Wednesday, September 15, 2021

What Facebook is good for

Facebook is stereotypically only good for cat videos and conspiracy theories. But the way people use it makes it even better at birthdays and, especially, deaths. Again and again, people (including me) post their thanks for the overwhelming flood of birthday greetings they get every year. And as I experienced when my father died five years ago today, it is a great comfort to receive comments, post reactions, and messages from Facebook Friends: counting my responses, my post about him had 398 comments and 154 reactions. Since then, whenever I see a post about a death, I've tried to make a point of responding, even just with a formula: "My condolences." (Andrew Shields, #111words, 15 September 2021)

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