Huffington Magazine Issue 32 | Page 57

HUFFINGTON 01.20.13 DARE DELLICAN’S INSTAGRAM THE VIRTUAL CEMETERY spread from Los Angeles to Miami. A few were in Brazil and Italy. As with most people on Facebook, they were former girlfriends and dates-turned-friends, high school and college classmates, co-workers. Many hadn’t seen him in years. Most didn’t know each other. The message on Facebook, linked to a newspaper article about an unnamed man found dead in a truck in the store’s parking lot, is how nearly all learned of Dowdell’s death. Dowdell wasn’t close to his mother and stepfather, and “we knew from his family situation that there would not be any sort of memorial,” says Jessa Moore, a 35-year-old friend who lives in Jersey City, N.J. “Facebook became our memorial. We could leave messages for him and each other.” Moore has been posting memories of Dowdell on his page for four months. Friends upload photos of him and his dog, Bacon, and if they are at a restaurant or bar he would like, they “tag” his name so his Facebook profile shows that he, too, was there. For some, it’s been a painful experience to see constant reminders of Dowdell online, as if he were still living. Others have wondered if they’re being respectful of his privacy. But for Moore, it’s been cathartic. “For a month, I was there on his page every day. It just sort of kept us all connected,” she says. It used be that news of death spread through phone calls, and before that, letters and house calls. The departed were publicly remembered via memorials on street corners, newspaper obituaries and flowers at grave sites. To some degree, this is still the case. But increasingly, the announcements and subsequent mourning occur on social media. Facebook, with 1 billion detailed, self-submitted user profiles, was created to connect the living. But it has become the world’s largest site of memorials for the dead. Dowdell is seen in an image he took on Instagram, while waiting for a train.