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Tweeting a Toddler’s Death
On Monday evening, a Florida family lost their two-year-old when the boy fell in a pool and quickly drowned. Rescuers tried and failed to save the boy, who was pronounced dead at a hospital.
The baby’s mother, Shellie Ross, posted the tragedy to Twitter in real time, saying, “Please pray like never before, my 2 yr old fell in the pool” a few minutes after the accident.
A tweet she has apparently deleted from her feed, after controversy erupted across Twitter and the blogosphere.
A lot of you are probably thinking, “She tweeted it?”
It doesn’t seem that strange to me. People do strange things when they are desperate and grieving. In shock, they often do whatever they were doing a few minutes earlier when things were OK. And those who believe in the power of prayer frequently ask friends and strangers to pray for loved ones when crises happen.
Most of Shellie’s friends and strangers who saw her post and the photo memorials that followed it reacted with sympathy. Many sent prayers, some sent donations.
Others were less helpful. Madison McGraw aggressively questioned the truth behind this tragic story, suggesting that it might be a hoax and claiming that she’d contacted police and journalists all over Florida and no toddler had been reported drowned. McGraw has since made several lengthy posts to her blog blaming Ross for her son’s death.
It’s not insane to wonder if such a raw personal tragedy is real. We’ve seen hoaxes tug at our heartstrings on the internet before. Anyone remember the woman who faked a troubled pregnancy and stillbirth?
Asking questions is one thing. Blaming a mom for her child’s accidental death, accusing her of faking it to get attention, and vilifying the poor woman for daring to use Twitter …that’s quite another.
Or, as someone else in the Twitterverse said, “People. Regardless of how you think someone should behave after THEIR CHILD DIES, unless you’ve lost a child, YOU JUST DON’T KNOW. STOP IT”
This is the tragedy every parent on some level lives in fear of: your child dies in front of your eyes, and all the kings horses and all the kings men can’t put him back together again. My heart and prayers are with the Ross family today, as I gratefully snuggle my own toddler while writing this.
The twitterstorm surrounding this tragedy has opened up a lot of discussion about what this Twitter thing is for.
Shellie Ross reached out to her online support system during a crisis. Her tragedy shone a light on the power of social media networks to connect strangers in sympathy and care for regular people far away whose lives echo our own in some way.
Ross also unwittingly exposed an ugly underbelly of social media. I’d bet the people insulting and blaming her online wouldn’t dare speak to her if they saw her in person. What makes us feel safe being rude on the Internet? The people we “meet” here are just as real as our physical neighbors.
Twitter, Facebook, our personal blogs: those of us inhabiting these spaces are on a kind of social frontier where there are few norms and fewer rules. What are we going to make of this space?
Catherine Connors at Her Bad Mother offered one suggestion, tweeting, “Defy meanness/ugliness by ignoring it. Let this place be a place of friendship & warmth & support & beauty & wisdom & laughter & naught else.”
Connors has since posted a lovely primer for dealing with trolls of all stripes on her own blog.
I’m not as optimistic as Connors that we can make it a place of pure light and kindness. I do look forward to people figuring out how to treat each other with decency in the new media.
What do you think of all this? Would you tweet a tragedy as it happened? Can social media offer you real support, or is it all shark-infested waters?
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15 Comments
[...] up. The police investigation into this tragedy has found Shellie Ross blameless in her two-year-old’s accidental drowning earlier this [...]
Tweeting Mom Blameless in Tot’s Death, Police Say | Strollerderby commented on Dec 18 09 at 4:29 pm[...] Death, Shut up. The police investigation into this tragedy has found Shellie Ross blameless in her two-year-old’s accidental drowning earlier this [...]
(Slightly More Than) Weekly Link Round-up — ChildWild commented on Jan 30 10 at 10:04 am[...] 17, “Tweeting a Toddler’s Death“, [...]
Reflections and advice following Military Mom tragedy - vampyr commented on Mar 13 10 at 11:00 amHer Bad Mother commented on Dec 17 09 at 9:11 amI don’t think that we can achieve pure light and kindness. Nor do I think that we really want that – sometimes the best of Twitter/blogging/virtual-whatever is forceful critique and edgy humor and a willingness to push boundaries. BUT, but… we can have that without cruelty. Being critical and edgy (whatever that means) and pushing boundaries can be done respectfully. And in cases of tragedy, set those aside altogether – better to err on the side of being fooled than on the side of stabbing already broken hearts.
The rule that if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all applies here. We’d do well to add, if somebody else doesn’t have anything nice to say, don’t have anything to do with them at all would work nicely too.
e commented on Dec 17 09 at 9:29 amI don’t really use social networking sites (other than commenting here!), so I don’t think it’s something I would do. However, I would call my mom, my sister, and my friends immediately because I would need their support. If tweeting is how Shellie Ross finds her support system, I don’t see why it’s any different.
Knitty commented on Dec 17 09 at 9:47 amUnless she were busy tweeting while her baby was actually in the water, I don’t see what the big deal is. The real question to me is: what the hell is wrong with Madison McGraw? There are times when you should keep your mouth shut and your suspicions to yourself, and the death of someone’s baby is one of those times.
Rosa commented on Dec 17 09 at 10:26 amYeah, although I’ve never experienced THAT level of tragedy (and hope not to), both times I’ve been in vehicle accidents, I tweeted about it (or the equivalent, in the case that came before twitter.) It’s a way that I feel connected to the world, and those moments are when I most needed it.
Would I tweet something that level of tragedy? I hope never to know.
Eric commented on Dec 17 09 at 11:12 am“I do look forward to people figuring out how to treat each other with decency in the new media.”
Who’s the optimist here? Reminds me of this: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/3/19/
DukeLaw commented on Dec 17 09 at 1:58 pmThe criticisms are that she tweeted a minute before the 911 call made by her 11 year old son. What was she doing tweeting while her toddler was wandering around in the back yard? The tweet afterwards was poor social convention. The tweet right before the 911 call was unfortunate…..
Rinish commented on Dec 17 09 at 11:45 pmHmmmmmm….. Father, Blogging expert, social media specialist, website development company CEO….Nope, I would know better and will continue to criticize this social media pig for making a ridiculous post within minutes of a death.
Mila commented on Dec 18 09 at 10:29 amI hope she didnt tweet before calling 911, but I can understand wanting to reach out to many friends and famly in a mass way. I don’t think she did anything wrong. We tell our friends and family in one fell swoop via facebook that we are pregnant, come out of surgery, or that a baby has been born. Why not also reach out to those we love all at once to ask for prayer and support?
Sierra Black commented on Dec 18 09 at 11:19 am@DukeLaw: the police investigation found there was no connection between the child’s accident and the mom’s use of twitter.
lexine commented on Dec 20 09 at 2:40 amas somebody who used social networking to keep people informed while a loved one was missing this year, i can relate to the woman. my situation went on longer, but chances are she was just using the easiest means possible to inform people of a horrible situation without having to make a million overwrought phone calls. sometimes it is easier to put it out there in a blast.
ginmar commented on Dec 20 09 at 12:34 pmComments She didn’t tweet ‘please pray for my baby’ minutes after the paramedics got there: it was almost an hour later, from her phone. She was cleaning the chicken coop with her eldest son at the time the child was actually in trouble, so where’s Madison McGraw’s outrage at that?!
The real issue for me is just how much of a wretch McGraw is. She’s got a shitty book to pimp and attention to snork up, which she’s frankly glorying in. She just boasted about how she was meeting with somebody ‘from MSNBC’ about how maybe the toddler wouldn’t have drowned if the mother hadn’t been tweeting. Except the mother was doing chores at the actual time of death.
McGraw’s books seem to be pretty bad, and her reviewers mostly have reviewed exactly one book—hers. And they give it glowing reviews. One review went so far as to warn against a ‘witchhunt by Mommybloggers’.
Be warned; if you go near the woman’s blog it’s so full of anger and self-righteousness you might need a shower.
DukeLaw commented on Dec 22 09 at 2:45 amI said the twitter was unfortunate and possibly not the root cause. Obviously it’s hard for the police to blame twitter for a drowning. However, the fact that Ms. Ross had 74 tweets in a 9 hour span before her son’s death (averaging a tweet every 7.5 minutes) and that she is partially compensated through her blog indicates that it’s a job. Most people with jobs have babysitters for their children. That’s at least one other perspective (and then there’s the perspective that twitter takes absolutely no time and attention away from your “duties”–if you believe in that feel free to twitter while driving….)
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