The first post in this blog could have been a happier one, but it is when life surprises you that you need new ways of expression. To write about this in a blog focused on marketing or books just doesn’t do the trick – sometimes you just need a zone where it’s ok to talk about high and low, ask the stupid questions and just let your emotions run free.
About 20 minutes ago I read a tweet that mostly resembled eulogy. The fact that twitterers pay each other homage is not rare, on the contrary. But it was the first time I saw “RIP” in a tweet!
I was not the only one to be surprised, and several several tweets asked: “What” and “Why”
Turns out a woman was killed in a car crash yesterday. This woman was also a member on Twitter, and she had made around 300 friend on this platform. Around 15 of them expressed their grief and feeling of loss – via Twitter and in a matter of minutes.
The tweets were of course full of RTs, @ mentions of the woman’s name, +1 and other typical twitter characteristics. This is (to my knowledge) the first time a fellow twitterer seizes to exist in this world so it’s only natural that chock gets mixed in with curiosity and the question if you read it correctly.
And after the first wave of questions came a wave of “We miss you and we’re thinking about you”-tweets. And then – then people tweeted “I’m logging out”.
Maybe this is a sign of how our online life works – many of the people twittering are online 24/7 – but now, in a time of sorrow, we turn away from online. Possibly to be with our loved ones, since the realization of the fragility of life hits us in times like these. Or maybe it’s the equivalent of a minute of silence – shutting of your Twitter/computer is today’s way of being quiet and bowing your head in prayer.
With our online life comes a bigger circle of friends, and new ways of acquiring info. I’m afraid this is only one of many chocking news to be delivered via online communities. So lets not forget the rest of our online community, people that actually feel what we feel and that can be a shoulder to lean on – even if it is a digital one…