Sometimes I look up dead people on Facebook. Not, say, Thomas Edison or Washington Irving or George Washington Carver. If they had Facebook, I wouldn’t be here– but that’s a different story.

But maybe I’m watching the six o’clock news and there’s a story on how Randy Rappelstein, a junior at Rutgers, crashed his RAV-4 into a lightpole. Hop on over to Facebook, type in Randy’s name, and boom: a picture of him at his Sig Ep formal with his date cropped out. A remnant of his life when death seemed an abstract possibility.

It’s a creepy habit of mine, yes, but the Facebook has emerged as a virtual graveyard for such real – life situations, and it’s hard not to pay attention to the amount of dead matter on the site.

In many ways, it has become a digital ecosystem, equally supporting life and death without erasing proof of either. In the past, the site would normally remove profiles of the deceased one or two months after their death. But more and more Facebook users had expressed a desire for the profiles of the dead to stay alive, and in the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting, Facebook changed its policy to allow for perpetual virtual memorials. Myspace, on the other hand, has a separate website for the profiles of the passed, called MyDeathSpace.

Providing I don’t become entangled in any RAV-4 disasters, I plan to live until 80 or 90 and often wonder what will happen to my little Facebook page along the way.

Will I be tethered to this intangible thing until I’m at death’s door? Will I be writing on my friends’ walls until I’m blinded by cataracts? Will I have to join a virtual nursing home group?

I can see it now: “I live in a public nursing home that might as well be a private nursing home.”

And then what?

I heard what happened on the news yesterday. I was shocked. But I can’t say what happened to those poor, unsuspecting students hit me until this morning when I saw the many V-Tech memorial groups on facebook. I saw pictures of the actual students who were shot and killed having fun with their friends, enjoying college, living a carefree life like the rest of us. I read other students’ comments from other schools and felt the sympathy and sadness in their words.

Check out the links to the memorial pages.

It has never been more apparent that we aren’t just self-involved, alcoholics who party five days a week. We care about what happens to our peers, people we don’t even know. We see and are concerned with how yesterday’s terrible incident affects the victims’ families and friends. We have all been sadened by the fact that not one of them expected to lose their life that day. Even more, we’re aware and scared by the fact that this could have happened on any of our campuses. We could have been victims too.

People are angry, people are pointing fingers at this shooter, some are saying that they’re glad he’s dead. But I want to know why. Why did he do what he did? What was it that happened between he and his girlfriend that made him snap? What made him so angry and irrational that he thought it’d be a good idea to hurt his fellow classmates?

I doubt there is a word out there that can actually describe what happened yesterday. All I know is, I was comforted when I saw how much love, concern and support is out there on other campuses … in something as small as a group on facebook. My heart goes out to all the victims and their loved ones.

Official Facebook Memorial Pages:

Tribute Page

Shooter Hate Page

Pray for VTech

Always Remember Virginia Tech

Victims Memorial Pages:

Emily Jane Hilscher

Ryan Christopher Clark a.k.a. Stack

Mary Read

Henry Lee

Leslie Sherman

Reema Samaha

Maxine Turner

Jarrett Lane

Matt La Porte

Brian Bluhm

Caitlin Hammaren

Daniel Perez

Ross Alameddine

Check back for more.