Personal Loss Should Not Be A Public Event
Ok, now this is something that has been on my mind for quite a while now. I (as I have mentioned in several blog posts previous) browse several forums on a regular basis, RSBANDB being one of them. But it never ceases to baffle me as to how regularly as to how often people are willing to discus such personal topics with a forum full of people, who for the most part, are strangers. Topics particularly concerning death confuse me. If when somebody close to you passes away, the first thing you do is to go and announce it along with all the details to a public forum, you have problems. In the past 2 years of my life I’ve had two people very close to me pass away, and although at both times I was actively involved in a number of internet communities I did not have one single thought about letting the general populations of those communities know. Maybe I’m just a private person. In fact thinking about it I didn’t even tell many people on the internet what had happened, even those I knew well.
Perhaps If I was to be slightly more empathetic I could understand that gushing your emotions to a forum full of people you don’t know well, may be easier than doing the same to somebody face to face. But still, Why some people feel the need to catalogue every tragic event in their life on the internet, an entirely public domain, I can’t understand. What do you gain from it? Sympathy? Sympathy from a bunch of strangers or people you barely know? I would think that’s almost equal to nothing to any reasonable person.
I’m sometimes slightly suspicious of these people, and sometimes I think they might be making it all up. But that is extremely cynical, and although I am extremely cynical, the better part of me would like to think that there are few people fucked up enough in the world to invent somebody elses death and that most of them are not in online gaming forums. Plus, you have no way of knowing if the person has died or not, and bursting on to a topic proclaiming ‘YOU ARE A LIER!!’ makes you look like an insensitive prick, and if they aren’t lieing (which is most likely) you’ve just upset them a hell of a lot.
Although whether they’re telling the truth or not is really irrelevant, topics of such personal matter should not be posted in public.
Yeah, get blogs!
Hah, agree with you a bit there; I can’t help thinking people are lying sometimes…
I think I have to admit to even doing this myself on some rare occasions without realising that I’m doing it and thinking better of it later - that is the public display of my loss, pain or whatever, have sympathy for me plx - but definitely not on the forums. I tend to keep my private life just that, generally. Private.
Yeah I agree mostly, but it would feel better than saying nothing to noone and getting no comfort.
Comfort or not? I’d chose the best, #1.
I have to agree. I wouldn’t post anything like that on a forum. Maybe people ar just more open than me.
I wouldn’t post anything that dramatic, but you know, I might let my clanmates or guildies know I just failed a math test or something.
It creates a really awkward situation when someone is like “Yeah, my brother just died”. You don’t know how to console them, and if you don’t you feel like a dickbag. Then it’s really awkward to talk to them for a little while after because you don’t want to upset them or anything accidentally.
I sort of know what you mean.
Not only announcing the death of a relative/friend, but stating that they’ll be away from the forums for several days or weeks.
Only to start posting again on the same day.
Took me two tries but I saw the baby lion, Brad. You were definitely on something when you saw that, lol.