Why do we feel such an overpowering need to make loss about ourselves?
That impulse, surely, existed long before social media. When someone beloved and famous died, people would always share their memories — a fleeting encounter, a story, a connection that linked them to the deceased. But in the age of social networks, this instinct has become louder, more relentless, and often painfully self-centered.
When news breaks that a beloved public figure — say, the legendary Greek singer-songwriter Dionysis Savvopoulos — has passed away, the internet fills with tributes. Yet so many of them begin not with grief, but with I once met him.
Who really needs to know that you once took a photo with Savvopoulos? What does that memory offer to those mourning his death? So often, we’re not telling stories to honor the person who’s gone — we’re using the moment to catch a little of their reflected light, to prove that, for a fleeting instant, we stood near greatness.
Even grief hasn’t escaped our endless online self-staging. Sorrow is packaged as just another episode in the ongoing series titled Me. It’s not enough to feel sadness — we must display it. It’s not enough to remember — we must announce, publicly, that we were there too.
In this digital age, mourning is rarely about the person we lost. It’s about asserting our own presence in their shadow. Because if you don’t post about it, did it even matter that you knew them, that you once smiled for the same camera?
The photo, the story, the snapshot uploaded “in tribute” — all of it is less an act of remembrance and more a certificate of association. Look at me. See how I once touched the hem of the famous. Like a collector showing off a rare work whose value has suddenly soared after the artist’s death.
It’s narcissism masquerading as grief.
It’s not unlike what some journalists secretly do: chasing interviews with aging legends, harboring a quiet, shameful hope that their publication might feature the final appearance before the inevitable farewell.
And maybe — hidden somewhere in this reflex — lies our desperate attempt to turn away from mortality. Our own, and that of the icons we believed were immune to it. When even our heroes die, we feel the ground shift beneath us. So, we post a picture, we tell a story, as if to deny that we too are temporary. A small, public act of self-affirmation against the truth of death.
The simplest explanation, though, is even bleaker. We’ve turned mourning into content. Grief has become a performance. We stage it with ourselves at the center, letting it drift through posts and stories, hoping it performs well — in likes, hearts, and sad-face emojis.
Who has the best photo with Savvopoulos? Who can tell the most charming anecdote?
Of course, grief is personal. Everyone has the right to express it however they can. But when loss becomes another chance for self-promotion, when the focus shifts from the one who’s gone to the one who stood beside them once, something about it feels off. It leaves behind an awkward silence — the sound of mourning that has forgotten its purpose.
