HUFFINGTON
01.20.13
THE VIRTUAL CEMETERY
own postings and “likes” of others’
words. She says she doesn’t think
Dowdell would mind. He loved being online. It’s how he met new
friends and kept in touch with old
ones. “I remember saying to him
once, ‘You know, everything on
Facebook stays on Facebook. It’s
not going to go away or disappear.’
That’s how he felt,” says Moore.
Some would rather that not be
the case.
COURTESY OF ROHAN AURORA
NO CHECKBOX FOR DEATH
In early August, Rohan Aurora, a
24-year-old biomedical engineering student and technology blogger who attends the University of
Southern California, was on Facebook, reading news about friends
back home in New Delhi, India.
The routine is common and deeply important for Aurora. He posts
photos and updates of his life —
announcements of internships
and photos of mountain-climbing
adventures — and friends comment on them, while he does the
same for them.
One friend from high school,
Lalit Mendhe, had a photo posted
on his Facebook page of himself
in a hospital bed. He didn’t look
so bad, Aurora thought. “It didn’t
seem like he was very uncomfortable.” So he made a quip on his
wall, hoping to cheer up a friend
stuck in the hospital, whatever the
cause may have been.
“He had a habit of keeping long
hair, so I wrote under the photo,
‘Did you get a haircut?’” said Aurora. Not long after, he got a message in his inbox from another one
of Mendhe’s friends. Mendhe, 23,
24-yearold Rohan
Aurora (left)
corresponds
with his
friend, Lalit
Mendhe, on
Facebook
(right), prior
to Mendhe’s
death.