One of the grossest perviest most invasive exploitative dehumanizing behaviors we humans indulge ourselves in these days of social media: demanding to know HOW somebody died.
I’m absolutely guilty of this: seeing an obituary or gofundme or in memoriam grief post about a total stranger (usually someone local-ish) and immediately wanting to know WHAT TOOK THEM AWAY “too soon”. How? How did this relatively-young person die? How did this old person die? How did this person die so “tragically”?
WE WANT TO KNOW THE SPECIFIC TRAGEDY YOU ALLUDE TO SO ENTICINGLY.
fishing accident suicide car crash logging accident overdose drunken mishap sudden fast-acting disease murder where which bridge what road plane train automobile which body of water which treacherous peak what safety gear left off
Ultimately what we want is some evidence that we are not at risk of the same thing happening to us. We want to know it was avoidable (or now at least is for us). That this will never happen to me or mine! That maybe even they asked for it.
We want to know who to blame.
We want to know the details of their deaths to comfort us. The same details that are exceedingly painful for their loved ones to see in print and just try to absorb and deal with, that they cannot find any comfort in or escape from — we want those details broadcast to us as total fucking strangers so that we will feel better and safer and somehow chosen to stay alive, or tell ourselves we are somehow superior to falling prey to.
For me it takes the shape of highlighting their names and right clicking to do a “web search”, hoping to find an article that says they were the only occupant in a one vehicle collision: drugs or alcohol were involved. So then I can be happy and self-righteous: won’t happen to me, and thank god they didn’t take anyone else out with them.
For other people it goes an invasive step further: asking for and/or sharing those details in comment sections. With or without performative sympathy: being unapologetically entitled and demanding about it. How died???? What happened????
The worst, of course, is when these pretty-natural reactions are verbalized and/or put in writing for everyone to see: punk had it coming or IDK why everyone is feeling sorry for him when he could have killed someone or sorry but that was just dumb what did they think was going to happen or great another jumper making traffic stand still should’ve done it sooner why couldn’t they do it at night at home alone that’s what happens when you play with fire do drugs whatever.
I personally feel pretty strongly though that as long as you don’t show gore, accident scenes that teach communities something should be posted and published and spread around all over. Like … this is how this happened, and what we can do to avoid it happening again.
It’s natural to want to know more about death. To want to understand. To want to handle and inspect the specifics when so much about dying is vague and intangible. To find some evidence that we are less at risk than others, and that our number is nowhere next to being up when there are so many other people who should (and will, clearly) come before us with their high risk lifestyles peer pressure bad influences failure to go get that checked out and wrong places wrong times that we can probably easily steer clear of just by sitting at home safely, staring at our screens. Judging and inquiring. Commenting and searching.