The Internet is changing the way we do… Yes, you’ve probably heard this before.  By now, this is the standard, cookie-cutter lead-in to any sort special interest piece about the Internet.  The Internet has changed the way we shop; it has changed our love lives; it has changed our TV viewing habits; and now we are finding out that it changes the way we die.

A few weeks ago, NPR featured a story about online death.  Strangely, the story treated the Internet as “serious business” as the kids say, which is a definite no-no.  To have your death known online is a bit like dying from suffocation during autoerotic asphyxiation—you don’t want to be in that position.  If I were to die, for instance, I’m sure my blog would carry on until my payment expired, and for a few months, at least, I’d get comments on blog entries telling me how I enriched people’s lives, and so on and so forth.  But soon after it would be drowned in spam hawking Viagra, penis enlargment pills, and god knows what else.  An anonymous creationist who I may have badmouthed in the past would likely come along and spam the site with nasty comments about my tiny penis size.  This is just the way the Internet usually works.  the Internet, after all, is just the world’s largest truck-stop bathroom wall, minus the glory hole.

And yes, the Internet can even cheapen death.  Consider, for example, a recent death documented on Facebook.  An online friend of mine documented the status updates detailing the sickness and death of a Facebook “friend’s” wife, and the resulting stream of text, put into a single place, is at once ridiculous, pathetic, and sad.

The story of the wife’s death is tragic.  She gets checked into the ER.  Her illness stumps the doctors and appears serious.  Then she seems to get better, becoming less confused.  But finally, she succumbs to the illness after a lung collapses, along with internal bleeding.  This is all recorded in the stream of status updates.

What makes the story ridiculous and strange is the text in between all of this.  After his wife is sent to the ER, for instance, he “became a fan of Kool-Aid.”  After stating that he is worried sick, he “became a fan of cookie dough.”  And after she dies, he posts the obituary, and, naturally, “became a fan of Krispy Kreme.”  One almost gets the impression that he is the sort of person who consoles himself with food when he is upset.  But strangest of all, on the day of the memorial he talks about how sad and upset he is, says that he has to pick up the pieces and move on, and then immediately updates his status from married to single.  Apparently he picks up the pieces quick!

I’m just glad he didn’t have a Twitter.  “My wife just died.”  Five hours later:  “I just took a dump.”

Of course, taken out of context, this all seems surreal and hilarious (in a “I shouldn’t be laughing, but I am” sort of way).  Why would you update your fan status for a variety of foods and sports while your wife is dying and even immediately after she has died?  How do you go from posting your wife’s obituary on Facebook to then deciding to stick around to inform everyone you’ve become a fan of frosted donuts?  How does one come to the conclusion that it’s a good idea to post all of this on Facebook, in the cesspool known as the internet?  It is almost akin to writing the obituary in a restroom stall, right under Sally’s phone number, which you can call for a “good time.”  When all of these events are documented and put together in such a way, intermingled with his fanship of various sweet-tasting food items and sports, it just looks insane.

But isn’t this what we all do during and after a death?  When my father was dying, after all, it’s not as if I didn’t think about food or go to the bathroom or go about my daily life throughout the whole thing.  But these aspects of my life were invisible, stretched over long periods of time, and undocumented.  If a computer had been hooked to my brain, and every thought would end up recorded as a post, I would not be surprised at all if, immediately following my father’s death, I may have had a stray thought about ice cream, or puppies, or updating my blog.  My own stream of consciousness would look just as ridiculous and silly.

So maybe what makes this Facebook death so interesting and morbidly funny is that we can all see ourselves in it as it magnifies the trivialities that we all dwell on—Saint Gasoline became a fan of Pizza Hut—even at the most traumatic and important moments of our lives.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 15th, 2009 at 6:47 PM and is filed under Humor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.