When a Web page outlives its owner
A person's online space can turn into a place for friends to post memorials.
Jenna Ross
Xiaomi Qu and Dave Chung had posted on each other's Facebook Web profiles for as long as they'd known each other.
The two University of Minnesota students' messages ranged from the silly ("remember when you went insane last night?") to the sillier ("i saw you today wheee.")
So when Chung, 21, drowned in a Bloomington lake April 14, it felt only natural that Qu would again visit her friend's Web page and post.
The tone, however, changed.
"We'll love and remember you for always dchung," Qu wrote.
Original article with photo or
This message is one of more than 35 that fellow students have written on Chung's wall since his death. In life, a person's Facebook or MySpace wall serves as a public space for students to speak to and about their friends. In death, it can spontaneously become a memorial and site of mourning.
"It's amazing to look at the posts and see all the people he touched," Qu said of Chung, whom she knew for more than two years. "It's a little piece of him in cyberspace."
After a young person dies, oftentimes his or her Facebook or MySpace profile remains. Friends post their wishes ("Rest in peace, baby."), memories ("remember when you taught me bass guitar ...") and frustrations ("i just dont understand").
About 9 million college and high school students fashion profiles on Facebook. More than 72 million people have made pages on MySpace. And many users visit these sites daily, sometimes hourly.
So it makes sense that an online community so important to many young people's lives remains important when one of those young people dies.
During grieving, "it's less about the format or media," said Kathleen Condon, staff counselor at the University of Minnesota. "It's more about what's being expressed."
Expressing grief is healthy for the griever, Condon said. So any forum that encourages that expression is positive, she said, even months after someone's death.
Though Michelle Linsmeyer, a junior at the U, has "loved" reading all the wall posts on Chung's profile since he died, she finds her friend's cyber existence "eerie," she said.
The two most recent messages on her own wall are from Chung. In early April, he went to a concert she helped promote, and he promised to be at the next one: "keep me posted on upcoming shows -- i'll be there for sure," he wrote.
"It's hard to go to my page and just keep seeing that," Linsmeyer said.
Chung's profile won't remain forever. When Facebook learns that a user has died, it removes some of the profile, including the contact information section, said Chris Hughes, spokesman for Facebook. Photos, personal information and the wall stay for a month. Then the company removes the profile entirely.
MySpace's policy on the matter is less clear. The company declined to comment for this article, but users said that even after people die, those profiles have remained up and active.
More than three months have passed since U student Germain Vigeant fell to her death from atop a grain elevator in Minneapolis.
But the St. Paul East Sider still gets shout outs on her MySpace page.
Mardi Palan, 21, visits Vigeant's page each time she checks her own profile. She looks at the more than 60 posts that friends have left since Vigeant's death in January. Though she was Vigeant's roommate, she didn't know half of the people Vigeant apparently touched, she said.
One of their mutual friends tried to contact officials at MySpace to make sure that Vigeant's profile stayed up. They were worried that because Vigeant no longer logged on, her profile would become inactive and eventually deleted.
But then, on March 22, Vigeant's page showed that she had logged on. Her friends don't know how it happened; they believe no one has access to her account. But they're thankful.
"I don't know what I would do if her profile came down," Palan said. "It would feel like she was gone entirely."
Nora Paul, director for the Institute of New Media Studies at the University of Minnesota, hopes these profiles won't be lost to the delete key. Academically and historically, she said, such documentation is important.
"Records of social life in the early 21st century are so ephemeral," she said. "Losing such a lovely virtual expression of love and grief would be a shame."
Jenna Ross is a University of Minnesota student on assignment for the Star Tribune.
©2006 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
Jenna Ross
Xiaomi Qu and Dave Chung had posted on each other's Facebook Web profiles for as long as they'd known each other.
The two University of Minnesota students' messages ranged from the silly ("remember when you went insane last night?") to the sillier ("i saw you today wheee.")
So when Chung, 21, drowned in a Bloomington lake April 14, it felt only natural that Qu would again visit her friend's Web page and post.
The tone, however, changed.
"We'll love and remember you for always dchung," Qu wrote.
Original article with photo or
This message is one of more than 35 that fellow students have written on Chung's wall since his death. In life, a person's Facebook or MySpace wall serves as a public space for students to speak to and about their friends. In death, it can spontaneously become a memorial and site of mourning.
"It's amazing to look at the posts and see all the people he touched," Qu said of Chung, whom she knew for more than two years. "It's a little piece of him in cyberspace."
After a young person dies, oftentimes his or her Facebook or MySpace profile remains. Friends post their wishes ("Rest in peace, baby."), memories ("remember when you taught me bass guitar ...") and frustrations ("i just dont understand").
About 9 million college and high school students fashion profiles on Facebook. More than 72 million people have made pages on MySpace. And many users visit these sites daily, sometimes hourly.
So it makes sense that an online community so important to many young people's lives remains important when one of those young people dies.
During grieving, "it's less about the format or media," said Kathleen Condon, staff counselor at the University of Minnesota. "It's more about what's being expressed."
Expressing grief is healthy for the griever, Condon said. So any forum that encourages that expression is positive, she said, even months after someone's death.
Though Michelle Linsmeyer, a junior at the U, has "loved" reading all the wall posts on Chung's profile since he died, she finds her friend's cyber existence "eerie," she said.
The two most recent messages on her own wall are from Chung. In early April, he went to a concert she helped promote, and he promised to be at the next one: "keep me posted on upcoming shows -- i'll be there for sure," he wrote.
"It's hard to go to my page and just keep seeing that," Linsmeyer said.
Chung's profile won't remain forever. When Facebook learns that a user has died, it removes some of the profile, including the contact information section, said Chris Hughes, spokesman for Facebook. Photos, personal information and the wall stay for a month. Then the company removes the profile entirely.
MySpace's policy on the matter is less clear. The company declined to comment for this article, but users said that even after people die, those profiles have remained up and active.
More than three months have passed since U student Germain Vigeant fell to her death from atop a grain elevator in Minneapolis.
But the St. Paul East Sider still gets shout outs on her MySpace page.
Mardi Palan, 21, visits Vigeant's page each time she checks her own profile. She looks at the more than 60 posts that friends have left since Vigeant's death in January. Though she was Vigeant's roommate, she didn't know half of the people Vigeant apparently touched, she said.
One of their mutual friends tried to contact officials at MySpace to make sure that Vigeant's profile stayed up. They were worried that because Vigeant no longer logged on, her profile would become inactive and eventually deleted.
But then, on March 22, Vigeant's page showed that she had logged on. Her friends don't know how it happened; they believe no one has access to her account. But they're thankful.
"I don't know what I would do if her profile came down," Palan said. "It would feel like she was gone entirely."
Nora Paul, director for the Institute of New Media Studies at the University of Minnesota, hopes these profiles won't be lost to the delete key. Academically and historically, she said, such documentation is important.
"Records of social life in the early 21st century are so ephemeral," she said. "Losing such a lovely virtual expression of love and grief would be a shame."
Jenna Ross is a University of Minnesota student on assignment for the Star Tribune.
©2006 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.