The ubiquity of obituaries on Facebook and WhatsApp pages

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By Okechukwu Nwafor

It is with a deep sense of concern that I wish to observe the ubiquity of obituary messages on our social media, especially on Facebook walls and WhatsApp groups.

Almost on a daily basis, as I scroll down my Facebook wall, news of death inundates one and dampens the spirit. Sometimes obituary news follows in quick succession on more than five walls, consecutively. As a matter of fact, this has become one of the major repugnant manifestations of social media pastimes, especially Facebook. This is because, in the olden days when someone died, the news of such person’s obituary was treated with dignity. In fact, news of death was treated with such respectability that a hush silence would prevail over the neighborhood for days. People discussed such news in whispers instead of the characteristic irreverent loudness we see today on Facebook and WhatsApp. Most often I wonder whether the severity, the agony and the extremities of death have been mollified by the social media. Does locating the news, and an image, of the dead on the social media translate to a technological dislocation? Is this a dislocation that suggests that the dead is never dead because the remains have been buried in what Dilmac describes as ‘mobile, computerized cemetry’ where ‘digital remains pile high.’

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Do we assume that a computerized corpse does not elicit the same measure of emotional pain as the physically dead body? That is why some individuals would consistently type ‘rip’ on the news of obituary on Facebook walls. Some even click the ‘like’ button and one wonders whether the person likes the reported news of the individual’s death or the fact that the individual died.

It is a fact that the rise in obituary news on the social media comes with a corresponding mass callousness. Facebook has become our collective memorial landscape where even the enemies would heartlessly celebrate the death of an individual. It has become a space where emotional indifference challenges the traditional meanings of death. It has become a space where our walls are stained with the blood of depressing emojis. As I scroll down my Facebook wall, it seems from morning till night I am now charged with the quotidian task of typing ‘Accept my condolences,’ on almost every other wall on Facebook. This is a topic most would wish to remain silent on but at the same time it is a worrisome existential reality.

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Whether we keep silent or not, we continue to see obituaries posted on Facebook walls, almost on a daily basis.

Do these ubiquitous obituaries gesture towards the possible impact of COVID 19? Answers please.

Above all, our prayer is that none of us shall witness any obituary again. We shall all live long to fulfil our destinies in Jesus Name we pray. Amen.

What are your thoughts?

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