Internet Graves: Are Facebooks Eternal?

By Samantha Friedwald

The eeriness of a room untouched. Of a bed made, of clothes all hung up. Everything as it was, as it is. Everything lived in and with a sense of anticipation of the owner’s return. Not wrong, but not wholly right. Something askew, yet everything is in perfect arrangement. That is how it feels to look at Beatriz Ponce’s Facebook profile. Her black-and-white pose is both beautiful and nervous as if it were a Broadway actress’ first headshot. It says she is studying International Relations at Boston University; she is single and interested in men. Her favorite television shows are Lost, Grey’s Anatomy, and Smallville. Her favorite movie is Lord of the Rings. Her cell phone number is neatly typed above her address.

However, she no longer checks her page for friend requests, writes on her friends’ walls nor does she anticipate posts left on her own wall. Beatriz Ponce died after being hit by a car on October 3, 2006, at seventeen years old. While she is no longer alive, her Facebook page remains an eternal Internet gravestone and a memorial continuing to haunt its visitors. Ponce’s tragic situation has sparked a bizarre question: What happens to our Internet personas when we die?

While Facebook is the latest frontier of personal Internet memorials, it certainly is not the first. Since the Internet’s inception, people have used it as a way to not only expand their interpersonal relationships, but as a way to have a second life. From chat rooms to e-mail, early users chose screennames representing their real-life persona or an image they wanted to project. Similar to Livejournals and profiles, people use screennames, such as “hOtTsTuFf8” to “Jetzfan9,” as a way to create or re-create themselves in an entirely new environment, and these identities live on, perhaps, long after they were intended to.

Unexpectedly, the Internet is now a place to mourn and memorialize the dead. Desiree Passaro, Ponce’s cousin, says that seeing Ponce’s profile on Facebook is a constant reminder of the seven-teen-year-old’s tragic death.

According to Pamela Roberts’ article, “Here Today and Cyberspace Tomorrow: Memorials and Bereavements on the Web” in Generations, the earliest web sites dedicated to the deceased were created in 1995. Virtual Memorial Garden and World Wide Cemetery sites provide online memorials that can be created by friends or family members. Both sites offer memorials, or “permanent monuments” that can include a picture, a birth and death date, and an obituary. In other words, as long as these web sites are maintained by the administrator, so will the person’s memory and virtual gravesite.

Kenneth Pfeiffer’s web presence exemplifies the messy and disconcerting role sites can play in commemorating the dead. Pfeiffer’s Myspace page, adorned with a Florida Gator layout and videos of himself, includes, in his “about me” section: “RIP Dave Mitnek 5/31/86-2/16/08…Dave I love you bro and will miss [you] and never forget our great memories.” According to an online obituary found on Livejournal.com, Mitnek passed away “unexpectedly.” In a disturbing and unfortunate twist of fate, Pfeiffer’s makeshift Myspace memorial for his friend would soon transform into another memorial—his own.

Pfeiffer was listed on Mydeathspace.com on December 5th, 2008. Mydeathspace is a unique site that not only posts the deceased’s online obituary or article, but also links the reader to the personal Myspace page for the obituary writer. According to the site, Pfeiffer was stabbed over 50 times by his roommate. Now, Pfeiffer’s Myspace is also adorned with posts like this one: “You will never be forgotten and will always be loved and missed! XOXO love you Kenny I will always miss you cuz!” His loved ones even changed their user names to things like “Can’t Believe Your Gone R.I.P. Kenny Bear.”

Caitlin Badeaux, a student in Boston, lost close friend Ryan Gereaue this past September. Badeaux often visits Gereaue’s Facebook profile. “I think it’s strange I could stumble upon Ryan’s name,” she says. “Instead of seeing ‘what’s up this weekend’ on his wall, I see ‘RIP I miss you.”

Ponce’s, Pfeiffer’s, and Gereaue’s profiles are more captivating than just postings on an obituary site because they represent more of their former personalities. Their profiles capture a moment. Each choice reflects a careful detail the profile author chose to represent themselves or perhaps, the person he or she wished to be.

“You know what’s weird?” asks Badeaux. “In his ‘interests’ it says ‘anything outdoors and living a healthy lifestyle’ and he died of a meth overdose.”

While web cemeteries are easier to control, profiles found on social-networking sites (SNS) are harder to delete because they are password protected. Abihinay Evani, a graduate student who works closely with computers, believes since SNSs like Facebook or Myspace have privacy policies that require a password to log in. These profiles may never get removed. The password ultimately unlocks one’s Facebook profile, but passwords are often taken to the grave. With it one can alter information and most importantly delete one’s profile. Without it everything must remain the same.

Myspace has taken steps to deal with this strange, new phenomenon of the dead amongst the living. “Myspace handles each incident on a case-by-case basis when notified, and will work with families to respect their wishes,” said Tom Anderson, president of Myspace as quoted in the New York Times article “Rituals of Grief Go Online.” Though founded only a year after Myspace in 2004, Facebook still does not have a way to deal with the deceased. According to its web site, there are 130 million active users. To be considered “inactive” would mean the user has not logged-in for more than 30 days. For Passaro and her other family members, it has been difficult to remove Ponce’s profile. “No one has the password, so [we] can’t cancel the account,” Passaro says. “[Facebook] still reminds you when it’s her birthday.”

For many, the shallowness, the popularity contests, and the vanity that Facebook often propagates make SNSs inappropriate places to deal with death. Badeaux remarks, “Facebook isn’t serious. It’s a place you go to see someone’s new haircut or boob-job, it shouldn’t be a place to mourn.”

“I think that Facebook should auto-cancel profiles if they’re not being used for a certain amount of time. Profiles should just disappear,” says Passaro. “Every time I type in a name that starts with ‘B’ her name comes up. It’s an uncomfortable reminder,” she says. Passaro continues, “I think [Ponce] would have wanted to get rid of the account.”

But, some like the idea of an eternal Internet memorial. “I don’t know why anyone would want to remove the profile. Wouldn’t friends and family want that memorial? Maybe the person wouldn’t want to remove it,” Evani said. “I’d rather keep it up.” Better than just a grave, web sites and SNS profiles can be visited over and over again--multiple times, in the same hour. No matter where you are, the deceased is still at your fingertips.

In true modern technological fashion, the Internet has once again adeptly reshaped the way we express human emotion. Just as we can use the Internet to help us find love through online matchmaking, the Internet might also help us in our grieving.

While most online obituary sites like Virtual Gardens post funeral information, groups on SNS sites are leading the way in connecting communities who share grief. Young users, such as Matthew Teto who created the Facebook group “We will never forget Brian Mullarkey,” after Mullarkey committed suicide in 2007, find such community comforting. Teto wrote in the group’s description, “On August 1st we lost one of the greatest guys I ever knew, Brian Mullarkey. Since some of us don’t have phones or might be far away, you can use this group to talk about the man we all loved, Brian.” The group provided times for the mass, wake, funeral, and a memorial that commemorated his one-year anniversary. Through the use of the group, users have shared videos, pictures, posts, and even a link to another web site created to honor Mullarkey. Teto posted, “There’s not much I can say, all I know is…the day before…he was fine, and happy. I don’t know how it happened, and now I’ll never know, I miss him.”

“Groups” have also been set up in memory of victims of tragedies such as the Virginia Tech shootings. In addition to a memorial that posts the information about the deceased, the site provides links to other Facebook memorial groups. The Facebook groups can be joined by any user. They help create support for the network of people who have lost someone.

These internet memorial groups can be worldwide, and they can include strangers as well as close friends and family. Even people with looser connections can participate in the online memorials. Robert J. Pagano Jr., for example, wrote on the group honoring Mullarkey: “Hey, what’s going on everyone? Unfortunately, me and Brian were never close friends, but we were friends, and I’m glad that I was able to call him one when I knew him.”

Unlike the SNS profile, a group, though, can be deleted. For some that is easier to deal with. Passaro says, “I’m not so much against groups because they’re temporary.” Passaro and her cousins created a Facebook group to post funeral information for Ponce. “We chose to do it. It can be eliminated,” Passaro says. “It is a great way to remember her. A lot of people and friends who loved her can now see her.”

However, some still think SNS groups are not the place to share thoughts about death. Some group walls are too colloquial, and are frequently marred by crude language, Internet lingo and abbreviations. “Death is so sad and it is so serious. If people were into [Gereaue’s] ‘gangsta’ lifestyle that’s fine,” Badeaux remarks. “Out of respect, people shouldn’t post things like curses--things that they wouldn’t say in his eulogy--in front of his parents.”

This phenomenon is something previous generations never dreamed could occur. These are modern-day problems that today’s so-called “digital natives” must learn to deal with. “I wonder if people will still do this in five years,” Badeaux asks. “I think it will fade.”

In five years, the high school crowd will be in college and college-age crowd will be adults, and the adults with SNSs will be slowly inching toward mid-life crises and AARP cards. Just like the decision to donate organs, some people have already chosen what they want their loved ones to do with their profiles. For student Maggie Rossman, her sister has already directed Rossman on what to do with her profile in the case of her death. “I have explicit instructions,” Rossman says, “that if anything happens, the first thing I have to do is delete her profile.”

The novelty makes it difficult to gauge whether these web sites and SNS profiles are just a trend or something more lasting. Passaro asks, “But what’s going to happen in twenty years?” She says, “Facebook is a graveyard.”