This is both disturbing and fascinating: a look at what suicide, grief and mourning look like when they’re played out in the arena of blogs and online communities. The nature of blogs means that very personal pain can be made extremely public if you choose; and it means that thousands of people you’ve never met can respond to your passing in ways both touching and offensive. The article suggests that something critical about the human mourning process is lost when it’s reduced to a blog drama; it’s hard to disagree but also hard to understand exactly what’s gone wrong.

This essay is from a few months ago, but it seems quite timely right now with the recent news of the death of a blogger in Iraq; he had written a moving blog post specifically to be published in the event of his death. What is the web doing to the very human process of death and grief, and is it a bad or a good thing?