Reflections from RLG319H, “Death, Dying, and Afterlife”
Death, Dying, and Afterlife (RLG319H), which is taught by Professor Rory Lindsay of the Department for the Study of Religion, introduces students to religious and secular approaches to death, the dead, and the afterlife. Through considering ways in which death has been dealt with in different communities, it explores understandings of life and questions about what it means to be human. One lecture during the winter semester of 2024 addressed recent trends of photographing the dead and posting their images on social media. Two undergraduate students in the course, Stephanie Da Ponte and Yujia Du, chose to reflect on this topic in their final response papers, which they have graciously agreed to publish with RPS.
Death, Social Media, and the Derelict Social Media of the Dead // Stephani Da Ponte
On several occasions throughout the course, we have discussed the intersection of social media and death. We read “The iPhone at the Deathbed,” in which Penelope Green explores the resurgence of deathbed photography. Its modern iteration sees relatives photographing their deceased loved ones with their mobile phones and posting said photographs to social media. Similarly, we considered Rohit Thawani’s suggestion that we shouldn’t be shocked at the people on TikTok dancing about grief and death. Rather, we ought to join them.
It is clear that a culture of constant digital interconnectedness profoundly affects attitudes and practices regarding death. During the 2020 lockdown, I experienced the death of a close friend. For many months after her death, I would periodically return to her Instagram account to share a photograph of her or to comment beneath one of her posts—which now felt remarkably like epitaphs—that she was ever in my thoughts. I no longer visit her account—I no longer use social media at all—but I know that if I wished to “see her again,” “she” would still be there, online. I could scroll back through the final week of her life, and still further back—to five years ago (a family holiday, a drunken night, her first tattoo), to ten years ago (a pool party, an embarrassing high-school haircut, a photograph of a photograph of her as a young girl). I’m sure that many individuals have had similar experiences with the continued online presences of deceased relatives and friends. If one hasn’t, then one undoubtedly will.
The lives of recent generations are documented on social media quite literally from birth until death. Inevitably, these documents are left behind when one dies. And, inevitably, the accounts of the dead accumulate over time. One rarely considers while scrolling social media that these platforms are both networks, marketplaces, and playgrounds for the living, and mausoleums of the dead. There are vast swathes of cyberspace dedicated to the former daily—careful, intimate—documentation of the lives of people who no longer walk upon this plane; there are millions of ghosts in the machine. Further, in our own daily—careful, intimate—documentation of our lives on social media, we are curating our own eventual digital ghosts.
What becomes of the social media content—the “digital estates,” per se—of the dead? What do we do with it—not logistically, as corporations or online platforms, but as human beings who have outlived its creators? What can we learn from it? It is no small thing to possess the means to behold entire human lives, neatly encapsulated. This seems an important frontier—perhaps, that of digital forensic anthropology, wherein one investigates these derelict immaterial domains just as archaeologists investigate material artefacts of the deceased.
Images of the Dead // Yuija Du
A discussion question posed during one of our lectures—whether it would be acceptable to post a picture of your own death on social media—initially made me uncomfortable. This discomfort lingered as I tried to probe deeper into my feelings and the ethical implications of such an act. At first, the concept seemed outright disrespectful to the dead. The issue of consent immediately comes to mind: if the deceased did not agree to their image being posted online for countless people to view, this would certainly constitute a disrespect to their dignity. Yet even assuming consent was given, why does the idea still provoke such strong reactions?
One possible explanation could be related to the uncanny valley effect, particularly if the deceased’s appearance closely resembles that of a living person but with various degrees of subtle, unsettling differences depending on their time of death, triggering fear and discomfort in the viewers. Speaking from an evolutionary perspective, the natural fear of witnessing a dead body, regardless of its time of death, stems from its potential to start decomposing and harbor harmful bacteria that could lead to sickness and even death. This natural biological response was passed down over millennia to help humanity survive.
Further reflecting on this, I recalled an anecdote from my mother, who once took a photograph of her colleagues sleeping on a bus ride as a prank. Upon reviewing the picture, she found it disturbing because “it looked like they were all dead,” leading her to delete the photo hastily. It seemed like possessing merely a picture of someone’s lifelessness is a taboo. I theorize that associating a living person with death or death-adjacent subject matter runs the risk of it somehow becoming a reality, and the person making such association would be charged responsible for “cursing others to death.” Such concern, however, does not seem to apply to our case, in which the individuals depicted in their lifelessness are already deceased, and are thus immune to the death curse.
Personally, I find myself somewhat ambivalent about the idea of pictures of my own death on social media. While the thought doesn’t bother me extensively—I am, after all, no longer there to be affected by it—I am concerned about not being able to control how I might appear. In life, I would edit photos before uploading them to the internet where the whole world has access to my appearance; in death, that autonomy would be stripped away.
My self-inspection underscored a general cultural discomfort with death and the representation of the deceased, especially deeply rooted fears and taboos that persist even in our digitally interconnected age. While discussing death openly can be a healthy way of demystifying and understanding our mortality, the act of sharing images of the deceased on social media might be pushing against deeply ingrained boundaries of respect and reverence for the dead. This discussion, while unsettling, is crucial as it challenges us to think critically about the intersections of technology, ethics, and our cultural practices surrounding death.