Facebook and the bizarre new culture of grief

The last thing I want to do is take Facebook too seriously; it’s an isolated portal of communication that can only display so much of a person, so it’s inaccurate to judge people solely by the content they choose to post.

However, it does add up. People create patterns and expectations based on their shared information. Even friends I love dearly in “real life” have been hidden on Facebook because I simply don’t care about 99% of what they deem share-worthy. Most of the time, it’s nothing personal.

But I cringe every time I see a personal prayer request – for several reasons. It’s bad enough that “I’ll pray for you” has become a conversation-closer with good intentions that is rarely followed through; these are the posts that typically garner the most ‘likes’ and comments, and I’ll bet that most of them come from people who otherwise don’t give a damn about the rest of your life, except when there’s an opportunity to be a part of something that breeds attention. It’s for the same reason people tend to dress up ordinary encounters they had with someone who recently died, because death and grief create a backwards celebrity status.

I’m a strange person who considers the intimacy of prayer in the same way as marital intimacy: you don’t share the details with a great number of people. Just your significant other, your close friends and relatives, maybe a counselor or mentoring figure. I highly doubt those are the only people who have access to your Facebook account. So when you are asking an artificial community of ‘friends’ to pray on your behalf, what are you really asking for? Why does your grief demand a spotlight?

Personally, I’m terrible with remembering prayer requests. I’d much rather be asked to do something tangibly helpful, like make soup for someone who is sick. It’s possible that my discomfort with publicized prayer requests is linked to my changing conviction about the purpose of prayer, period: I don’t necessarily believe in praying for specific outcomes to problems anymore. Doing so makes me feel like I’m treating God as a personal genie, which I don’t believe he is. If someone is ill, I’ll pray that the doctors do their best performing courses of treatment. I’ll pray that the sick person is giving strength and resiliency, regardless of the outcome of their prognosis.

I think of Facebook-shared prayer requests like the cliffhanger ending of a TV show, because it sets up expectations of fulfillment. You are creating an audience for your troubles, and the voyeuristic tendencies of most people may keep them wanting to know what happens. And if the end result is not what you wanted, what then? Then your grief has been made public, which sets a precedent that leaving a condolence comment suffices for genuine sympathy. It doesn’t.

Real community should be there for you, in person, assisting you with your real needs (Jews have perfected this practice, called “sitting shiva”). Don’t settle for the falsehood of Facebook grief, because while most people may feel passing sympathy for you, they will likely forget once the next engagement post starts making headlines.