Hyperglyphics

Jenna Wortham’s post on the Bits blog in the NY Times on the Tweeting of Michael Jackson’s death on Thursday, June 25, sent me right back to thinking about the Twitter phenomenon I had just written about in my post on the Computers and Writing conference.

I was particularly interested in one of the comments on Wortham’s post (comment #6) in which “Hopskotch” writes:

“Twitter is at its best reporting to us the present tense, where it can affect things. Michael Jackson’s death is already in the past. Twittering about it won’t change anything. Twittering about Iran still has a chance.”

While I think it’s valid to say that Twittering about this event may have brought nothing new to the table in terms of news or details about MJ’s death, I think what Twitter (and Facebook’s status updates) did in this case was actually more interesting than simply reporting facts on the ground. It seems, from my limited survey of the Tweeting and of reading accounts of it like Wortham’s, that it is true that Twitter served, in this case, mainly as a space for people to express their feelings about what has already happened and is, effectively, done. However, I think if you look closely, you can see something happening on Twitter (and also on Facebook) that is essentially a resistance to the mainstream narrative.

Yesterday, I pointed you to Steven Krause’s post on the Tweeting of the Computers and Writing 09 conference and I think his point about how the Twitter stream during one of the keynotes exposed a subtext of resistance to the speaker’s talk is very relevant here. While it seems that many people Tweeting and updating their Facebook statuses are mainly expressing the expected emotions of shock, sadness, grief, and nostalgia over MJ’s death, there are some (a definite minority, granted) who used those tools to openly joke about and even mock Michael Jackson and the general reaction to his death.

My friend Hayden Black, the creator and writer of the Web series Goodnight Burbank and the highly anticipated new sci-fi musical comedy Web serial The Cabonauts, kept up a steady stream of Tweets and Facebook status updates that was crass, tacky, snarky, and, if you share his penchant for irreverent humor at the expense of the recently deceased as I do, quite often hilarious. Another Facebook friend began a running commentary in his status updates on what he saw as the hypocrisy and false sentimentality of the outpouring of grief, reminding his friend list that this was a man who was widely suspected of (even tried for) child molestation.

While these are just two examples, I feel sure there were plenty more like them who similarly resisted the script that has been written over the past decade (I’m thinking the death of Princess Di was the moment when this script truly emerged, though I welcome other perspectives here) that dictates how we (should) react to the death of a well-known person. It requires that we display an ostentatious outpouring of shock and grief even though we might not have really cared that much (if we’re truly honest) about the deceased. It is fueled by the grief-porn that is created by the media’s non-stop coverage of the death and the subsequent mourning, which creates a continuous feedback loop that feeds the fire and effectively silences - at least in the early days following the event - any reaction that does not fit the script.

But I think that silence was broken, at least a little bit, by the Tweeters and Facebookers who dared to say what they were really thinking. There are consequences, though, to resisting the script. Black, at one point in his rapid-fire commentary, noted that he had been unfriended by two people during his MJ jokefest, presumably because they were offended by his comments.

Of course, if you don’t friend or follow any such irreverent or righteously angry folks, then you may not ever see such a visible manifestation of resistance. But I’m willing to bet that in the age of Web 2.0 when we all get to have our say in a very public way (be that through comments on a major newspaper’s Web site, or on our own blogs, or through our status updates and Tweets), more of us are seeing that there are those who refuse to follow the master narrative. And I like that!