To think grief is often performative, especially on social media?

[CandidGreyCrow]

Endless posts, hashtags, photo dumps… AIBU to think a lot of public grieving is more about performance and attention than genuine mourning?

So .... What sort of Facebook posts are acceptably non-attention-seeking, in your opinion?

Is anyone allowed to say anything about themselves?

Why not go the whole hog and write "Haha, someone close to you died, sucks to be you stuck with your memories. My family and friends are alive and well so I'm pleased to say I couldn't POSSIBLY relate"

I hate social media platforms like FB and the like, so I’m probably not the best person to talk to about that 😂

If it was up to me, it would all be banned and people would go back to living their lives privately and actually communicating in person with the people close to them.

People have never lived like this. This is akin to people who bang on about the "good old days" as though people didn't suffer in the past.

Throughout history, people have shared news. It doesn't make you better than them that you don't engage in what has become a pretty standard way to communicate.

Let’s not pretend that the way people share on social media is anything like how people shared news previously.

Why would it be. Is there any aspect of life that's the same now as it was 100/50/30 years ago?

Well, of course it's not the same. Because the circumstances aren't the same. Technology is not the same.

I assumed that went without saying. Silly me.

Thinking about how people shared in the olden days… what I did find comforting when we lost our son was his school letting us know that the kids (high school age) had been writing graffiti on the toilet walls. Fly high and RIP… things like that. They even took photos to show us (before removing it). He would have loved that if he’d had seen it!

To me, that’s people wanting to publicly remember and shout about him for others to see, but also anonymously so it’s not making it about themselves.

Maybe posting on social media is similar, except for it obviously isn’t anonymous.

^Quite. What is the point of following people you don’t like and then being bitchy about them? It’s very sad actually.

Why are you here then?

Yes. 💯

It's just one of many reasons why I'm not on Facebook.
But, then, I never understood the long In Memoriam messages in newspapers when I was young - they struck me as performative too, and it wasn't as if the deceased could read them!
So there's nothing really new with it all - you either think it's a good idea, or you don't.

I personally don't mind. I think it's a sign of the times and I don't mind how people communicate, as long as we do and we keep human connections open.

Take Ozzy for example. I respected the music but wasn't a fan particularly (now I know how good it is!) but I did feel genuinely sad when he passed and I got stuck into reading lots of things about him. The way his music had been there through people's lives, how much the music had meant to people - it is not for me to ridicule that or take it away, how do I know the roads people have driven down playing Black Sabbath as the soundtrack to their lives. If they want to share that, good for them.

The telly told us the nation is grieving so a lot of people acted accordingly. It’s hyperreality in action. We didn’t have the internet back then to see how people really felt.

Another example of this hyperreality is when people who’s only experience of grief is from the movies and tv. People sometimes perform what they think grief is supposed to look like - performative and dramatic.

It’s judgemental. Grief is a personal thing and until someone you love dies you don’t know what you are going to do.

I changed my profile picture to mum and I when she died. Meant I saw her face when I logged in. I had no post about my mum dying. People who knew me knew.

I did update my dad’s profile as it was the easiest way to notify people. I called close family and friends of my mom. But I honestly didn’t know all her friends.

I grieved silently and got fed up with people telling me I wasn’t upset or cry if I want to. I didn’t know how to feel so kept quiet.

I have cousins who only missed their father after his death and not the 20 years prior that they did not speak to him. Now every year on his anniversary it is a competition to see who is grieving more for example if one has a picture up with a candle beside it the other has to go out to the garden and build a shrine to him. When he was alive neither spoke to him. I am sure grief does different things to different people but this pair really are doing it for the performance.

Maybe they are also doing it because in life the relationship was a disappointment, but now it is finally done, they can treat it as they wished they could in life?

He must have been a terrible father if they all stopped talking to him for twenty years. I can't imagine how complicated their feelings must be. It's such a shame.

I meant that I would hate for my friends on Facebook thinking I was doing it for attention - as this thread shows, people are thinking that.

And it’s made me angry that people can be so judgmental about how people grieve. It’s such a personal thing - there’s no right way or wrong way of doing it. And I’m angry that people are judging people in their lowest moments.

There's a lot of blanket judgements going on here. Obviously there are a bunch of attention seeking posts on social media, that's literally what it's designed for.

But that doesn't mean that everyone is using it in that way. Some people use it as a way to store photos, as an online diary/blog or somewhere to organise their memories, happy or sad.

I don't know why people seem to be automatically predisposed to assuming the worst.

I actually always think that about one particular friend. She was messaging me about how incredibly upset she was about a relative who died- it turned out she hasn't seen him in the last 20 years and couldn't be bothered to go to his funeral.

I wouldn't judge in most cases. Some people are comforted by interactions on social media; others need privacy for their grief. It can be quite cruel either to regard the former as performative, or the latter as uncaring.

The one thing I'd prefer is if Facebook profiles of people who've died were either taken down, or it could be made clear that they've died. Obviously, I wouldn't expect that bereaved relatives should deal with the FB profiles as a priority shortly after someone's death! But sometimes profiles are kept for years afterwards, with FB sending birthday reminders every year, and people, who didn't know the person VERY well, may assume that they're still alive and continue to send birthday and other messages, no doubt adding to the grief of the relatives.

I can completely understand setting up a space for people to share memories. Especially because there will be things you didn’t know about.

But otherwise yeah it does feel like attention seeing if I’m being completely honest. You post because you want a response from others. Fair enough it may be comforting, but you do want their attention.

I’ve lost loved ones, the last thing I would want to do is sharing stuff on social media about it tbh.

Losing a bad parent is complicated, had a few in my family, it’s not straight forward at all.

I think the UK has a culture of isolating the family in grieving and death - funeral held weeks after the death, almost an invitation-only event etc.

Other cultures approach death differently, and perhaps in a more healing way.

As an example, in England it seems that you attend the funeral only if you knew the individual personally.

in Ireland, you may never have met the individual, but you attend the funeral for the individual relative you know, to express sympathy and give condolences. That is a great comfort to the family that all their friends attend and I think it helps the grieving process.