"Cyber-Spaces of Grief" - Socolovsky

Summary In her article "Cyber-Spaces of Grief: Online Memorials and the Columbine High School Shootings", Maya Socolovsky talks about the effects of online memorials on society and our management of grief through these online memorials. Speaking to viewers of online memorials, and to anyone who's experienced loss/death, Socolovsky begins to analyze and explain the effects of online memorials. She quickly starts off by saying that the public desire to monumentalize suggests an anxiety about and an inability to deal with grief (p.468). Emphasizing a resurgence of community and the desire to be heard unanimously in one collective voice, Socolovsky explains throughout her article that online memorialsare places where people can go to accept death, to fill the void of loss, and to even gain "celebrity status" (p.477). These memorials also serve, according to Socolovsky, as archives or storage units of our memory, allowing us to turn over the responsibility of remembering to the "cult of computers"; our mnemonic idols (p.468). Socolovsky continues to touch on various questions she asks of the reader throughout the article, but circles back around in her conclusion by tying in the online memorials of the Columbine High School shooting victims to the ability of internet memorials to fill voids that physical and spatial monuments cannot. She argues that by transcending time and space, online memorials eliminate the silence and absence of death that is created by physicality by way of creating forums that exist for people to discuss collectively about loss (misery loves company) and to share their story with the world, creating a sense of immortality for the deceased, and giving the bereaved a sense of closure and satisfaction knowing that their loved one will be forever marked in history. Inquiry Socolovsky's claim that online memorials fill emptiness or voids created by death or loss is a controversial one indeed. The fact is, no matter what we do on a given day to remember someone we no longer have with us, we cannot wake up the following morning and speak to this person directly, get a response from them, or even physically touch them. As far as Socolovsky is concerned, online memorials are places where one can go and interact with the deceased. Many online memorials through the home site of www.virtualmemorials.com have posts that speak directly to the deceased. While many cope differently, and this is obviously one of many coping mechanisms, in no way shape or form is it possible for the people they are "directly communicating with" to respond. This still leaves us with the absence, or void, of personal interaction. As far as physcially interacting with the deceased; it's not possible. Interactive websites with photos and other simulacra, to also use a term from Socolovsky regarding digital images (p.469) may serve a great purpose as far as remembrance, but don't enable us to interact with the deceased individuals. Though a void may be filled by being able to see an image of the deceased, the fact is that they are still deceased and we cannot truly see them, not in the real. Thus, we are again left with a void of being able to personally interact. Though Socolovsky is correct in saying that online memorials fill some void, they do not fill any void different that that filled by physical memorials, photographs, personal memories, or stories told by other family members or friends. Online memorials are not a place to escape ghosts or absence of an individual as Socolovsky suggests, rather they are simply just another way to cope with the loss of someone near and dear to the bereaved. For this reason, online memorials will continue to pop up, espeically as those around the world continue to grow more and more connected through the medium of the internet, and for this reason new ideas will be generated through this medium to help those who have suffered a loss better cope with it. Questions How do online memorials affect the ways that we understand and cope with loss and grief? Do you think that the ability of the internet to transcend time and space, in the sense that we can view any deceased person whenever and wherever so long as they have a memorial online, has an effect on how we cope with loss? Does this lack of time and space serve as a symbol of disrespect to the deceased; would they be "upset" if they knew that we could simply "close" their memory with the touch of a button? Do internet memorials lack a place for ghosts to reside, as Socolovsky claims physical memorials enable, or are they another place that one can go and get that haunted feeling?