Piggybacking onto the OP with a reposting, cos it got eaten on another thread. This thread seems an even more appropriate place for it
-
Grief, loss, shitbags and Web 2.0
Events beyond my control have led me to have conversations on here with other people who have also had bereavement and loss complicated by the existence of public online communications and a shitbag or two in the family.
By the same token, the existence of online communication, MN specifically and the posters who engaged with me as I flailed about, in a pain that I think may have stripped me of any sense I may once have had, saved my arse.
It's a 2 sides of one coin sort of thing.
So I know there is a tight rope to be walked between facilitating much needed support, and protecting posters and off-line family members from fall out, abuse of trust and the existence of not-so-nice people in the context of illness and death.
I have a dog in this hunt. While I initially wanted to batter the posters, (not here, other forums/sites) discussing my father's death, over the head with their keyboards, that was the anger that disappeared the fastest. Not least because of all people I was angry with, they were the only ones who engaged. And actually, turned out to be mostly kind, sympathetic and fairly horrified that they had inadvertently been put in the position they found themselves in.
However I still harbour a certain amount of ill will towards the sites that hosted the exchanges and information. I appreciate the need to protect a product and a brand. I understand I am not the only person on the planet and rules cannot be individualised to my needs. But a lack of willingness to engage in a conversation in how to avoid a reoccurrence was not appreciated. It left a bitter taste in my mouth. I didn't want or need an apology for something that RL people connected to me had created by being selfish, immoral shitbags. But it felt dismissive to offer an unneeded sorry, without a much needed attempt to at least look at how the chances of reoccurrence could be minimised.
That can and hopefully will be avoided on this site. Which IMO has stood out and flourished because of, rather than despite, it's more unusual and open management style.
I'd like to make some suggestions that could be discussed, specifically for unintended consequences, but also for basic feasibility.
1- Delete all and any mention of real life identifying information relating to the identity of the deceased and those who would by extension lead to their identification.
What you don't ever see, because it is essentially google-proof thanks to lack of identifying features, can't eviscerate you. What wings it's way to you because an online identity has been linked to a real life one can feel like being pierced with red hot pokers of shame, anger and shock.
2- Add a permanent and fairly detailed, "do(s) & don'ts" warning to boards more likely to packed to the rafters with emotionally vulnerable people, who may be sitting ducks for the more exploitative among us. When a thread attracts a lot of attention, particularly in terms of reports, would it be possible to consider repeating the "more detailed than usual" warning, within the body of the thread ?
Grief is a greedy fucker. There is little it won't try and suck off you. It can take your normally raised shields that protect you from life's chancers and smash them to the ground. It is reasonable to expect posters to engage good sense on here. But there are times in life when all the hard earned good sense you ever had just leaves, as a swirl of conflicting and strong emotions take over the steering wheel. It's not a reasonable ask for all of the people dealing with the ramifications of grief to always be able to operate under "life as normal" expectations in terms of well maintained boundaries and a healthy dose of self-protecting cynicism.
3- Shut down all overt and covert attempts to fund raise, or soften up posters to the concept of fund raising/donating. Both on thread and via the PM system.
There have been instances where funds have been raised for posters and that has been a good, positive thing. But at this size, with the degree of exposure MN has, this site is a magnet for chancers, bastards and shitbags on the make. They will go for the soft underbelly, the boards where people are most likely to be off-kilter and shields down due to life events. They need to be strongly discouraged with a very muscular shutting down of their attempts to make a personal gain, so that support can remain.
I cannot afford the therapy I need to get to a place where I can fly over, locate my father's place of rest and accept his death and the circumstances surrounding it.
This I can live with.
What I am not so sure I could have lived with is a lack of support where I found warmth, understanding, engagement and ... a very real propping up of me. I wanted to die. About four times an hour. I have family, but the words would not come when around them, cos I owed them no extra weight. MN was pretty much the only place where I could let out the howl, feel heard and understood. I have concerns that unless there are clear boundaries placed on what can and cannot be asked or suggested to posters the upshot will be the withering away of a willingness to trust a random stranger enough to offer support, for fear of being sucked into something untoward. That would be a far far far greater loss than the loss of good being done via donations. IMO.
4- Recognition that not-so-nice people can be bereaved too.
Trolls are not the only bridge dwellers. People can be who they say they are, be dealing with the loss they say they have suffered. And still be god awful people with one eye on the prize. My own brother was crowd funding before his wife was even cold. He never had any intention of spending the money on the "bereaved reasons" people thought they were donating to. His semi- faux grief led people to be less cautious than they otherwise would have been. Which was exactly what he was banking on. His real world bereavement became a handy shield to ward of criticism and probing questions about the exact nature of his grief related outgoings. Shitbags walk among us, people connected to them will get ill, have accidents and die. It doesn't mean they temporarily stop being absolute aresholes while they are in the shadow of grief.
This is the hardest one to resolve. How to avoid being heavy handed so the recently, or about-to-be, bereaved are not over policed and under an air of suspicion at a time when they have never needed more support. All while being alert to the reality that some people are awful, even when dealing with real world events that actually happened to them.
I don't think there can be a clear cut, one size fits all policy here. IMO it has to be case by case. The risk of calling it wrong cannot be engineered out of the equation completely because... human error and only hindsight is 20/20.
With that in mind think it might be worth building a small (2/3) team (to provide 24/7 coverage) with some extra expertise in this regard.
Which sounds overegged I know. However it is worth considering that family bonds may have become more fragile than they used to be. This is in addition to modern communications becoming a game changer in terms social interaction. There is illness/death news sharing and a public participation in a loss that can affect many more family members than the one bereaved poster who is posting on a thread.
I think the way SM and forums are failing (and conversations here, with other people who had their loss complicated by online communications and discussion, underlines the failure is not small scale ) to adapt and evolve in the face of the above, specifically in the context of death and bereavement, is something of a time bomb waiting to go off. IMO it is worth future proofing the site to some extent by getting ahead of the curve and building some expertise and knowledge in a small team.
And then maybe you can do the rest of the world's online comms management a favour by beating what you have learned, evolved and created, into their thick heads.
I accept that while I might know quite a lot about a family member's death being publicly discussed all over the internet, I don't know a great deal about running a site of this size. So I'd like to underline the intensions of the above, suggestions for discussion to tease out inbuilt flaws that have not occurred to me. And the generation of better suggestions that will work without the inbuilt flaws.
It is by no means a list a demands. And I don't want to teach my grandmother how to suck eggs. Promise.