It’s getting more complicated to die

Belén Fernández at Al Jazeera:

One recalls the days when sympathy was not reduced to a series of yellow crying faces – when people had more time to be human and condolences were not something to be fired off before scrolling on to the next Facebook post.

I personally will never forget an occasion some years ago when, in response to a Facebook friend’s post about a death in the family, another Facebook friend – a filmmaker for whom I normally have the utmost esteem – commented: “sorry for ur loss.” Modern communications have so warped our sense of propriety, it seems, that the commenter failed to consider the inherent disrespect, in such circumstances, of only typing half of an already very short word.

More here.