i'm wondering how many deaths i've learned about through facebook. might have learned about them anyway, should i even be surprised or fascinated that i'm stumbling into not-yet-autopsied pop corpse accounts through an online social network that i'm now told amounts to "5% of collective internet usage worldwide?" im fascinated. it was brittany murphy today, last was michael jackson. my curiosity rarely sticks long enough to follow up when there's further information. he is dead, his family is sad, he did a lot, special people are trying to figure out why he died to satisfy destiny/fate instincts/cravings ingrained in the sad people.
ive said for years that when i die id like a close friend to sign into my account and post the status "____ is dead." the idea is less apt now that the facebook format changes all the time, but i'm still a little obsessed with the idea. what the fuck does that mean? kids i knew in high school would probably learn about my death via facebook. someone else's status update posted on their "newsfeed" trickles down the digital shitstream and they receive it...where? just after waking up? in a subway? in an airport? "_____ is dead." oh shit! did you even know him? you've learned about it so quickly that you can't read my obituary (would i have one?). you could maybe find an account of someone's intention to figure out my cause of death. i imagine someone with a set of dentist's instruments delicately lifting up sections of skin to see what's inside. oh shit! it's a kidney. but chances are if im dead it was a car crash, a freak fall off the roof. maybe a riptide drowning. hows the weather in LA? it's so great it's pulling me under the surface and im dead. oh shit! it's a lung, and it's full of salt water.
speaking of death, i might go see the most expensive movie ever made today.
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I guess one interesting thing is that as pop culture becomes so globalized/televized/SHARED, which has been happening since the advent of TV, there are more celebrities. Now that some of them are older (MJ, etc) they start dying off, and a decade from now we'll have a new celebrity death every week. I'm excited - no more need to think of new themes for parties.
ReplyDeletefacebook facebook.
ReplyDeletefunny as a kind of purely sentimental (that is, largely contentless) memorial...i got invited once to the event of memorial for a brother of someone i met briefly last summer. the event was ongoing for like 5 years; "attending/maybe attending/not attending." a minimal commitment that demands a thought everytime i look at my events. facebook seems to facilitate avoiding life but and makes avoidance of reallife, or the continuity of reality perhaps, all the easier by demanding infinite tiny chunks of reciprocity ("reconnect with old friends!" join this group! play this game! think of me!).
strange things.