Steve Jobs and social media mourning: Why are we all so iSad?

These days everyone goes out with a bang. Steve Jobs and Apple were synonymous. To the geeks, the association had deeper meaning in terms of design and the direction he gave the company. But to most of us, he was just a name; a famous one – but just a name. Yet, that didn’t stop us from tweeting our condolences – ‘iSad’ – or even changing our Facebook status to quickly reflect what everyone in the digital world is talking about. The internet is being flooded with tributes to the man. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, for example, put this message up on his page: “Steve, thank you for being a mentor and a friend. Thanks for showing that what you build can change the world. I will miss you.” Every media outlet is filled with stories on his career and life. Bytes and kilobytes of data flooding the net and in essence, making you feel the magnitude of the loss — even if it doesn’t affect you directly. [caption id=“attachment_101303” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The hashtag #iSad was trending on Twitter yesterday.”]  [/caption] But beneath this very public show of emotion, one can’t help but wonder if there is any real feeling. Do people really do it because they care or do they do it because it’s the ‘right’ thing to do? Or is it just the need to feel one with the crowd? These questions are especially relevant for us Indians. Apple’s association with India is a relatively recent one. In fact, till around the early 90s, there was only a small group doing Mac development in India. That’s it. And while the world bought into Jobs’ dream, we mostly looked on as silent spectators. Windows did the trick for all of us in India. And even now, India stands largely ignored in Apple’s greater scheme of things. Yet, India and Indians are trying to show that they care. But this is a phenomena that isn’t restricted to Jobs. When former Indian skipper Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi passed away recently, there was a similar outpouring of grief. Pataudi may have been one of us, but many of us – especially the younger generation — didn’t know Pataudi or his deeds. Some of us knew him because he was Saif Ali Khan’s father, others because he was Sharmila Tagore’s husband and still others because he appeared on television and old people’s tales of the past. However, whether you knew him or not, it was cool to say ‘MAK Pataudi. RIP.’ So the crowd followed the line. Even in death — in fact, especially in death – the herd mentality shines through. This is a process that repeats itself almost every time someone even remotely well-known dies. Has life and death become just an excuse for a Twitter or FB storm and little else? Death seems to have become the deceased’s final act of showmanship – just not of their own doing; in essence giving literal meaning to the idea of going out with a bang.