The Witty Celebrity Death, Or, Who Are You on Social Media?
So, 2016. Many of my popular culture heroes died. Technically, Lemmy Kilmister was 2015, but the news of his death started the new year in the worst possible way. I probably don’t need to repeat all the obituaries here, but there were many. For me, none meant as much as Carrie Fisher. Not only was she my childhood heroine, but I was just listening to her raspy voice reading The Princess Diarist audiobook and was thinking what a remarkable, funny woman she was. Full of the kind of wisdom that you don’t get from books. She and all the others who we lost in 2016 transcended generations, gender, ethnicity, class. So, we mourned.
Except the social media police.
With every viral celebrity death news shared, there are people who manage to find time and energy to remind their virtual friends how ‘celebrities are mortal too’, ‘old people die’, ‘he/she did drugs’. Witty, huh? ‘I wish people would mourn for every Syrian child as much as they do for these useless celebrities’ has a point at least, even if it misses the bigger picture.
My visceral reaction has been to use a lot of four-letter words to characterise these people, but I’ve restrained myself. As against visceral (‘relating to deep inward feelings rather than to the intellect’), I’ve tried to figure out how to respond as a sociologist would, to figure out what the bigger picture is. Well, here we go.
I am not I. What you see on social media is a performance which is a sliver of the cake that makes up what we call identity. And even then, that cake is ever in the process of baking rather than a pie chart. What I post on social media says a lot about how I want to look like in the eyes of my audience. It says little about anything else. I was profoundly shocked and saddened by Carrie Fisher’s passing, and I wanted to share that feeling on social media. But that doesn’t mean I’m ignorant of or indifferent to either human mortality or humanitarian crises. I am politically vocal on social media, but I have barely posted anything about Syria, for many reasons. I post pictures of my daughter; many keep images of their kids strictly off social media. I don’t talk about my love life online; for many, performing love-related happiness seems to be the main function of social media. The key word here is performance.
I’ve got uncomfortable news for the social media police: you — shock horror! — are not you either. What you’re doing is a performance where you sit on your high horse and ride into the sunset of better, wiser (so you say), and wittier people. Perhaps you really don’t know or don’t care who Carrie Fisher was. All I can say is I’m sorry.
Carrie Fisher was meaningful for me. So are Syrian refugees. Whatever we post on social media does not define what we are. It does define how we perform ourselves. I am not I. You are not you.
Or, perhaps more accurately: I am I because of you, and you are you because of me.
May the Force be with you.
