I remember where I was when I heard the news; in the kitchen washing yesterday’s dishes. The name, followed by “has died”, punctured millions of little worlds that day. The outpouring of grief was immense. Everyone spoke about it, and asked the same questions despite knowing the answers: “How did this happen?” “Have you heard?” and, perhaps more tellingly, “Is it true?”. In our family home images of crowds gathering, sharing their grief, were broadcast by the only five channels we had. Everyone felt awful because it was awful. She was a mother, a sister, and a daughter. We knew someone was to blame, and we knew certain groups of people who published truths were also to blame.
In the mid-Nineties I understood that news was written by informed journalists who told the Truth. I had no critical abilities (I thought criticism was what some teachers did to remind me that my intelligence was forever limited to drudgery). There was no clickbait, but there was a scantily clad young woman, and she invited me in. This appealed to my pubescent self too nervous and too small to reach the high places. I never gave it a thought that she always ended up in the bin to be recycled into a new form or dumped in landfill. Newspapers provided relief in the days before my mobile phone could connect me to urgent tasks. My phone could make and receive calls, text messages, and, to distract attention, provided a game called Snake. The aim was to feed the snake and prevent it eating itself; capitalism and consumerism as pixelated entertainment. Nowadays screens are everywhere and so are the invitations, distractions, and truths. For some people it doesn’t matter whether these truths are true because that’s “the way it is” #fakenews.
The way it is is never simple. On paper and on screens basic personal details are given, read, and used to suppose who we are; as if the person at either end understands the totality and complexity of a human being from seeing “white” “prefer not to say” “35–49” “prefer not to say” “divorced” “yes”. And yet we read micro-biographies online and assume we know all there is to know of a person.
Some social media networks, namely Twitter, are like school playgrounds for the apathetic. People coalesce into a vitriolic web that teems with the sucked dry remnants of their ethics and morals, spreading invective opinions. If you don’t like Brexit, you won’t like the patriotic pile-on that comes with it. If you think transgender women aren’t “real” women, join the gang. If you think that a woman should be locked up and the key thrown away, join the gang: “we found one, may we burn her?”. It’s just a laugh and doesn’t matter anyway because it’s online and they can choose not to read it. Anyway, no one forces me to read or watch things I don’t like, and another thing is they’re famous so they have to deal with it. I’m just a small part.
Yes, we can see that.
I remember where I was when I heard the news; in the kitchen, sat at a table, browsing for music to play. It was Friday evening. Tomorrow some friends were visiting. My (now ex) wife’s phone rang and she answered in her usual cheerful manner. It was her mum. I carried on browsing. At some point I became aware of the silence. Something was not right, and, sadly, a hunch of what it might be became suddenly very real. The next sound I heard was my wife saying “No! No! No! No! No!” in a voice I never want to hear again, but will never get the choice not to. The name followed by “is dead” tore apart everything in our world. My beautiful, bright, confident, and vulnerable sister-in-law (we only added “in-law” when chatting to each other because it seemed so humourously impersonal) had taken her own life. She was 24. The grief was surreal, and felt like something we existed in; a total world of different sounds, colours, living. We asked the same questions despite knowing the answers: “How did this happen?” “Why did this happen?” and, perhaps more tellingly, “Could I/we have stopped it?”. We all knew the answer to this last one. It still does not make it any easier to live with.
We live in a world where 120,000 people could have lost their lives as a direct result of austerity. We do live in a world where Errol Graham died because of the welfare system. An investigation by the National Audit Office (NAO) linked sixty nine suicides to “where difficulties with the Department of Work and Pensions [DWP] played a role”. It is bewildering that human life seems to have become of so little value. A petition calling for the criminalisation of ‘netting’ that would prevent birds from nesting received 365,508 signatures, while a petition asking for an investigation into Atos’s alleged mishandling of health assessments that would result in a vulnerable person losing their vital and necessary income received 28,702. I’m not saying nesting sites shouldn’t be protected from greedy developers who care for profits more than people, I’m simply asking “do we actually know what we’re doing?”. If our interpersonal relations to each other comes through characters, data, and statistics, then we already are living in a dehumanised world. In my lifetime it seems as if suicide has gone from a rare event to an increasingly visible sign of the systemic hatred that is carefully disguised as incompetent government policies that feeds an increasingly intolerant and conservative society. Homeless people are moved on because they spoil the view. Hostile architecture “decorate” our physical social spaces. Sick and vulnerable people are forced to attend “assessments” proving their illness. There is no room for the feeble because they keep clogging up the spaces that no longer exist.
I remember where I was yesterday when I heard the news that Caroline Flack had died. The thought she may have taken her own life was instant. Flack’s life, already more challenging and vulnerable because of public glare, scrutiny, and mental health issues, had become something that didn’t really exist. She was an avatar, not a real person. Her decision was made not by her, but by those who got and spread the Truth about Caroline from hearsay whispered in capital letters exclamation mark exclamation mark exclamation mark … crying with laughter cartoon yellow face.
Maybe behind deleted articles someone is asking “Would I write that if I knew her? Would I think that of her after I’d listened to her?”.
For Caroline Flack, her family, friends, and fans, and us, it’s now too late.
