(ThyBlackMan.com) The addiction to social media many face is unnatural and can be inhuman. We don’t need our phone to capture everything we see, furthermore we should not want it to do such. When someone dies the RIP statuses go up, many times, before all the necessary family has been contacted. It is very disrespectful to the family that you place your need to post over their sorrow in that moment. However, just when I thought we could sink no further we broke new ground. Why would people get on Snap Chat or any other platform and post pictures of what appears o be a dead body?
Are we so obsessed with the moment that our humanity is completely eroded? Yes, some people say the lifeless body of rapper XXXTentacion on social media. People that is sick! In that moment those people were lower than the much-hated paparazzi. This man had a family, not to mention the rest of us didn’t want to open our social media to a dead body.
You might ask, how does this terrible act relate to our humanity. Well, as a community and country we are desensitized. Death has become a gossip point and a great show, and some are in a mad dash to see who can post it first, and if there is footage who can make such go viral. Too many of our young people don’t understand what it means to respect the dead. Until it is someone in their family they don’t get why they should put their phones away. This is tragic as the need to impulsively be seen continues to weave a web that disconnects us from reality.
We don’t know what’s real, what’s a lie nor how to react to either the truth or the lie. Somewhere right now this discussion is being had and the person posting graphic content just might relate doing to so being informed. However, what’s worse is the idea that posting whatever is their right because somehow their page or account is a direct connection to them “living their truth”.
It’s a scary thing to think we live in a world where likes, how much you make what you are riding…is more important than how are you living. It’s a problem when we become so engrossed with death to the point that we possibly let someone die. People were so busy looking at, and posting, a dead body that they neglected to call the police.
We are losing the value of life beyond infancy, and our phones are often the tool that is sucking the life force from our being. We are losing our grip on reality hence we will lose our grip on each other. Its time we realize the phone does not belong in every situation. Death is not something to be recorded and posted. It’s a time when our community examine where we place life, our humanity and how to get back to seeing ourselves and each other as people.
Staff Writer; Christian Starr
May connect with this sister over at Facebook; https://www.facebook.com/christian.pierre.9809 and also Twitter; http://twitter.com/MrzZeta.