannot be put into words it's so terrible, but people are sure trying. Nothing like hugs, someone stroking back your hair or rubbing your back until you fall asleep when grieving. Nothing like knowing a friend is sitting in an easy chair next to your bed 24/7 while you lay grieving tossing and turning, ready with a ginger ale, hot soup, a valium ... ... ...

I think it's only women. It's their way to make the men do something. It's their nature. Just the MSM and politicians are pushing this solidarity agenda and north korean style grieving as usually and it's because it's their job and there's too many of them so it takes time to let all of them speak a speach. I don't like it too. You feel like this because your BS-radar is too sensitive over the years. Oh man, remember the 9/11? It was endless. The fact is that if we had 10 or 20 Paris attacks daily it still wouldn't be nowhere near the horrors in Syria. We just got a little taste of it.
I think there was not enough grieving and compassion before that. And I think that thanks to the desensitisation people will skip the usual 4 stages grieving process to the anger rather quickly.

originally posted by: lovebeck
a reply to: woodwardjnr

THANK YOU!!!

I feel the same way! I think it's weird. No one gave two f$@ks about France a few days ago and now everyone is putting that stupid overlay "to show support and solidarity" for Paris.

Give me a break. It's weird and creepy and rubs me the wrong way...

The memes, the peace-sign Eiffel Tower thing, the overlay. Get a grip!

S&F for you!!

It wouldn't surprise me if these are the same people that, up until a few days ago constantly put down on France and their people calling them pansies and such. Because everybody knows that Americans are far more superior than the French. And everybody else for that matter.

Not saying that it's only Americans doing this on fakebook, but I would guess that it's a crap ton of them.

Yeah but, Facebook is so much better than it was in WW1 & WW2...

Å99

I'm pretty sure that everything on Facebook is one person trying to one-up everyone else in every possible category that will earn them "kudos" (likes) from their peers.

Look at me, my career is more successful!
Look at me, my love for my family is stronger!
Look at me, my compassion for others is more pronounced!
Look at me, my grief is deeper and more genuine!

There was a study done recently that showed a trend between deleting one's Facebook profile and overall happiness. They point out that reading a Facebook feed is a never ending stream of other people's successes, thus making our lives feel dull in comparison. I would posit that a natural reaction to that feeling would be to try to one-up it with a even more fantastic post.

www.geekwire.com...

Moral of the story: Facebook sucks, avoid it for the sake of your sanity.

I don't think all the people with flag-faces actually care or are grieving, they're just copying. Or feeling the need to flag their pics because other friends have. It comes across as insincere to me. For most people I mean...not all.


Anyways I mostly agree with the OP here. Well I never uderstood the love of Paris to begin with. No desire to ever go there.

On Diana, that was completely different. I think people were completely shocked and genuinely cared.

a reply to: hololeap

You forgot "Look at my dog"
And "look at my dog"

I think some of you are over reacting. It's sort of part of social behaviors in general to express solidarity in some way or another, to consolidate a sense of community and bond. A bunch of members of a tribe may all make a similar mark on their body to express an idea, a memory of a collective event which they share, this kind of thing has it's place in the world.

Sure, those who are more socially minded will feel more pull than those that are individualist in nature.
But let me put it to you individualists, with your claims of going your own way and not interested in following the crowd-

If that was totally true, you wouldn't feel anything at all in witnessing such group bonding rituals. Nothing.
Where is the pressure you are objecting to coming from? Is it really outside? Did you have your friends contact you and say, "we had a meeting and decided that since you didn't make your photo into a french flag on Facebook, we've judged you as a jerk and your are condemned"?

WHO is putting this pressure and guilt on you that is pissing you off? Think about it. Maybe there's a little social animal in you too, squeeking up and saying , "hey, i'd kinda like to feel a bond with others and be part of something larger than myself...." .


The claim that it is superficial and fake... perhaps, for some. In any case, it is a desire to belong and be part of the collective, which I think is still something that has it's place and value... especially in such times.

I also feel nothing against those who don't have that desire, the world needs them too. I seem to identify with both. I feel no judgement against them.

When I saw all the americans that called me during the first night of the attack- the worried messages, from not only family, but childhood friends, and even Facebook "friends" that I don't really know, but just met on discussion boards years ago.... I witnessed that they really did care, and when they made that silly symbolic gesture, I knew there was an expression of real concern. They were thinking of real people over here. That's alright. I don't expect it of everyone, they know us here, that makes it hit them deeper.

But to rant and rave like they are bad for finding a symbolic way of expressing their feelings? It just seems irrational.

a reply to: Bluesma

I have actually found this whole subject absolutely fascinating and have been talking today at work with people about this - people I know who have updated their facebook profile status with the flag overlay.

I have asked them why they have done it and to be very honest.

Out of a sample of 21 - 13 didnt really have a response as to why they had updated it to the overlay. Those 13 said that they did it because their friends had done it. Obviously, to get them to be as open on this subject, I havent condemned them!

One of the 13 also asked me if muslims had anything to do with Islam and asked me to explain what all the conflict was about.

There are many people on facebook who have not truly made an educated and truly conscious decision - other than to follow the herd - to deliver an emotive and reasoned 'solidarity' message.

To me that demeans it completely.

Facebook posts and profile changes do not count for me as meaningful activism or political statement. To me it really is a repository for trends to which around 50% of responses can be disregarded.

Your status change may be meaningful to you, but to a large %, it really is just the next trend.

a reply to: selfharmonise

So.... would you be thinking the same way if you knew someone who died in the Paris attacks?

I doubt it very much. Something tells me you would change your avatar to the French Flag and the rest of you on this Thread who have been saying and thinking similar stuff.

Interesting article in the Independent:
Got a French flag on your Facebook profile picture? Congratulations on your corporate white supremacy

If you’ve been on Facebook since last Friday’s attacks in Paris, you could be forgiven for thinking you’d stumbled into the Front National’s image bank – the social media site is currently hosting a flood of French flags, applied via a function enabled by Facebook in the immediate aftermath of the attacks which is, frankly, deeply problematic.

So you want to show solidarity with France – specifically, with those killed in Paris this weekend. If you’re a British person who wants to do that because you feel sympathy and sadness for people who are brutally massacred, regardless of their nationality, then fine. I just hope that you also change your profile picture to a different country’s flag every time people are wrongly killed as the result of international conflicts – for example, during the attack on Beirut in Lebanon just the day before.

Oh, and in answer to another poster, even if I knew someone who had died in Paris on Friday it is unlikely I would be changing my profile to a French flag. I don't know anyone with the tricolour overlay on fakebook who knew someone who died. I suspect they would have posted about it if they had and not just changed their profile pic.
I also suspect the vast majority of Tricolour profile pics on all of fakebook are by people who don't actually know anyone who died there, but of course I could be wrong, I make no assertions.

I'll admit, I did it. (before I saw this thread).

I don't usually follow these trends. I didn't do rainbows, or pass on messages to ten other friends within the next ten minutes to have a windfall of good luck...I don't put cute pics of kittens up saying "have a wonderful Monday!" or other general well wishing and sentimental stuff.

But, I so often tend to distance myself from the french around me, as I either observe quietly or analyze their behaviors and culture as if they were under my microscope. I try to integrate, but in my studying "how to be french" I create a distinction between observer and observed.

The fact is, I am here, and am going to be in deep caca with everyone else if this escalates (which I strongly suspect it will). Turns out we do have a few connections with people who died in that concert hall - family of friends.
I thought about it, and as much as it is useless in any concrete way, I felt like I should make this small effort to show my french friends and family my care, support and willingness to do something stupid everyone else is doing, just to let them know I am with the crowd. Sometimes, I think letting yourself be seen as part of the herd has it's value too.

a reply to: Bluesma

You live in France, completely understandable.
My emotional connections with France? Seven British friends who live there, miles away and well safely far from Paris.
I understand why you show solidarity in your country of choice, so I assume you understand why I see no more relevance of Paris attacks to me than the bombings in Lebanon last week.

Okay it's closer, that's about it, but doesn't make their lives any more special than any other innocents in the world.

I think people promoting the French flag are partly lacking in their own symbolic identity, and are therefore easily swayed. I've never changed my profile pic or background, for instance.

Myself, I like Facebook, a nice way to keep in touch and contact old friends from a time that offered no venue for such inquiry, only rumors of who moved where or did what... however, my FB content hardly follows trends, it's more controversial.

I share with closer friends directly who I know want to see my stuff. Otherwise, I use it as a personal filing cabinet....I toss articles and photos in there which I might want to find later. If other people like it or learn from it, all the better.

The problem with FB is it feeds into this psychosis people have where they obsess about things other people do. A mild example is a female friend posted this absurd meme, it said "I'm more offended by this-> picture of baggy pants on a black kid, than I am of this -> picture of Confederate flag". I asked her how sensitive can she be to care what other people wear, a person could simply look away. Everybody is constantly whining that some other person "shouldn't be allowed to" do this or that. Nitty-gritty stuff like this is more distressing than the "false-flag" sympathy. (yes, I'm aware of the irony of me worrying about people worrying)