There's Something Very Wrong with Posting about Death on Facebook

I have a Facebook account.  Chances are you have a Facebook account.  I've been guilty.  You've been guilty.  We've all posted things or used the Social Networking service for things we probably didn't intend to and even made fun of at some point.   Frankly I think the whole site has become a place where people become miserable seeing the 1000s of pictures of their friends having a great time.  It's also become a place where similarly to Twitter, people mention any and every single thing they are doing the moment they are doing it.   And that leads to a whole bunch of useless information and valuable time wasting.  



I wish we could go back to using Facebook for it's intended purpose:  seeing what old girlfriends or boyfriends look like now and hoping to God they look horrible.   Well, that's the purpose for the 30 and over crowd.   For the college crowd, which I am deeply jealous of, it's for "hooking up" or whatever else you kids are calling it these days.  Man oh man if I had Facebook in college I would have never, ever even bothered going out prior to stalking talking to some girl I knew at least was attracted to me.   Talk about cutting out effort.  It's beautiful.  

But with all things beautiful,  an ugliness eventually reveals itself.  And while Facebook is a beacon for some businesses, can enhance communities, connections, websites, commerce, you name it, ugliness reveals itself there too.   Cybercrimes are growing.   Stalking is rampant.  And trickery runs all over the place.   People are being lured into scam after scam being told to "like" this and "like" that.   Then the algorithms change and all of a sudden you don't "like" what you thought you did and then your feed gets all messed up and you have no idea what's going on.   Then the privacy settings switch and oh God hell is breaking loose!

In any event, let's get to the subject.   Like I said before we've all been guilty of saying something as dumb as "going to the gym, just had a great workout!" on Facebook before.  It's your way of telling the world that you worked out and you're proud of yourself.  Congratulations, not a single soul cares.  In fact we're all annoyed because we didn't go to the gym today.   Hooray!  You posted a picture of yourself chilling at a beach in the Caribbean.  Is that supposed to make me happy?  But I digress.  These aren't even the things that upset me that much.  They're just stupid and one can disregard them quickly.   However, if there's one thing I took seriously it was what I noticed this past week.

Two people I know had deaths in their families and spoke openly about it on Facebook.  This is where I somewhat draw the line.  I know when death occurs it can make a person not think clearly but is your mind so out of whack that you seek validation from others through a social networking platform?  Some things in life are pretty sacred in terms of human connections and emotion.  Death among them.   To bring death to Facebook just isn't right in my book.  Especially when it's done like this.   Here is an exact quote of something I saw today which really disturbed me.  Someone in my network has a husband who is terminally ill, might die soon and this is what she writes....

Before **** passes (the Doctors think he only has a week or 2 left) I want him to give the girls a special necklace. Any suggestions please? Where should I go?

And then this post came the very next day 

I went black dress shopping but couldn't resist this dress!

The second post came with a picture attached which I won't share here.   With all due respect this is an example of someone jumping the shark and an example of what exactly you do NOT do on a social network like Facebook.   Death is a very serious matter and bringing it to Facebook so publicly isn't making matters better.