Back when I was a younger idiot (instead of the older one I am now), and I was first working as a server in college, I had many good friends at my restaurant.
Few were as great a friend to me back then as John Eric “E.J.” Jarrett.
E.J. was the kind of friend who would go to bat for you, no questions asked. He would hang out with you, include you, talk life with you, whatever. One of my fonder memories from those younger days was waxing philosophical with E.J. on the patio of our restaurant after our shifts, sipping a good dark beer.
Life happens of course and we went our separate ways. He and I both remained in the restaurant industry, so we often heard about one another through mutual friends. And we would run into each other ever so rarely, and grab a beer or chat for a bit.
Eventually when Facebook came around, we found each other there and became online “friends.” Like many, though, I had a lot of these friends whom are people from my past that I only keep passing touch with, and E.J. got lost in the mix with all the others.
So it was with some shock earlier this year that I discovered, a week or two too late, that E.J. had passed away, very young at just 43. It was a shock for me, and I found out on Facebook. So I put up a post about how much a younger E.J. had meant to me and how I would miss him.
What then really took me aback was the strong outpouring of sorrow from my friends, many of whom are also not so attached to me. Although many of my closest friends also gave their condolences, I was surprised at the sheer number of the responses.
E.J. and I were no longer close. I hadn’t even seen him in person for maybe seven or eight years. We had sent a message or two back and forth on social media, but that was about it. I knew he was in Dallas and told him if I ever went out that way, I would make an effort to visit. That is about as far as it extended.
But my friends read my post as some announcement that I had lost a dear and close friend. I was definitely sad for E.J. and his family and gave thanks that I had had the opportunity to know an awesome guy like him. But that was the extent of it. I chalked up the overly enthusiastic response of my friends to me not properly making clear in my post how close (or not terribly close) E.J. and I were.
Recently, I went to see the movie Searching, an intriguing whodunit missing persons movie that takes the innovative approach of showing its story entirely through social media sites like Facebook, Facetime, and Tumblr.
In one scene (not spoiler critical), a study partner for the missing girl was posting about how much she missed the girl in question, even though she had earlier told the girl’s father, played by star John Cho, that they barely knew each other.
The next focus was on the Like bar, with Sad faces piling up for this study partner whom had faked her sorrow. I sat there, stunned, in the theater, and watched what had basically happened to me with E.J. recreated in a movie.
That is when I discovered that trolling for sorrow support is a “thing.”
It’s not a concept I should have been unfamiliar with. I knew people posted their whole lives on Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat, just to get responses and get some validation from others. I have long understood that this is part of the disease of social media addiction.
It just never occurred to me that someone would use the death or misfortune of others to give themselves emotional support from hundreds of their “not really” friends. And I felt a little dirty knowing that, to an extent, I had seen this similar benefit myself, happening upon it by accident.
Maybe if these trolls had more friends like E.J. once was to me, they wouldn’t need this sort of support. I fear, though, that we are only moving more towards this being the norm, rather than the outlier.