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’I know you are myspace’n in Heaven now’ |
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Written by asap
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Thursday, 17 August 2006 |
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The language may be new. But the sentiment on the public comments section of Alicia Castaneda’s MySpace page would be familiar to anyone who has lost someone.
A teen from Florida, who goes by “ANDREA...the COOLEST BITCH on MYSPACE,” posted on her dead 19-year-old friend’s site: “i will comment you everyday until i have some kind of closure.” The next day, another friend, going by Shnnon, wrote, “You’re new pic is the best ;) i know you are myspace’n in Heaven now...lol.”
Andrea added later: “i went to your viewing today. ... when i hugged your mom was the hardest part i swear i felt a piece of you then.”
Online grief is public. It’s oddly juxtaposed amid pop songs, animated dancing cats and ads for dating services. And yet social networking is still social networking, no matter how dreadful the subject.
The just-launched Eons.com, a social networking site for baby boomers, includes a prominent link to “obits” on its home page between “goals” and “lifemap.” There’s even an obituary search function.
Grim subject matter also doesn’t deter movie marketers. Paramount Pictures put up a MySpace page for Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center.” It now has more than 230 “friends” who left both serious and tongue-in-cheek comments, including the first: “thys movie l0oks pimp. ima definitely see it!!”
Morbid jokes aside, the at once anonymous and public nature of sites like MySpace can aid those who are grieving a loss, said Kim Vargoulis of Atlanta, who along with her ex-husband runs a page called “Andy’s Voice” in memory of her younger brother Andy Richardson.
“It certainly is on a much more public scale, but we also feel behind our computer some sense of anonymity,” Vargoulis said. “So it’s probably a real healthy tool in grieving. You’re able to voice your emotion while still feeling safe.”
Richardson’s head hit concrete during a fight at a July 30 Korn concert in Atlanta, and he died a few days later. Vargoulis, 35, has blogged on the tribute page and received dozens of private messages from well-wishers. Her site is both a memorial and an investigatory tool; the family is seeking witnesses to the fight for a civil lawsuit.
“It’s a great and healthy thing,” she said of the page. “One of the real misconceptions with how to grieve is that you should be strong and look like you’re handling everything well. When in fact, the best thing to do is to be open, and let it out. ... When you’re mourning, to be able to express yourself on a really wide mass scale like that, it feels really good.”
The pages for Richardson and Castaneda -- who police said was beaten to death this month by her 21-year-old boyfriend -- were both linked to by MyDeathSpace.com. Since August 2005, the site’s users have morbidly tracked more than 430 deaths by linking news stories culled from the Web with victims’ MySpace pages.
MyDeathSpace was co-founded by 25-year-old San Francisco resident Mike Patterson, who says he’s most fascinated by “clues often left on the profiles prior to the death.”
Patterson said in an e-mail interview: “Countless profiles have tag lines saying things like ’Life fast, die hard!’ and then that person will end up dying in an automobile accident. Another girl who passed away had the tag line ’Asian Drugee Whore’. She died from an overdose.”
MyDeathSpace began as “primarily a place where people would go to laugh at deaths,” Patterson said. It remains that for some users, one of whom posted about Castaneda: “I dated a girl I was real close to choking. haha.”
But others simply seem to be -- respectfully -- fascinated by death and why people die. One wrote of Castaneda and her boyfriend, the suspected killer, “I just don’t get how someone can snap like that and do that to someone they ’love.”’
Vargoulis said she didn’t know such a site had linked to her online tribute to her brother, but it didn’t bother her.
“Any outlet that’s going to get somebody to that page is fine with me,” She said. “I love people looking at that and knowing a little about my brother.”
———
asap staff reporter Ryan Pearson is based in Los Angeles.
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