The Tweet Hereafter
by reblog
The Tweet Hereafter is a website I became aware of after listening to an interview between Jian Ghomeshi and the site’s creator. It has a fascinating, albeit slightly morbid premise: collecting the last tweets of people who have died. Although this is not, of course, a website intended for light reading anyway, some of the tweets are downright chilling.
On February 13th, 2013, Reeva Steenkamp, the late girlfriend of Oscar Pistorius, tweeted “What do you have up your sleeve for your love tomorrow??? #getexcited #ValentinesDay.” The next day, on Valentine’s Day, Pistorius fatally shot Steenkamp, proving her light-hearted message to be cruelly ironic.
Many other tweets show their authors to be equally oblivious of their imminent passing on. Elizabeth Taylor, for example, excitedly bubbled “My interview in Bazaar with Kim Kardashian came out!!! http://j.mp/eqQsGa.” I’ve been meditating on these two examples, one of which is eerie in its unconscious foreshadowing, the second which is bittersweet in its excited ignorance.
I don’t necessarily have a clearly developed analysis of this practice. Really, I just thought it was an interesting and unprecedented way of looking at one’s Twitter history. I think it speaks to our culture’s preoccupation with final words and trying to assign significance to them. For some, like Steenkamp, this proves to be all too easy, while others inevitably have and inevitably will wind up with their final message as a broadcast of what they ate for lunch that day.
It’s not exactly clear what the desired result of this project is, or even if there is one. It seems that the compilers of the tweets are merely interested in chronicling the unconscious goodbyes of the dead.
What an interesting (albeit slightly morbid) project! Depending on how well-known the person was, maybe it’s a way for some people to come to grips with their departure? Although it’s not like we’re close to famous people, some people get pretty wrapped up in it.
Although she wasn’t a celebrity, a good family friend passed away several years ago (before Facebook and Twitter), quite unexpectedly. I had spoken to her on Wednesday and was going to see her on Saturday – she died on that Friday. I remember looking at her old emails in the days after and re-reading them…I’m not sure what I hoped to accomplish, but it was part of remembering her as a living person. Maybe that’s sort of what this project hopes to achieve, but on a ‘grander’ scale?
Definitely, I think there is absolutely an element of ‘coming to grips’ with someone’s passing. What I’m grappling with right now is – is this a therapeutic practice or are we torturing ourselves by reading and rereading comments/tweets/e-mails from the dead? What benefit, if any, do we really get from meditating on a person’s final words, whether they be written or spoken? Totally rhetorical, of course 🙂 I’m not sure this even can be answered, except on a personal level, and maybe not even then.
Even thought it was a rhetorical question – I think (for me, anyways) there’s a fine line between coming to grips with something and just torturing oneself. It starts off as a coping mechanism and then progresses to something that’s not very productive. It almost seems like technology is facilitating this kind of “torture” on some levels.
That is an interesting site. I think for some reading the last social media postings of loved ones could be comforting, for others quite painful.
I’m glad you guys found this site as weirdly fascinating as I did!