Mourning rituals & Goodbyes in the indie web

[Corrupted Unicorn]

Bringing this topic back to bring up another kind of online grieving: Youtube comments. You can find the kind I'm talking about when looking for a song you like. Short, but emotional stories about what-could-have-beens with a past love, a parent or family member that is no longer here, or a rough upbringing with the hope for a brighter future...

I hope I don't sound weird when I say this, but reading these things make me realize how connected we are all through music, and how a single song can contain infinite stories, not just the one embedded within its lyrics.

I know it's not a stable platform. Comments get dragged down to the bottom where only the most restless bored people scroll. Videos and accounts can be taken down. But for a brief but meaningful moment, these loved ones from strangers live once again, becoming part of my memory.

With time, the details may be eroded away - but never that feel of connection with humanity.

[JetDungeonDragon]

Mourning is the reason why I have one of the on-and-off WIP pages on my site that I call Old Times- though I wouldn't call it mourning for traditional things. It's a kind of celebration/mourning of the past, my past, when time just aligned more with my closest friend group to get together and just spend like 8+ hours together at a time online, among other things of my past but mostly that. When I do get the right mood to work on the page, it typically ends up being a lot of work trying to dig up memories across what devices I have remaining.

[caby]

when talking about IRL grief specifically, I find myself struggling to even think of posting to the internet while experiencing it. I understand people making tributes completely but for me, I struggle to focus. I've recently lost two guinea pigs, one expected, one unexpected, and I felt so broken down and exhausted that I stopped posting altogether anywhere, I still haven't updated my personal site since. I've luckily not experienced much in the way of human loss but my guinea pigs are extremely dear to me.
as far as exploring the line between nostalgia and grieving the loss of our past, I'm pretty fixated. both in terms of things I missed out on due to not being born or being too young to remember it, such as the 90s and early 00s, and things I hold dear from my childhood and teenage years in the late 00s through the 2010s. I feel sad that I missed out on art portals for example, while I miss playing roblox with school friends in 2010-12. they're definitely two different feelings and the latter feels more like grief, I feel more sad about never being able to experience those moments again. for that reason I enjoy playing retrostudio on roblox, or using habbo retros if I want to experience habbo as I knew it in 2010. it's never the same, but it does feel like I'm making space for myself to grieve and heal in a way. it's interesting to think about. same with old internet friends I'll never speak to again, on sumopaint, doink, flipnote hatena and even deviantart. my love of the 90s internet however feels more like a fun larp most of the time, now I have more things in my life that I enjoy I don't feel as much sense of being born in the wrong era.
speaking of deviantart, forever grieving and regretting the deactivation of my first deviantart account. there's really early art of mine that was on there that I'll probably never see again. frustratingly I remembered my account details and am still able to log in, it just logs me into a nonfunctional account. sux...