Three weeks ago, when my dog Tyson passed away, I kept looking at the hundreds of pictures I had of him on my phone. And yes, I wrote a post. I am that person. I use social media as a public diary sometimes, to say things I feel, I go through, and I learn.
I posted multiple pictures of Tyson and my family, and as people replied, expressing their love for dogs or wishing Tyson well in the afterlife, I could feel the warmth.
There are many people who never post when they lose a loved one — family members, friends, lovers, or pets. They grieve in their own silent way. But there are others, like me, who like to pen down their thoughts — sometimes even as a way to celebrate the lives of the ones who are no longer in our sphere. Last month, when journalist and author Jugal Mody passed away — social media was full of posts that spoke about his kindness, his intelligence, his friendships, his magnanimous personality that gave so much love. I had worked with Jugal, and remembered him as a warm person, but I didn’t know so much about him. And as I read the posts, I felt something — what a lovely person Jugal must have been to incite such overwhelming feelings in all his friends. They gave him a befitting farewell and homage.
And so I say it’s okay to talk about your grief on social media — if it helps you, so be it. If it makes you feel like you are paying a tribute to a life well lived, that’s your call. But when I saw influencer Malvika Sitlani’s post about her mother’s demise — complete with aesthetic pictures shot of her sitting at the grave, and holding a rose in her hands — I felt conflicted. This was not like the pictures I posted of Tyson — moments at home when I caught him looking adorable, or staring at my mom in the most dumb way. These pictures were not like Jugal’s photos that his friends posted — of fun times they had spent together with their goofy friend.
But these pictures of Malvika mourning were not candid, or shot by paparazzi, who have been doing this for years at celebrity funerals (they have been getting flack for it in the recent years). These were planned. These looked like they had been referenced from a movie poster. These looked like they were meant to fit into that Instagram aesthetic many influencers now can’t do without. They made me ask: Should we even beautify our grief now to fit our online personality? Does being an influencer mean we abandon the rawness of life?
When I started reading about this, I realised there was a word for this phenomenon of influencers mourning publicly. There is a word for everything these days, I say. It is called “publicity grieving” or “grief labour”, which means that the grief is “strategically curated to drive engagement, maintain follower rapport, and build personal brand authenticity”.
What? What does that even mean?
Maybe that means that we have lost sight of ourselves. We don’t remember how we used to be before social media took over our lives. Everything has to be set to music, everything has to match an aesthetic, everything has to be recorded, everything needs to be reacted to — it’s a world that desperately needs to pause and think about what they are putting out there.
I feel it’s healthy to share your grief — sometimes only because it finds resonance in another, and they feel less lonely. But maybe it’s high time we stopped curating our grief, or curating our life, for it to always look pretty, and sorted. We need to stop fearing judgement when we show up as our messy, authentic selves. My idea of an ideal social media will be when everyone posts without a filter — either on their face or on their lives. Too much to hope for?
See you next time.
Ranting and raving about all that’s trending on social media, Aastha Atray Banan is an author, creator, podcaster, and the Editor of your favourite weekend read, Sunday mid-day. She posts at @aasthaatray on Instagram.
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.