Post 3: Local Article

Site is virtual graveyard for MySpace's deceased
by Meghan Barr
Tuesday, Sep 11, 2007


Real death is hard enough as it is. Furthermore, the death becomes a whole different experience when the people who pass away are your peers. During high school, I lost one friend, one friend-of-a-friend, and one classmate. Realizing that someone else—who is at the same stage in his or her life as you are—is just as mortal as the next person is downright spooky. Feeling the goose bumps as you pass by their empty desks or glancing their grieving families in the grocery aisle can really mess with your head. But the thing I hate the most about getting over the deaths of peers are the MySpace and Facebook groups or accounts managed in their honors. Its an awkward thing to be invited into an “RIP…” group. I think its pointless, but declining the invitation would be rude. Seeing a profile page left exactly as it was made by the now-deceased user is quite cold and haunting, but seeing a page littered with “RIP”s and “i LuV yOu”s seems disrespectful and almost detrimental to the attempt of preserving the deceased's personality and memory.

Experiencing death on a real level and on a basic technological level is indeed damn hard. Why add to this pain? MyDeathSpace.com is the mind child of an unidentified, morbid, and bored young man. He began searching MySpace for the names of teens he found in the news—those who were being killed, killing themselves, or killing others—and eventually gathered all of the profiles into his aptly named directory. Many problems lie behind the creation of such a site.

Firstly, murderers’ profiles are also listed and linked to from the page; arranged victim and murderer, side by side. While the site is careful to specify accused and convicted criminals, there have been some slip-ups where innocent MySpace users who simply share names with killers become linked up to the site. They begin receiving harassing messages and even death threats from other MySpace users even though may be completely unaware that the murder even occurred or that MyDeathSpace even existed.

Secondly, this archive site creates yet another forum in which members can discuss and perhaps premeditate unhealthy or morbid actions. “Wickedly—curious” writes: “Anyone with any insight tell me if it would be possible for 2 people to shoot each other in the heads at the same time?”

Lastly, these sites, as well as the grieving groups generated on a more local basis are serving to whittle away at the interpersonal experience one has when dealing with a death. Death should be a solemn, humbling time to reflect. You don’t need to leave comments to a person who can’t possibly read them to show that you truly care. You don’t need a join a Facebook group to miss someone who is gone. You certainly don’t have to look at a profile page to remember the lives and stories of those who have passed away.