Imagine this: you’ve just heard through a third party that a friend of yours has lost her baby. What would you do? Would you leave her and her partner to grieve in private? Would you phone her, send her an email or a text, or would you tell everyone else around you (who may not know your friend) just how sad you feel about her loss?
That last option may seem ridiculous, but isn’t it the same when people tweet their condolences? Jan Moir, writing in today’s Daily Mail seems to think so. ‘Isn’t there also something unsettling, distasteful and offensive about this new eruption of celebrity-to-celebrity condolences’, she asks, in response to the tweets of Emma Bunton, James Corden, Mylene Klass and Alan Sugar, expressing their regret that Amanda Holden has lost her baby at seven months. (And her husband Chris, of course. Interesting how the burden of grief is always attributed to the mother, celebrity or otherwise, but that’s a subject for another post).
Apparently, the name for this act of reaching out via twitter is ‘twimpathy’ (not to be confused with twimpathy.com, a site that allows you to share your emotions with anyone who’s interested). And perhaps there is a use for it — as someone in our office commented this morning, ‘people don’t know how to express their sympathy to your face. Some people will cross the street to avoid a bereaved neighbour, so isn’t it a good thing if you can know that hundreds or thousands of others are thinking about you?’
It’s a good point. But it doesn’t take any more effort, surely, just to send that person a card or an email (or even to direct message them, if you absolutely can’t avoid Twitter). Isn’t the effect of sharing your feelings about someone else’s tragedy just a way of co-opting their grief? Don’t you risk making it all about you, rather than about them?
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