http://newsdurhamregion.com/opinion/article/159210
Here are some of the things I know about a 17-year-old youth gunned down in Ajax last week: he loved language and poetry, he helped classmates with French homework, he dreamed of becoming a rapper and had a big gig this Friday in Oshawa.
I never met Chris "Splitz" Tshilombo but I know what he looked like, what he sounded like and what his friends thought of him because it's all captured online.
His music is on YouTube and like many much bigger artists he created a fan page for his music on Facebook. And after his death the number of people who "like" his fan page or view and comment on his videos keeps growing. Commenters have dubbed him one of the best young rappers in Durham and they mourn his death with daily messages.
This kind of public outpouring of grief is nothing new in the world of social media, for a whole generation of people the natural instinct after someone passes is to visit their Facebook page and leave a message.
These pages become impromptu memorials where people share their sadness. In some cases, people even send their loved ones private messages and e-mails, despite knowing that they'll never get a response.
As it stands Facebook does not delete profiles of members who have died and so for now they remain a snapshot of lives frozen in time, never to be updated. In some cases, profiles will see a flurry of comments each year on the anniversary of a person's death.
In fact, four years ago, a blog called mydeathspace.com launched specifically to link public deaths to social media profiles. Initially, the blog connected mainly MySpace pages to news articles detailing murders and accidents. The victims were generally young, in their late teens and 20s. The site occasionally included suicides, cancer victims and drug overdoses.
The site now links to Facebook pages as well and includes celebrity deaths. It's also become more interactive with readers posting their own links in the forums.
It's all somewhat macabre, but it represents the very real curiosity the public has about death and dying. If pressed, I think many people will admit to searching Facebook when they hear about headline-making deaths.
Facebook's ubiquitous 'Rest-in-Peace' groups often garner hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of members when the death is public, particularly if it involves a child. Examples include the death of Tori Stafford in Woodstock and Keagan Davis, the toddler found dead in January in Oshawa. Keagan's RIP group has more than 5,000 members.
In many cases the members of the group have a tenuous connection with the victims; perhaps they know a relative, or they're complete strangers who would normally have no other place to express public sympathy.
In the case of Chris Tshilombo, a dozen bouquets and a handful of notes were left in the parking lot of St. Nedela's church where he died. Those tokens are far outnumbered by the notes and photos posted online.
Ultimately, these days we share our lives online and it seems our loved ones will share our deaths there as well.
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Originally Posted by bowieluva
