This is seriously disturbing.
posted by agregoli at 11:18 AM on September 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

I can' t decide if I should weep or run away screaming.
posted by aramaic at 11:47 AM on September 17, 2015

I'm torn.

On one hand, I'm happy to give almost any solace to a parent who has lost a child. I cannot imagine the grief, and do not wish to even try.

That said, the prospect of consuming the grief of others like any other product or service is deeply unsettling.
posted by leotrotsky at 11:48 AM on September 17, 2015 [21 favorites]

The drama in the comments section is as interesting as the article (a couple of the women featured in the story do not appear happy with the angle the author took here).
posted by The Gooch at 11:50 AM on September 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

Was I the only reader tripped up by ".. now she wears Ryan on the inside of her arm .." and ".. but then she tapped her inner arm and I looked down and, of course, there was Ryan on my arm"? Like, whose arm was Ryan on??
posted by Captain Chesapeake at 11:54 AM on September 17, 2015 [11 favorites]

I feel so sorry for the surviving and subsequent siblings. #NeverGoodEnough
posted by carmicha at 11:55 AM on September 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

I feel so sorry for the surviving and subsequent siblings. #NeverGoodEnough

It's hard not feel for everyone in this story, but I really felt for the son that Penny's mother had afterwards. Maybe his life is great, I don't know, but I feel like growing up in a home named for your deceased sister with all the animals named after words she spoke would cast a long shadow.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 11:57 AM on September 17, 2015 [19 favorites]

Yeah, this is creepy. I mean, I get it. I get how people are compelled by things that scare them. I am too.

But the familiarity strikes me as intrusive and strange. I feel the same way sometimes when, in the aftermath of some horrible tragedy or murder, people make a point to remember the victims rather than the perpetrators. The impulse is correct, but after Sandy Hook, there was this thing where people were choosing a victim to 'remember,' and it just made me squirmy.

I suppose if a parent who has lost a child gets some solace from the sympathy of strangers, that's one thing. But not everyone wants their lives made public.

I'm a pretty private person myself, and I don't even like people I know being too familiar, even while I'm alive and able to defend myself. The idea of being 'remembered' by total strangers is kind of horrifying. I can guarantee I wouldn't want to see people who didn't know them 'remembering' my loved ones. (On that note, there used to be some awful crime show where they'd have an actor portray murder victims, actually putting words in their mouths. HORRID.) The idea of anyone I care about being some kind of 'death celebrity' is absolutely repulsive to me.

I really do get that the impulses behind this sort of thing are not malicious, and even that some people may find some much needed comfort from it, I guess I wish people would be more respectful of the fact that not everyone wants that.
posted by ernielundquist at 11:59 AM on September 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

As a parent who lost a child, let me add my own opinion. Had someone I didn't know initiated fund-raising, memorials, blogging, sharing photos, or any other activity centered around my son's death without my permission and sanction, I would have been furious. Those acts are invasive and thoughtless.

There is a sensationalism that grows around the death of a child in this day of social media, strangers leaving real or digital symbols of a child's death on the street corner where they died a tragic death or on a hasty facebook page need to look long and hard at their motivation to do so.
posted by HuronBob at 11:59 AM on September 17, 2015 [45 favorites]

When Severino couldn¡¯t reach Jacqui via email, she began posting the photo to Instagram and tagging Jacqui.

The precise moment the NOPE! centers in my brain really fired up. In the parlance of our times, "Christ, what an asshole."
posted by Drastic at 12:15 PM on September 17, 2015 [15 favorites]

I come to this story as something of a stranger in a strange land. I've experienced my fair share of tragedy, but can't imagine sharing those incredibly personal experiences with random internet strangers as grief porn (to the point where I've in the past written and then deleted comments on this very website when I felt like I was exposing more intimate details of my life than I am comfortable with). I get that other people may find comfort in this, so this isn't necessarily a criticism, just that I don't understand the impulse.

I'm not immune from feeling emotionally connected to people who I don't know personally, but whose writing or experiences have moved me in some way. For example, I was really outraged yesterday on behalf of Ahmed Mohamed. But I think it would be really creepy if I got "I Stand with Ahmed" tattooed on my back, having never met the guy. If I found out someone I never met had a picture of my deceased nephew tattooed on their arm, I wouldn't be moved, I'd want a restraining order.
posted by The Gooch at 12:23 PM on September 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

I sort of understand the parent side of this. Sort of. One of my kids was very sick this year and I'm pretty introverted and I found social media incredibly helpful during that time. I'm part of a small facebook group of parents, and for whatever reason when I needed to talk it was much easier for me to go there and emote than to call a friend or my sister and talk to them. Somehow being able to talk about the situation from the safety of my couch knowing that I could walk out immediately on the conversation if I needed to was very, very helpful.

The part that is more confusing to me is the watcher side. Is there some enjoyment there that I don't understand, or do they honestly believe that they're performing a service for the family? There's something happening here that I just don't get.
posted by gerstle at 12:27 PM on September 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

The part that is more confusing to me is the watcher side. Is there some enjoyment there that I don't understand, or do they honestly believe that they're performing a service for the family? There's something happening here that I just don't get.

Ever watched your local evening news when the reporters are standing on the street corner reporting on some child's tragic death, and, in the background, there's this pile of stuffed bears, candles, flowers..and, in the foreground, people standing there making sure they are in the view of the camera, emoting in some manner to show how compassionate, caring, supportive they are....

In answer to your question, the cynical part of me believes it has NOTHING to do with "performing a service for the family", but everything to do with stroking their own ego.
posted by HuronBob at 12:35 PM on September 17, 2015 [11 favorites]

"When I saw on Instagram that Ryan died," [shirt company IndieNook co-owner Andy] Mulvihill said, "I immediately thought of this balloon T-shirt design that we'd never actually used and I was like, We've got to print it, that shirt was made for Ryan."

The shirt was a success ¡ª a year later, it's still their second most popular item. "People really feel moved by Ryan's story; they want to share in it and be a part of it," Mulvihill explained. After the first few months of T-shirt orders, IndieNook says they gave the family two checks totaling $28,000. However, the brand now keeps all the profits. "We just didn't think they'd want to feel like they're getting all this charity," she told me, sounding a bit uncomfortable. The shirts continue to sell.

So many things about this story are mind-bendingly upsetting, but this is just straight-up ghoulish. "We just didn't think..." So they didn't even ask the family what they wanted to do next -- put the shirts out of print? donate funds to another family or organization? keep the money rolling in? -- and just quietly decided to start pocketing all of the proceeds themselves? How the fuck do these people sleep at night?

They have another tragedy-based fundraising shirt up for sale on their website right now -- "We are so blessed as a company to once again, help a family in need!" I wonder when they'll switch over to profit-keeping mode for that one, assuming they haven't already.
posted by divined by radio at 12:35 PM on September 17, 2015 [28 favorites]

I just can't. Criticism feels wrong, but the exploitation feels wrong, too.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:39 PM on September 17, 2015

Bulgaroktonos, that's exactly what i thought of too - how do all the kids and future kids of these parents feel with the ghost of their dead sibling, whom they may have never even met, hanging over them all the time?? it doesn't seem like a healthy grieving process at all to me, but i've never lost a child or had one at all, so i don't know
posted by burgerrr at 12:47 PM on September 17, 2015

The part that is more confusing to me is the watcher side. Is there some enjoyment there that I don't understand, or do they honestly believe that they're performing a service for the family? There's something happening here that I just don't get.


It sure seems like the appropriate word would be, horribly, fans. A lot of the actions (and the responses in the comments) remind me of what I've seen of One Direction fandom but for adult women directed towards families whose children have died. And I am almost 100% "you do you" in this world, but this is registering all kinds of NOPE from deep down in my core.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 12:48 PM on September 17, 2015 [6 favorites]

That said, the article is a fantastic look at the phenomenon and I'm super glad to have read it.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 12:50 PM on September 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

how do all the kids and future kids of these parents feel with the ghost of their dead sibling, whom they may have never even met, hanging over them all the time??

I've read that, in the case of descendants of Holocaust survivors, there was a trend toward gallows humor deliberately intended to horrify their elders - introducing the lamp shade to guests as Uncle Jacob, etc.

I think it's clear that this kind of deeply ingrained loss and trauma does indeed cast a shadow over those who follow - people for whom it's not "real" experience but just a story. They're expected to treat the story with almost religious awe and validate its importance to their parents or other elders, even though they don't really share the context or the emotional memory. It apparently leads to odd, conflicted forms of rebellion.
posted by Naberius at 1:02 PM on September 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

I can't even finish the article because I start thinking about my own kid dying in some kind of accident and I start to get panicky. Despite it all, we are empathetic creatures. It's hard to know where to put those emotions. And, I suppose, if it seems like there is an actual outlet -- donating money, wearing t-shirts, hash-tagging things -- that is very alluring to people. I think it's why God is so popular. Here's a person who will just take in all those emotions and feelings and love you unconditionally...or so some theologies go. I think the internet allows us to play and replay these things in public in a way that just never existed before. But, maybe it's just giving everyone PTSD.
posted by amanda at 1:08 PM on September 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

For anyone interested in a heartbreaking but beautiful antidote to the drama presented in that article, see the facebook page and website dedicated to the life of Daniel Barden, who was one of the young victims at Sandy Hook in Newtown CT. I can't imagine intruding on another family's grief, but the Bardens have embraced the idea that their son was a gentle teacher, and they have invited strangers to continue learning from his example.
posted by headnsouth at 1:24 PM on September 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

The woman who did a photoshoot with her infant dressed like a stranger's deceased child was like the world's most disturbing cosplay.
posted by galvanized unicorn at 2:05 PM on September 17, 2015 [11 favorites]

The first word that came to mind when reading this was "hagiography", which led me to Wikipedia: List of child saints.
posted by XMLicious at 2:11 PM on September 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

I completely understand why the parents might do this, but I can't even conceive of a situation in which I would think it was appropriate to tattoo a stranger's dead child on my arm.
posted by corb at 2:47 PM on September 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

I think about how this is a manifestation for our search for meaning in our lives and that part of the pushback in the comments by some of the people interviewed is because they feel any mockery or revulsion is an attack on the way they shape a meaningful existence. Of course some of this is tied up in ego and of course some of this is shaped by social patterns (the commemorative tshirt to show solidarity, the tourist photo to prove you too were there). This doesn't make this kind of collective public extended grieving necessarily a sign of a healthy person, family or society, but it does make me less appalled by it.
posted by spamandkimchi at 2:50 PM on September 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

I completely understand why the parents might do this, but I can't even conceive of a situation in which I would think it was appropriate to tattoo a stranger's dead child on my arm.

The woman did say she realized later it was her way of grieving for her unborn child, of whom she had no pictures.
posted by Omnomnom at 4:03 PM on September 17, 2015

One of the many disturbing thoughts that arose reading this article: some of these people just have way, way too much time on their hands.
posted by gottabefunky at 4:05 PM on September 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Also, according to the comments, tattoo lady knew the boy's family as a facebook friend of a friend. Not sure what to think of this.
posted by Omnomnom at 4:12 PM on September 17, 2015

I can't put my finger on it, but this article came across as gawky and classist to me, while pretending to be compassionate. I really don't want another overeducated young New Yorker's hot take on somebody else's tragedy, and I don't care if people find some kinds of grief to be tacky.
posted by thetortoise at 4:14 PM on September 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

This is all really weird and slightly terrifying to me. Having had a baby in the NICU, I thought that my worst problem would be people stealing his picture and using it for scammy "if you Like this xx will give one dollar for his treatment" or "Like and comment Amen if you want xx to get better", which is why I only posted a pic of his hand even though I would have wanted more people to see his beatiful face, since only parents and grandparents were allowed in the NICU.
I can't imagine people using my baby's image and my own grief After his death as a social media product.
posted by CrazyLemonade at 4:44 PM on September 17, 2015 [6 favorites]

Jesus this is not alright. I'm pretty sure that forming an online community around someone else's dead child is not a healthy or productive activity. Making a sculpture of someone's dead child without their knowledge or consent (!?!) and then posting pictures of it online? What kind of profound lack of perspective do you have to be operating under to think that's acceptable? Selling t-shirts? This is all fucked up.
posted by bracems at 6:36 PM on September 17, 2015 [8 favorites]

This really pushes me, yet again, to consider the complicated question of how technology is affecting our relationships, our humanity and identities.
posted by anya32 at 6:56 PM on September 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

People have always had a fascination with tragedy. Social media makes it more personal, but imagine how the victims' families must have felt about murder ballads and lurid crime journalism and such. There have always been death celebrities.

I'm not defending it by any means, but it's not a new phenomenon, just an old one magnified by social media.
posted by ernielundquist at 7:16 PM on September 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

But the familiarity strikes me as intrusive and strange.

It is intrusive, and I wish it was strange, but it really isn't. As much as this may be creepy, it's not really new; celebrity magazines have been enabling this sort of casual (or not-so-casual) proxy drama/proxy tragedy/imagined familiarity with strangers since long before the internet was a household thing. (Princess Di, anyone? Or the never-ending Brad/Angelina/Jennifer bullshit that I swear will outlast us all)

Granted, the internet (and social media in particular) has a way of making this shit easier/faster/more likely to explode into epic grossness, but this is just the next evolutionary step in the long tradition of people living vicariously through others, whether through their joy or their pain.
posted by tocts at 7:31 PM on September 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure I see the distinction between this event's virality and the events I observed in my own life before the dawn of the internet.

At 23, I lost my 21-year-old sister, 28 years ago. My community responded with an overwhelming outpouring of public grief, organic and natural. It was overwhelming and transformed her death into a public event. My family and I coped as best we could. In essence we were recast as involuntary grief counselors to literally hundreds of people who, without really understanding what they were doing, were effectively competing to provide the most compelling display of public grief and offers of comfort toward my family that they could. None of this was a social interaction distorted by contemporary social media; it was the legitimate form of community support itself.

I bear no one ill will for their grief and expressions thereof in that community, but I left and will never return. I last visited just after 9/11 and am in touch on Facebook. In fact, the majority of people I interact with on Facebook are from that community. I deliberately limited the number of people I interact with in real life and online after relocation. Her death didn't just rob me of her life; it robbed me of community, specifically because community support, in its' purest and most organic, selfless, and supportively-intended form, was something that I recoiled from. This too is an organic response, not a distorted and false emotional reaction. I suppose it's a grief reaction. I reject pursuit of the beloved community and self-consciously avoid the sense of belonging whereby it is felt.

The linked online phenomenon is definitely creepy and not something I am uncomfortable with. I don't see it as distinct from the grieving behavior I experienced before social media was a thing known as such.

(Without HuronBob's first post, I would not have written this, but it's not directed to him.)
posted by mwhybark at 8:33 PM on September 17, 2015 [9 favorites]

errata:

'not something I am uncomfortable with' - should read 'not something I am comfortable with'

'At 23, I lost my 21-year-old sister, 28 years ago.' - er, 26 years ago.
posted by mwhybark at 9:10 PM on September 17, 2015

How the fuck do these people sleep at night?

On soft piles of money, like Scrooge McDuck, I imagine.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 9:56 PM on September 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Lacking sufficient drama in their lives they appropriate someone else's.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 12:05 AM on September 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

I sort of understand the parent side of this. Sort of. One of my kids was very sick this year and I'm pretty introverted and I found social media incredibly helpful during that time. I'm part of a small facebook group of parents, and for whatever reason when I needed to talk it was much easier for me to go there and emote than to call a friend or my sister and talk to them. Somehow being able to talk about the situation from the safety of my couch knowing that I could walk out immediately on the conversation if I needed to was very, very helpful.

This was true for me as well when my child was very sick this winter, specifically in the context of a relatively closed online community. (Not this circus sideshow business.) Part of it was being able to unload in the general direction of people who kind of understood, because their kids were all sick too, but a key part of it was that those people kind of understood but not really because their kids had different illnesses and they didn't know us in real life. They could generally sympathize but sort of from a distance. Which made it easier to just turn on the firehose of anger and fear and sadness. (It was critically important that it was a relatively closed group of people who all had firehoses that needed turning on at different times, so it was socially acceptable and not constantly hijacking everyone's happy day.)

Calling my mom during that period was so hard. She was so scared too, with an additional layer of feeling helpless because she was physically remote. The third time I had to call her and tell her that the baby was back in the ICU again was the most difficult phone call I've had to make to date, because I just could not face her raw emotions and keep mine under control too.

But like some others here, if I found out a company was selling items to profit off our personal hell, I would be FUCKING LIVID. Similarly, if I found out strangers were getting tattoos of our sick baby, I'd probably have cut their arms off.
posted by telepanda at 6:54 AM on September 18, 2015 [6 favorites]

Yes. Amen to all of that.
posted by gerstle at 8:42 AM on September 18, 2015