If the medium really the message? This month I received a robocall from Bill Clinton, was invited to join LinkedIn by my younger brother, and learned that one of my freshman year college roommates had died on facebook. In each instance I felt that the person involved and the emotions they stirred up were far larger than the manner in which we were connecting.
A facebook friendship is something different from friendship. When someone tells me that they haven’t joined yet (won’t we all, eventually, join?) I note that it’s a great way to keep in touch with people we don’t keep in touch with. But what facebook friends post on their walls can be informative, entertaining and even moving. I had been following my college roommate track her illness on facebook for a year, and was looking forward to the day she announced its remission. She posted weekly about her treatments, her tiredness, and the moments of peace she found in between, all with bracing honesty. In the days after her death her facebook page become a living, shifting tribute as family, friends and colleagues posted photos, remembrances, and songs, while others pored over them and added comments. Many of the tributes, like this one, were self-involved, more about the contributor’s inability to express grief fully than about the person who died. The most meaningful ones revealed some small new thing about her: an anecdote, a card she made, a favorite expression. On my college roommate’s facebook wall family photos just weeks-old were mixed up with others from high school and professional events, and terse, formal platitudes were followed by skittish, lyrical rants. Each slight, random expression contributed to a portrait of her that’s fittingly vivid.