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Mourning the Internet Famous: Randy Pausch's Distributed Funeral

When the silent film star Rudolph Valentino died in 1926, thousands gathered in the streets of New York in such an excitable state that a riot broke out, injuring 100 people. It was a leading indicator that the medium and its stars held Americans in thrall. Randy Pausch's death on Friday provides an example of how we'll mourn the passing of the internet famous. Pausch gained celebrity with his exceptional and touching "Last Lecture," which he delivered after he'd been diagnosed with fatal pancreatic cancer. When news of Pausch's passing surfaced, the internet lit up with tens of thousands of Tweets and blog posts. Google even added a small tribute to the man on its main search page. But most fascinating and perhaps heartfelt were the grief-stricken comments that run for pages after every obituary or blog post bearing his name. This massive outpouring of grief is now inscribed across all media silos and geographies, respecting no particular corporate or institutional demarcations. There is no official place for expressing sorrow, no central control of this mourning. Taken as a whole, it shows that the internet has begun to alter how we mourn the dead, probably the deepest, oldest tradition of civilization. And in the process, it's revealed the extent of the flash-community of Randy-lovers, URLs linked like the arms of the marchers who grieved in the streets of Atlanta in the wake of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s death. I had the sad task of writing one of the many obituaries for Pausch. Within minutes, comments started to come in with a curious grammar like this one from Colleen: I am real sorry for your loss Jai. Your husband have [sic] inspired me to be a better version of myself. After I heard about Randy's passing, I couldn't help but cry. The whole world is mourning with you. These comments weren't about Pausch's death. They were addressed to him and his kin, as if Wired.com would convey this message to them. It's as if the internet has joined the angels in our collective imagination of heaven, the CAT-5 winding into the clouds like a beanstalk. This was strange. I checked other obits, like this random one from the Dallas Morning News metro blog, and found the same pattern: "Your inspiration stays with us, thank you. Peace to your family, Godspeed," commented Joanie Pelsynzka. Tributes.com, an obituary site, has dozens of pages worth of similar sentiments. It dawned on me that I was witnessing a new form of grieving: the distributed funeral. Why watch the service on TV when you can comment on the obituaries themselves? As my friend and Dwell magazine editor Aaron Britt put it Saturday, "the internet is an open letter to everyone," and people began using any form text box on any webpage, related or not to the Pausch family itself, to make known their sadness. At some level, these comments are a bit crazy. It wouldn't make sense in any other context to write or say what people are writing in the comments sections of blogs across the country. You can't imagine telling someone about Randy Pausch's death and them saying to you, "I am real sorry for your loss Jai," because you are not, in fact, Jai. But given the searchability of the internet, this behavior isn't that nuts. It doesn't actually matter what URL you put your condolences on, it's all part of Googleverse, so Jai could find it if she wanted to find it. The mourning also mimics the way that people experience Pausch's powerful oration. You interacted with Randy through a little box embedded in a webpage. Your headphones piped his voice clear and strong into the center of your brain, almost as if some deep part of your own mind was delivering his nuggets of wisdom. He was talking to you alone, not the hundreds packed into a theater or your family gathered around the television. In response, then, it made sense to get personal and say, directly, "Thanks, Randy. We'll miss you." This mourning splits the difference between the small and generally private funerals of our friends and family and the public spectacles that marked the passings of Stalin, or Elvis, or Princess Di. Millions of people grieved alone in the asynchronous communities of the internet. Still, at whatever scale and medium chosen, all these death rituals retain their universal purpose. They all provide convincing evidence that though the star may die, the universe continues. Though the Marine is gone, the corps lives on. "The integrity and viability of human society is challenged by every death, some more than others," write the authors of the dryly grisly 1989 tome, The Encyclopedia of Death. "The need to affirm or restore the strength of the community against the force of death becomes especially obvious when a powerful leader dies." The strength of the internet communities' reaction to the medium's most famous death-defying cancer patient shows how this series of tubes has come of age, not just as a market or a means of distribution, but as a series of linked communities, significant enough to require affirmations in the face of death. Comments, then, are flowers and wreaths, candles, pictures and prayers, and the Pausch's doorstep is located precisely at any address at which the web's spiders can find their name. One can only imagine that Randy Pausch's distributed funeral procession would warm the staunch advocate of virtual reality's heart. Right, Randy?

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