another example of something like this is when those 30-odd students got shot up in Virginia. half the people on my msn contacts list put an emoticon flower in front of their screen name. "if you don't you're heartless. it's just respectful." they said. aren't those Virginia Tech students too busy being DEAD to go on msn? also, i don't think anyone i know has any of the friends or family of those students on their contacts list. they will NEVER see that BEAUTIFUL, PIXELATED flower that they SLAVED for days and nights to put up onto the screen. it's so insincere, it's just hilarious. if anyone honestly cares, then they should send a personal letter to someone in Virginia. people die every day, so they might as well leave that flower up forever then. those flowers can kiss my ass.
I used to feel that way (that it was such a load of crap), but now that I'm an older fart, I made some room for that sort of behavior in my thinking:
1. Yeah, true, it's sort of like 9/11: Our lives are so numb and commonplace that when something dramatic happens, we sometimes identify with it in order to feel something and have some sort of passion in our lives -- hence, getting heavily emotionally invested in people we would have never met or cared about outside of the tragedy. Still, we all have to start somewhere. That's not a bad place to be, we just have to move past that level of engagement.
2. I think the personal letter would be a great thing, better than the flowerrs. But the flowers is easier and less messy, since you don't have to engage emotionally with people you don't know, who are grieving. It's like holding up a support sign from a distance, rather than being the one whose shoulder everyone is crying on; that's not an easy place to be, we all usually begin as sign holders, and some of us eventually do move past that.
3. It's easy to see why something from another person is hypocritical, while we ourselves do nothing whatsoever. At least they're doing something and trying to engage, even if the efforts are misguided.
4. Impersonal shows of compassion are still better than nothing. It would still move me to see people who don't know me offering some impersonal show of support (meaning I "registered on their radar, and they took a moment for me"), rather than being met with complete silence. That's pretty darn lonely. I only expect the few people who I have intimate relationships with to engage me on a deep or meaningful level; I don't require that nor maybe even want it from people I don't even know.
Just some ideas.
Basically, the point is to be authentic when you do something. If you don't know someone well, but just feel empathy for them in general, it's perfectly fine to do/say something more on the surface to show support, then move on with life. And if you know someone well, it's appropriate to go much further. It's the people who should be intimately involved and who blow off the suffering person that annoy me, as well as the people who don't know the suffering person from a rat's ass and somehow think it is their job to suddenly be their deepest confidante.