The Lemon Life | online magazine offering a fresh perspective on post-grad life.

Words by: Sam Clemens

Image by:  e (thanks to striatic)

Last Wednesday I logged into Facebook and perused the News Feed for anything worthy of distraction.  As I scrolled down I noticed Michael Jackson related commentary seemed to be the status du jour.  I pursued the story and a few clicks later I had learned of the King of Pop’s untimely demise without turning on the television, picking up a newspaper or talking to anyone else.  The entire experience, from rumour to confirmation took all of 30 seconds.

The following hours saw a groundswell of messaging about Michael Jackson and statuses and tweets covered everything from token pedophile jokes to song lyrics to ‘whatever, at least it wasn’t Janet’.  As afternoon turned to evening, something remarkable happened.  For the first time ever, almost all my friends on Facebook were commenting on a singular event.  Not even Obama’s election or inauguration trumped the social media coverage of Michael Jackson’s death.

People were sharing links, posting videos, downloading songs, and conducting dialogues all online.  And then I realized, I was in the midst of a massive vigil for one of the most significant cultural icons in modern history.  The deaths of Elvis and John Lennon left older generations mystified and emotional, but short of a pilgrimage to Graceland or Strawberry Fields they had no proper outlet for their shared grief.

Technology, and more specifically social media has significantly changed the way we react to and interact with cultural events.  And in the case of death, it allows for tailored memorials.  As people began posting videos and lyrics it became clear that everyone remembered the man, the myth and the music differently.  Our respective tributes were as varied as we are.

The mediums of decades passed shape the news for public consumption, but what became very evident in the wake of MJ’s death was that we don’t want to consume this information or these tributes, we want to produce them ourselves and share them accordingly.  While it was the same music that we all listened to, it was interpreted and re-purposed in completely different ways.  I’m sure there were other kids who moon walked to ‘Black and White’ in their bedrooms, but the imprints of my seven year old feet on my plush carpet are memories shared between me, MJ, and my boom box.

From balcony baby drops to The Wiz, we have an entire cultural archive at our finger tips and the materials necessary to commemorate a legend the way we see fit.

We no longer rely on the nightly news to interrupt our regularly scheduled programming, in part because they’re just too slow, and because when we are able to use our own voices, we have very little use for theirs.

While we might not all gather at the gates of Neverland Ranch, it is interesting that the glow from hundreds, maybe even thousands, of memorial candles is now the glow from millions of computer screens all over the world.

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