Do Go On

I went onto Facebook today for a piece of information.

This is generally the only reason I go near social media, having long since concluded that prolonged exposure to it makes me like humanity less.

I found what I needed.

Unfortunately, I also read the comments.

Most were perfectly normal. Someone had died. People were sad. They left a few words about him, or mentioned some small connection, or simply said that he would be missed.

And then I found an autobiography.

It was quite long.

Ostensibly it was a tribute to the person who had died, although he appeared to have been cast in a relatively minor role.

The principal character was the commenter.

There was her work. Her amateur dramatics. Her leading role. Her costumes. Her wedding. Her wedding dress. Her family. Her Christmases.

It was, by some distance, the most detailed thing anyone had written about themselves that day.

There is something very peculiar about social media and death. It encourages a kind of competitive intimacy that I don't remember existing before we all acquired the ability to publish our every thought beneath everybody else's news.

It isn't enough to say:

I knew him. He was lovely. I'm sad.

There must apparently be supporting documentation.

And the documentation has a curious tendency to demonstrate not how interesting or funny or kind or clever the dead person was, but how important the commenter must have been to them.

Because death does not retrospectively improve a relationship. It merely prevents one of the participants from correcting the record.

Other people may still possess the record. They may even have discussed the matter with him. They may read it and feel something between a wince and a private smile, remembering a rather different version of events.