INTRODUCTION

My interest in the Internet—its traditions, practices, culture, design, and "real life" implications—emerges from my own necessity to grapple with an increasingly digitized world. Laptop computers, tablets, and mobile devices extend from our persons with ubiquity like silicon limbs. As I type this, a café full of people—myself included—are glued to their screens, eliciting an eerily undead atmosphere. Who knew zombies enjoyed coffee and Pandora's indie folk rock station?

Web 2.0 mobilized millions of people to communicate with one another on an unprecedented scale and with unprecedented levels of efficiency. The Internet quickly altered the field of communication, opening a floodgate of information to be processed, transmitted, reprocessed, and retransmitted - all of which is consumed by a hungry audience of users. Social media sites like Facebook now threaten to keep one, at all times, abreast of old high school classmates and their babies, unorthodox political views, and peculiarly photogenic lunches. At times, it's as if the Internet reflects our worst attributes. On the other hand, new media can empower individuals and communities throughout the world and facilitate needed social change. Consequently, the digital experience is fragmentary and intimidating, emancipatory and enlightening.

This project has evolved quite a bit since its inception weeks ago. Admittedly, it didn’t take on its present form until I was nearly done with the project in its entirety. But what I’ve discovered and presented here, I believe, is worthy of attention.

My first task was to narrow my topic from the sweeping Internet to something more manageable. I’m an avid Redditor—subreddits Philosophy and WorldNews are my home away from “real life”—and I thought it could make an interesting case study pertaining to death. After all, the site is anonymous, which might do something interesting with Philippe Ariès reasoning about Americans’ “silence of death.” I wondered: Does anonymity online subvert the death taboo in America? How?

I began looking into posts and discussions in subreddits dedicated to the macabre and morbid. These were communities that met death and dying with an almost lascivious attitude, making jokes and awful puns at the expense of dead or badly injured people. After too many GIFs of Russian car accidents, I decided to steer clear (no pun intended, I promise) of an entire project dedicated to what would almost certainly provoke nightmares and anxiety. I answered my question almost immediately: yes, anonymity online subverts the death taboo in America. Instead, I decided to adopt Drew Faust’s terminology and look at the work of death that Reddit, a novel cultural resource, does to alleviate the bereaved.

For the purposes of this project, I looked at four components: two communities and two individuals. The first community, OffMyChest, is a subreddit that self-identifies as a “safe space” for individuals to vent their feelings. If I wanted to find constructive discussions on grief in a relatively popular subreddit, then OffMyChest was the place to go.

The second community, AdviceAnimals, is dedicated to the recreation and transmission of Internet memes, particularly the “image macro.” Here is a subreddit that worships humor and wit, with little-to-no tolerance for the griever’s “sob story.” I found exceptions to the rule, however, in cleverly meme-embedded grief posts that participate and transmit the community’s tradition.

I decided to include two individuals (instead of two more communities) because they provided a rich understanding of the grieving process on Reddit. The first individual, a mother who recently lost her eight-day old child, posts a riveting block of text about her constant recollection of her child’s brief life. I used the Reddit analytic tool website, Snoopsnoo.com, to look at the various ways in which this anonymous mother employed Reddit and its communities to help her through the painful process.

I stumbled upon the second individual, an “old man,” when I started the project. Sometime before Reddit started archiving its content (more than four years ago) this user posted a beautifully written text-based post about grief. Redditors responded with overwhelming gratitude for the enlightening post, going so far as to continuously repost it in grief-related discussions years later.

If I were smarter, I would have heeded Laura’s advice and focused on Reddit’s response to a single event—the Boston Marathon bombing being a good example, as Reddit notoriously made it to the headlines with their antics. A focused approach like that would have helped, as my method began relatively aimlessly and I felt off course for a good portion of the project. Regardless, I came out on the other end with meaningful information about the way an anonymous social networking site participates in the grieving process.

Without further adieu, welcome to my site.