This week I was surprised to find the MySpace page of a young man I knew who died of his own hand on July of 2006. On the “In Memory of” My Space page, this guy (dead now over eight months) has a dozen friends, some of whom still leaving comments for him. In fact, he has over 50 comments. Ten of those comments have been left in the first two weeks of this month.Through a convoluted series of clicks I ended up on MySpace. How I got there and what I was originally looking for aren’t related. Isn’t that the way it is sometimes on the internet? You start heading in one direction and you end up in another direction … or at least you stop at places along the way that you didn’t think you would.
That’s how I got to MySpace. I abhor MySpace. There are so many reasons I object to MySpace and I’ll just list a few. First and foremost is the gaudy, icky, horrible look of just about every single MySpace page I’ve visited. I think all the backgrounds are annoying. Either they are too dark to read what’s there, too bright it feels like sunglasses are necessary, or just plain distracting with all that flashing, darting, glimmering hearts, lines or whatever going on. Not to mention the page is too wide for the screen. I hate sites where I have to scroll left and right as well as up and down.
I have to admit that the target audience for MySpace is about half my age. So, maybe I just don’t get it. To me it seems the “communication” going on between MySpace friends is inane, profane, and out of line. I feel a “kids these days” coming on so I’d better stop before I propel myself into an even older demographic group than I belong.
This is still quite curious to me. How can dead people have a MySpace page … or any web page for that matter? And why? And who is *really* maintaining this page? How many other dead people have MySpace pages? And what about the people who are posting comments on the dead guy’s page. An out pouring of guilt, anger, and sadness are infused in their messages. They miss him. They blame themselves for his suicide. They are processing their anger openly and outwardly on his MySpace page, knowing that he can’t read it and that other people do.
And maybe that’s what the survivors of suicide need; a place to vent and to heal. At different points along the way I think we all wonder what it is that we leavve behind after we’re gone. In this case, I guess it’s a MySPace page where people can leave a comment.
My opinion ? All of those that are posting to this dead guys MySpace are dead themslves, it’s obvious.
Much like the shrine of flowers we so often see along many highways. They are not placed by family, friends or well wishers. No, these dead plastic arrangements grow up and out of the ground on their own. The flower phonomenom is very similar to the MySpace phonomenom and just goes to prove, you can’t keep a good dead guy down.