Vicarious Victims and Emotional Plagiarism
A few weeks ago there was a mass shooting in Seattle. I guess everyone probably knows that. A few of the people killed were involved with a social circle I am connected to. I met one of them a couple times, at most, but could hardly consider him a friend - we might not have even been formally introduced. Some of my friends, however, were really close to the victims.
The week that followed, my LiveJournal friends list was chock full of eulogies, pictures of the victims and discussions of memorial services, funerals, etc. People shared stories of the friends they lost. What initially started out as a news story was transformed into a tragic event as the names of the victims were given life via first-hand testimonies by people I know and respect. That brought the story home.
As such, I can understand why even people who didn't know the victims were impacted by the event. I can understand why people cried, became reclusive or even posted introspective entries as a means of dealing with the implications and aftermath of an event they could identify with even if they weren't directly connected to it.
What made me sick, though, was the realization that a number of the people posting in remembrance of their "close friend's" deaths didn't actually know the victims any more than I did - perhaps a brief meeting or introduction, chance encounters at random parties. In a couple instances it seemed like people were playing up their ties to the deceased in order to gather sympathy, attention or some connection to the media spotlight.
Don't get me wrong - as mentioned above you don't have to know the people to feel connected to these events, just as you didn't have to know the victims in 9-11 to feel the impact. Embellishing or exaggerating ties in order to leach off the tragedy as a means of compensating for unrelated emotional insecurities, however, is downright pathetic.
This isn't targeted at anyone individually. I'm not making any personal judgments nor is this some passive-agressive attack; where and when appropriate I've confronted people on this directly. I don't want to get into a debate with anyone over how well they knew so-and-so. That's not the point. This is simply a reflection of a phenomenon that I found disturbing. It bothered me in much the same way that it bothered me when corporations started putting up billboards after September 11th with patriotic slogans followed by their corporate logo. It felt cheap, insincere and insulting to the people who actually suffered.
The week that followed, my LiveJournal friends list was chock full of eulogies, pictures of the victims and discussions of memorial services, funerals, etc. People shared stories of the friends they lost. What initially started out as a news story was transformed into a tragic event as the names of the victims were given life via first-hand testimonies by people I know and respect. That brought the story home.
As such, I can understand why even people who didn't know the victims were impacted by the event. I can understand why people cried, became reclusive or even posted introspective entries as a means of dealing with the implications and aftermath of an event they could identify with even if they weren't directly connected to it.
What made me sick, though, was the realization that a number of the people posting in remembrance of their "close friend's" deaths didn't actually know the victims any more than I did - perhaps a brief meeting or introduction, chance encounters at random parties. In a couple instances it seemed like people were playing up their ties to the deceased in order to gather sympathy, attention or some connection to the media spotlight.
Don't get me wrong - as mentioned above you don't have to know the people to feel connected to these events, just as you didn't have to know the victims in 9-11 to feel the impact. Embellishing or exaggerating ties in order to leach off the tragedy as a means of compensating for unrelated emotional insecurities, however, is downright pathetic.
This isn't targeted at anyone individually. I'm not making any personal judgments nor is this some passive-agressive attack; where and when appropriate I've confronted people on this directly. I don't want to get into a debate with anyone over how well they knew so-and-so. That's not the point. This is simply a reflection of a phenomenon that I found disturbing. It bothered me in much the same way that it bothered me when corporations started putting up billboards after September 11th with patriotic slogans followed by their corporate logo. It felt cheap, insincere and insulting to the people who actually suffered.