Funeral pictures on your Timeline

[Starr]

CakeEater, you said what I was trying to much better than I could!  Unlike heights, mice, or snakes (all of which I'm afraid of  ) death and dead bodies are generally taboo to show.  Maybe this varies by region (as traditions about death tend to) but in my part of the country it's not considered acceptable to show pictures of death without warning.  I say this as someone whose family members have taken pictures of relatives in caskets.  They always let family and friends know pictures were available, if they couldn't make the service, and they were welcome to take a look at the pictures on the camera.

And of course it is obvious that not everyone will post things you like to Facebook.  But the question at hand is whether it's rude or thoughtless to post funeral photos - I think it is.  Of course, people have the right to post what photos they see fit (within a site's rules), but I think it's rude to post funeral photos that may obviously upset one's friends, just as it would be rude to post pictures of the hairball my cat deposited on the carpet because it might make my friends feel ill.

[CakeEater]

Perhaps FB should come with a warning too "Warning: not everyone thinks like you or uses this site like you. There is a chance that you may not be completely comfortable with everything you see or read. View at your own risk."
I just think that's pretty obvious...

Of course it's obvious. I haven't said that anyone should use FB in the exact same way that I do.

I don't post political or religious statements, although I have beliefs in both those directions. I'm happy to concede that people are welcome to shout their views on both those topics from their virtual rooftops as much as they like.

I don't post every day, or post photos of meals I'm eating. I do post photos of my hobby, which I realise that others don't.

Those sorts of things are personal preference about how people use their pages.

 Posting photos of things that are likely to disturb a lot of people is inconsiderate. I post photos of my kids a fair bit, but I don't post photos of them in the bath, or on the toilet, or with their fingers up their noses because I recognise that many people don't want to see photos of those things (their own privacy issues aside.) And assuming that my friends haven't hidden me already, my photos, although posted to my own wall, will show up in all my friends' faces when they check FB later today.

Seeing a body in a coffin will be a problem for many people as they look at FB while they're on the bus, or eating breakfast. Same goes for lots of other things, some of which I listed in my last post. Those aren't just differences in use.

[RingTailedLemur]

Let's put it another way.  I know a lot of people (I mean a lot) that are afraid of heights.  Is it rude or unacceptable to put pictures and videos of people that are up high?  Or that show how high it is from their viewpoint?  I get squeemish at the sight of scurring mice.  I hate them and looking at them is disturbing.  I know several people who feel the same way.  Is it rude for people to post pictures of mice without warning me?

I've seen images of dead people on tv without warning.  Whether it's been "fake" like in a movie or a tv show, or even in newspapers/news (we can warnings if the pictures show death, or babies, etc, but not more than that).  I hate seeing those images regardless of the medium, but again, it doesn't matter what I think...or even what a majority of the US thinks.  People taking pictures of the deceased is not uncommon.  There may be a lot of people out there who don't like it, but it's not uncommon.

This technological age has made our private lives much more open.  People can choose to share whatever they want about their private lives, and in turn, we can choose whether or not we want to be shared with.  But, what is not so easy, is protecting ourselves from accidently seeing something that we don't like.  But, really, that's life.  It's no different than me seeing something disturbing IRL, it's just that FB has increased that possibility.  I feel that sometimes we're going to come across things that make us uncomfortable.  That doesn't make it rude.  Shoving a picture in your face and forcing you to look at it is rude.  Posting it their own wall is not.  If your (general) "friend" is consistenly posting things you don't like, then there is a good reason to hide their feed.

I disagree.  The newsfeed is "shoving it in someone's face".  There are ways to stop such pictures appearing on the Timeline and hence newsfeeds.  How would we react if the poster had said, "I was at a party chatting to some friends when suddenly another attendee came up and shoved a picture of her mother in a casket in my face"?

As for, "People taking pictures of the deceased is not uncommon" - maybe we move in very different circles because I have never heard of such a thing happening here.  However, am I right in thinking US funerals have open caskets?  That doesn't happen here, and I find it rather bizarre which might be colouring my perceptions.

[Sharnita]

Yeah, open caskets are pretty common.  Not everyone does it but it is fequent enough that you are generally not surprised.

[bah12]

How exactly to you (general) expect to be warned that you may see something you don't like on Facebook? Even if someone said "warning! I'm about to post a picture of grandma in her coffin." FB doesn't exactly arrange everything in the right order. If you are so sensitive to certain things that you can't scroll by or hide a news feed without it ruining your day, then maybe the internet (and TV) isn't for you. You need to take some responsibility for yourself...for example if spiders make you sqeemish you need to take steps to either avoid pictures of them, our deal with the fact that spiders exist and you won't be protected from them forever. Same goes with funerals and the deceased. Expecting everyone else to protect you, just sets you up for disappointment.

[RingTailedLemur]

How exactly to you (general) expect to be warned that you may see something you don't like on Facebook? Even if someone said "warning! I'm about to post a picture of grandma in her coffin." FB doesn't exactly arrange everything in the right order. If you are so sensitive to certain things that you can't scroll by or hide a news feed without it ruining your day, then maybe the internet (and TV) isn't for you. You need to take some responsibility for yourself...for example if spiders make you sqeemish you need to take steps to either avoid pictures of them, our deal with the fact that spiders exist and you won't be protected from them forever. Same goes with funerals and the deceased. Expecting everyone else to protect you, just sets you up for disappointment.

Strawman.

[CakeEater]

How exactly to you (general) expect to be warned that you may see something you don't like on Facebook? Even if someone said "warning! I'm about to post a picture of grandma in her coffin." FB doesn't exactly arrange everything in the right order. If you are so sensitive to certain things that you can't scroll by or hide a news feed without it ruining your day, then maybe the internet (and TV) isn't for you. You need to take some responsibility for yourself...for example if spiders make you sqeemish you need to take steps to either avoid pictures of them, our deal with the fact that spiders exist and you won't be protected from them forever. Same goes with funerals and the deceased. Expecting everyone else to protect you, just sets you up for disappointment.

I don't think a warning is the way to go. I think not posting at all is the way to go. I don't understand the argument that I should just get off the internet completely because I don't want to see what I think is a pretty macabre sight.

 I do take steps to protect myself. I don't choose to go to websites where I'm likely to see a dead body, and I think that FB should be such a place.

[bah12]

How exactly to you (general) expect to be warned that you may see something you don't like on Facebook? Even if someone said "warning! I'm about to post a picture of grandma in her coffin." FB doesn't exactly arrange everything in the right order. If you are so sensitive to certain things that you can't scroll by or hide a news feed without it ruining your day, then maybe the internet (and TV) isn't for you. You need to take some responsibility for yourself...for example if spiders make you sqeemish you need to take steps to either avoid pictures of them, our deal with the fact that spiders exist and you won't be protected from them forever. Same goes with funerals and the deceased. Expecting everyone else to protect you, just sets you up for disappointment.

I don't think a warning is the way to go. I think not posting at all is the way to go. I don't understand the argument that I should just get off the internet completely because I don't want to see what I think is a pretty macabre sight.

 I do take steps to protect myself. I don't choose to go to websites where I'm likely to see a dead body, and I think that FB should be such a place.

Your talking about someone lying in a coffin.  I don't necessarily love seeing pictures like that either, but calling it macabre is a bit much.

And I just don't think that you can blankedly say what is and isn't appropriate for other people to post on their walls.  If it's legal and allowed by the site, then your particular feelings don't matter.  You don't get to dictate what other people choose to share.  All you can do is decide that you don't want to look at it and move past or hide the feed.

For example, I was extremely upset at the news that 20 children were killed just before Christmas at their elementary school.  Like so bothered, it made me cry...a lot.  I was disturbed, upset, and had bad dreams that the same thing would happen to my child.  I would venture to say that I had the strongest reaction to that news than most anything else that didn't directly affect me.  And I know that there was an entire nation of people that reacted the same way.  And where did I first find out about it?  On FB.  Because people were posting the news stories, pictures of crying children, pictures of devestated parents.  I wasn't exactly prepared for any of that when I got online.  But, to go so far as to say that it was rude of my friends to post their thoughts, pictures, etc on their FB page is absurd. 

You might attempt to argue that it isn't the same.  But it is.  It was an unpleasant thing that I didn't enjoy seeing at all.  Definitely more disturbing that a friend's mom lying peacefully in a coffin. 

You don't have to stay off the internet, but really, you do need to accept that life isn't always pleasant and when you are on a website where people are openly sharing their life with others, that those unpleasant things might creep in...to include, the perfectly normal (even if upsetting) practice of taking pictures of deceased and displaying them. 

I've hidden feeds of perfectly good people before because they continuously post things that upset me in some way.  And even if I did agree that it was rude to post a picture of someone in a coffin (which I don't), my advice would be the same.  Ignore it and move on.

**All you's are general***

[Allyson]

I think there's a lot of space between 'I never want to see anything on my Facebook that even slightly upsets me and therefore nobody should post anything that might potentially bother someone' and 'People should just accept they will see things they don't like, and I should be able to post whatever I want.'

I feel like even most of those people saying it's acceptable would still have a 'line' where they think people shouldn't be posting it on Facebook, whether that be graphic violence, pornography or what. So if the argument is solely 'It's acceptable to post such-and-such on Facebook because it's their wall', then the 'because it's their wall' part could apply to *anything*. Yes, technically anything I post might possibly offend someone, but I don't think that means that I shouldn't be aware of what is *likely* to be contentious.

I just see it as a little disingenuous to make the comparison of a dead body versus someone who might have a fear of kittens. One is just a lot more likely than the other. Sure, sometimes people misjudge what is likely to be upsetting, and that's an honest mistake. And, sometimes people have unpredictable sensitivities. 

[violinp]

How exactly to you (general) expect to be warned that you may see something you don't like on Facebook? Even if someone said "warning! I'm about to post a picture of grandma in her coffin." FB doesn't exactly arrange everything in the right order. If you are so sensitive to certain things that you can't scroll by or hide a news feed without it ruining your day, then maybe the internet (and TV) isn't for you. You need to take some responsibility for yourself...for example if spiders make you sqeemish you need to take steps to either avoid pictures of them, our deal with the fact that spiders exist and you won't be protected from them forever. Same goes with funerals and the deceased. Expecting everyone else to protect you, just sets you up for disappointment.

I don't think a warning is the way to go. I think not posting at all is the way to go. I don't understand the argument that I should just get off the internet completely because I don't want to see what I think is a pretty macabre sight.

 I do take steps to protect myself. I don't choose to go to websites where I'm likely to see a dead body, and I think that FB should be such a place.

Your talking about someone lying in a coffin.  I don't necessarily love seeing pictures like that either, but calling it macabre is a bit much.

And I just don't think that you can blankedly say what is and isn't appropriate for other people to post on their walls.  If it's legal and allowed by the site, then your particular feelings don't matter.  You don't get to dictate what other people choose to share.  All you can do is decide that you don't want to look at it and move past or hide the feed.

For example, I was extremely upset at the news that 20 children were killed just before Christmas at their elementary school.  Like so bothered, it made me cry...a lot.  I was disturbed, upset, and had bad dreams that the same thing would happen to my child.  I would venture to say that I had the strongest reaction to that news than most anything else that didn't directly affect me.  And I know that there was an entire nation of people that reacted the same way.  And where did I first find out about it?  On FB.  Because people were posting the news stories, pictures of crying children, pictures of devestated parents.  I wasn't exactly prepared for any of that when I got online.  But, to go so far as to say that it was rude of my friends to post their thoughts, pictures, etc on their FB page is absurd. 

You might attempt to argue that it isn't the same.  But it is.  It was an unpleasant thing that I didn't enjoy seeing at all.  Definitely more disturbing that a friend's mom lying peacefully in a coffin. 

You don't have to stay off the internet, but really, you do need to accept that life isn't always pleasant and when you are on a website where people are openly sharing their life with others, that those unpleasant things might creep in...to include, the perfectly normal (even if upsetting) practice of taking pictures of deceased and displaying them. 

I've hidden feeds of perfectly good people before because they continuously post things that upset me in some way.  And even if I did agree that it was rude to post a picture of someone in a coffin (which I don't), my advice would be the same.  Ignore it and move on.

**All you's are general***

Bah, I understand where you're coming from, but a news story about children dying is not the same thing at all as actually seeing a dead body. Both are understandably upsetting, but no one forced people to look at footage of what happened in Newtown, and no one forced anyone watching TV or surfing the Internet to look at the children's dead bodies. Seeing a dead body is far more traumatic than hearing about someone dying.

Also, your advice to ignore it is a bit disingenuous. Once I've seen something disturbing like that, it doesn't go away. Just because you yourself are not bothered by seeing dead bodies doesn't mean other people can't be disturbed by it.

I disagree that taking photos of someone dead is normal in the modern U.S. - I have never seen that done outside of the Victorian era, and it was normally done in that time because people couldn't afford a lot of pictures, so they took a picture of Great - Aunt Muriel when she died so they would have a lasting memory of her for future generations.

Now that people usually can afford to have a picture done of someone alive, it seems in poor taste to take a picture of someone after they've died, when they obviously don't look alive (no one can tell me a dead person doesn't look dead), and post it on the internet for everyone on a friends list to see. I would never want my last or only memory of a person to be them lying in a coffin, usually ravaged by illness and made up to the hilt to give a semblance of life.

If people who have a culture of doing that want to keep taking those pictures, it's no skin off my back. I only ask that people who do take such pictures not force everyone who's friends with them to look at them, without regard for what they might think or feel.

[Sharnita]

There were pictures of children running form the building, crying that popped up on my newsfeed so it was just as "in your face" as the picture OP happened to see.  And I can tell you that for me, the pictures of kids who had been traumatized like that were far more traumatic for me than a picture of somebody's mother in a casket.

[bah12]

Bah, I understand where you're coming from, but a news story about children dying is not the same thing at all as actually seeing a dead body. Both are understandably upsetting, but no one forced people to look at footage of what happened in Newtown, and no one forced anyone watching TV or surfing the Internet to look at the children's dead bodies. Seeing a dead body is far more traumatic than hearing about someone dying.

Also, your advice to ignore it is a bit disingenuous. Once I've seen something disturbing like that, it doesn't go away. Just because you yourself are not bothered by seeing dead bodies doesn't mean other people can't be disturbed by it.

I disagree that taking photos of someone dead is normal in the modern U.S. - I have never seen that done outside of the Victorian era, and it was normally done in that time because people couldn't afford a lot of pictures, so they took a picture of Great - Aunt Muriel when she died so they would have a lasting memory of her for future generations.

Now that people usually can afford to have a picture done of someone alive, it seems in poor taste to take a picture of someone after they've died, when they obviously don't look alive (no one can tell me a dead person doesn't look dead), and post it on the internet for everyone on a friends list to see. I would never want my last or only memory of a person to be them lying in a coffin, usually ravaged by illness and made up to the hilt to give a semblance of life.

If people who have a culture of doing that want to keep taking those pictures, it's no skin off my back. I only ask that people who do take such pictures not force everyone who's friends with them to look at them, without regard for what they might think or feel.

Actually, I don't like seeing pictures of dead people.  At all.  I've stated that several times.  I don't even like going to funerals because of the possibility of seeing someone in a coffin.

But, that doesn't mean that it's rude to post a picture of it on FB.  I know several people who take pictures of those they love while they are in their coffins....though, I admit I haven't seen these on FB.  People on FB are choosing to share their lives and we may not all agree on what part of their lives they choose to share, but it doesn't make it rude. 

If no one forced me to see footage/pictures of Newtown on FB, why is it different for a picture of somoene in a coffin?  They are both pictures we see on newsfeeds that we may not be prepared for.

My point is that it's not rude to post personal things.  It may be rude to tag friends in those pictures, it would definitely be rude to insult someone, but posting uncomfortable things is not rude.  Even if we agreed that taking pictures of deceased at funerals was uncommon, something being uncommon doesn't make it rude.

[violinp]

There were pictures of children running form the building, crying that popped up on my newsfeed so it was just as "in your face" as the picture OP happened to see.  And I can tell you that for me, the pictures of kids who had been traumatized like that were far more traumatic for me than a picture of somebody's mother in a casket.

Seeing children crying is upsetting. Heck, seeing anyone cry is upsetting. It's still not the same thing as seeing a dead body, and trying to equate the two does not compute in my mind. Even when someone has died peacefully, it looks wholly unnatural and creepy.

More to the point, wire images of people expressing emotion from a national news story with ramifications that affected many people is not the same thing as one person deciding to put a picture of a dead person where anyone and everyone connected to the poster, however tangentially, could view the body without warning.

As an aside, I thought those pictures at Newtown were in bad taste to be taken as well, and those children should not have had their faces plastered all over the internet for all eternity because they were unlucky enough to be a part of that situation.

[Sharnita]

There were pictures of children running form the building, crying that popped up on my newsfeed so it was just as "in your face" as the picture OP happened to see.  And I can tell you that for me, the pictures of kids who had been traumatized like that were far more traumatic for me than a picture of somebody's mother in a casket.

Seeing children crying is upsetting. Heck, seeing anyone cry is upsetting. It's still not the same thing as seeing a dead body, and trying to equate the two does not compute in my mind. Even when someone has died peacefully, it looks wholly unnatural and creepy.

More to the point, wire images of people expressing emotion from a national news story with ramifications that affected many people is not the same thing as one person deciding to put a picture of a dead person where anyone and everyone connected to the poster, however tangentially, could view the body without warning.

As an aside, I thought those pictures at Newtown were in bad taste to be taken as well, and those children should not have had their faces plastered all over the internet for all eternity because they were unlucky enough to be a part of that situation.

It isn't the same for you - and that seems to be the standard.  And it wasn't seeing children crying, it was seeing children who were shattered by seeing teachers and classmates injured and/or killed and terrorized by fearing for their own lives.  So I guess in one way I would agree, it is not nearly the same as somebody in a casket.  Like I say, for me the kids are far more upsetting.  And since there ae many different people using different standards assuming your standard/reaction is the appropriate one (or that there is an appropriate one) seems incredibly close minded. 

I don't think there is an obligation to keep either type of picture off of fb to appease either of us.  I don't think there is a need to keep off pictures of cats and kitties for my friend who actually is unsettled by all felines.  Nobody should feel constrained regarding spiders or snakes (or bunnies, giraffes, fish. etc.)

[Bottlecaps]

I feel like even most of those people saying it's acceptable would still have a 'line' where they think people shouldn't be posting it on Facebook, whether that be graphic violence, pornography or what. So if the argument is solely 'It's acceptable to post such-and-such on Facebook because it's their wall', then the 'because it's their wall' part could apply to *anything*. Yes, technically anything I post might possibly offend someone, but I don't think that means that I shouldn't be aware of what is *likely* to be contentious.

This. While we have the right to post what we want on our own profile, we should be aware that not everyone wants to see certain things.

One, I know that dead bodies freak a lot of people out. I'm not one of those people, but I'm willing to be considerate of the fact that some people go to great lengths to ensure they don't see a dead body, or at the very least, get upset when they do see one. I wouldn't want to bombard them with a photo of a corpse smashed in between a LOLcat and one of those funny e-cards people post on Facebook.

Two, I think that it's OK to take pictures at a funeral (I know not everyone agrees with that, but that's another story ), but to me, those pictures are very private. My grandfather requested that my mother take a few photos of my grandmother at the funeral home. I don't know what his reasoning was, and we never questioned it.  They were taken when it was just a few close family members there, and those pictures are kept tucked away. Even Pappaw knew that while he wanted the pictures, not everybody would want to see them while flipping through a photo album or the like.

Not everyone's going to see it the way I see it though, and I think that when we sign up for social networking sites and the like, we have to accept the risk that there will be things posted on such sites that we don't want to see. I hate, with the burning passion of a thousand suns, seeing pictures of abused animals. It upsets me a great deal, sometimes to the point of tears. However, I see posts like that on Facebook all the time. That's something that I have to accept as a netizen, that I'm not always going to be able to avoid upsetting images and stories, but I will try to be a good netizen and attempt to avoid posting those things that I know many people would possibly be upset by and probably prefer not to see.