November 20th, 2015
The 12 Stages of Social Media Grief in Response to Paris Bombing

As updates on the horrific terrorist attacks in Paris transpired over last Friday night, social media users across the United States and elsewhere struggled with how their social presences should react. The following is a list of the common 12 stages of social media grief in response to these attacks. Please keep in mind that your stages of social media grief will be unique to your own social media presence, and may vary in scope, size, and authenticity.

1. Post on Twitter: “What the fuck is happening in Paris????
2. Update Facebook profile picture to a picture of you at the Eiffel Tower from your junior year study abroad trip.
3. Update new Facebook profile picture to include a caption in French that you google-translated.
4. Updated new Facebook profile picture with French caption to include Facebook’s new French flag filter.
5. Check Twitter again.
6. Share your new Facebook image to Instagram.
7. Check celebrity Instagram profiles to like the photographs of Paris they’ve just posted with an Inkwell filter.
8. Like a friend’s post about Beirut that chastises the social media world for no Facebook filter or hashtag for them.
9. Share post and feel slightly guilty for your French flag filter.
10. Take a screenshot of a celebrity’s Twitter post reminding people not to be racist against Muslims after this, and share it on Facebook.
11. Take a screenshot of a celebrity’s Twitter post reminding people not to refuse refugees after this, and share it on Facebook.
12. Distract yourself from the lingering feeling of uneasiness that your performance on social media is ever less than genuine by — what else? — watching a funny cat video on YouTube.