A long time ago, my ex-wife had two miscarriages. We could barely speak after them. Maybe that’s why I can’t understand how someone can tweet the death of her two-year-old son almost in real time. That’s what Shellie Ross did.
According to the New York Times, Shellie has 5400 followers on Twitter. The wife of an Air Force sergeant, she uses her account to tell about her life as a mother of four.
Last Monday she tweeted about her chickens at 5.22pm. At 5.38pm she called the police saying that her son Bryson was dead at the bottom of the family pool. At 6.12pm she asked her Twitter followers to pray for the life of her son. Only five hours later, she posted photos of the two-year-old Bryson along with the following message:
Remembering my million dollar baby
I don’t know about you, but when I read about this, something flipped inside me, and I felt absolutely no sympathy for this woman. I just can’t believe that this is the way you mourn the loss of your own son. The same way I just can’t believe that anyone could have the cold blood to tweet about how your son is dead in the pool, just a few minutes after finding him there.
The NYT article is excusing her by saying that “it feels perfectly logical that Shellie Ross would reach out to that community with her pain”. Really? How is that “logical” again? Do you mean as logical as plastering the front of your home with photos of your dead kid, and publicly declare that you are “remembering” him shouting through the window? With a megaphone? And what is that community of 5400 followers? Are they 5400 friends? Or just 5400 spectators? And since we are at this logical game, could we step it a little bit further and turn on the Justin.tv webcam? I want to see the tears, please. What’s the difference, anyway? It’s all about “reaching the community” because everyone feels isolated, after all.
But then again, I remember I tweet about personal things sometimes too. So where to draw the line? Maybe each of us have to draw our own lines. I know where to draw mine, and tweeting about the dead of my kid – hopefully that will never happen – or anyone else is a hundred billion miles out of it.
No matter how you look at this, it’s terribly sad. Sad because an innocent kid died. Sad because something is really f—ked up when a mother’s first reaction is to post about the dead of her son a few minutes after she finds him dead. In a bloody web page. With the mum, with the whole society, or whof—kingever. But something here is just not working right, and no excuses on how this is a brave new world can make up for this often-pathetic show we call the web. [NYT]
matt
December 18, 2009 at 12:06 PM
“logical” is exactly the point here, rational and logical are at the bottom of the list of importance after a mother has just lost a child. its possible that with the shock she just did what was instinctual to her. also, people’s understanding of social network sites, and indeed the internet can vary greatly from us technically minded people.
I would reserve judgment until she starts doing stuff like trying to make money out of it…
Report PermalinkMike Anthony
December 18, 2009 at 3:06 PM
So half an hour after her kid dies she lets all the people she feels a connection with know about the tragedy by posting on twitter, and you think that’s so wrong? What should she have done instead o master of all things? Kept it to herself and cried on the floor a bit longer?
And for gods sake, “have the cold blood to tweet about how your son is dead in the pool”? O yes, I’m sure she was completely cold blooded towards her kid.
Also, “a few minutes” as you keep saying is inaccurate. If you got told to wait somewhere for “a few minutes” and nothing had happened after 15 minutes you’d be pissed off, let alone over half an hour.
Stop being so bitter and completely trashing this person. On a forum what you’re doing now is called flaming, and for something this bad you’d get banned quicker than you could blink.
Report PermalinkStick
December 18, 2009 at 4:25 PM
Mike the death of your fucking child is not something that should be made public 30 fucking minutes after it happens. That’s seriously not right…
Report PermalinkPav
December 18, 2009 at 4:55 PM
Obviously for one reason or the other we also draw moral lines on different levels. For some it will be “making money out of it” for others it would be exactly what she did!
Like it or not, but all social networking sites are full of media whores / attention seekers similar to “balloon boy” family. And in this instance, her behaviour may lead some to think of her this way as well…
PS
Report Permalink@Mike Anthony – everyone is entitled to their own opinions!
Mr Corel Drawer
December 18, 2009 at 7:25 PM
maybe if she wasnt on twitter in the first place and supervised her child when he was near the pool he would still be alive. just a thought.
Report PermalinkObserver
December 18, 2009 at 7:33 PM
Everyone deals with grief differently.
She was alone and had never dealt with that kind of situation before. In a panic, in shock, who do you tell, what do you do? Once you’ve called emergency services what can you do but wait.
In that half an hour after calling the police she would still have been coping with all kinds of emotional pain and may have self-medicated. There are so many things at play here and none of them call for the kind of judgement that labels the mother anything other than normal.
Was she mentally “sick” at the time she posted? Of course she was, her son had just died.
Twitter is something to occupy time with, and a distraction. It wasn’t planned, I’m sure the thought “If my son dies I’ll make sure I tweet about it” never went through her head.
She Twittered because she had nobody to support her, absolutely no-one. Imagine that.
Report PermalinkDavid
December 18, 2009 at 9:57 PM
The one thing that most people fail to understand when it comes to dealing with such a traumatic shock is that everyone deals with it in their own way.
When my brother died, I went completely numb. I did not know what to do, I did not know what to say and as strange as it sounds, I did not not know what to feel. It literally took me months to really come to terms with the fact that he was gone. After which I went into a deep depression for the better part of a year. It is now 15 years on and I still feel the loss of James
So, what did I do in the hours after finding out that James had died from sustaining a head injury after a fall? I blocked it entirely, I did what ever it took to shield myself from this reality.
I did some homework
I took a walk to the shops to buy some milk and a pen
I talked to my best mate about cricket
I watched the Simpsons and even managed to laugh
I argued with my parents who thought I was not upset the same way they were
My point is that I did everything I could to shut off my feelings at that point. Did I lack the humanity needed to love my brother and mourn his loss? The answer to that question is no
If twitter or facebook had been around in the day I can see myself doing the same as this poor woman, the internet gives me a sense of community. The people I interact with online are the people who I consider close friends, why wouldn’t this woman want to reach out to them? I defy anyone who has gone through the sudden loss of a loved one to ridicule anyones way of coping. How dare you…
You are the ones that lack empathy, it is your blood that runs cold. It is not your right to judge how people deal with grief
Report PermalinkSean Kow
December 19, 2009 at 11:52 AM
The thing is that what you did is, as you said, block things entirely, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. And the things you did were done a few hours after. This woman has done this in a 16 minute window, from a tweet about chickens to a tweet about her dead son, and most likely in a smaller time frame. Why is it that we lack empathy? We all understand the grief that comes with losing someone, my mother passed away when I was 9, and I did the same as you and attempted to block it out, with video games, tv etc. It’s not that we both lacked the emotion for our loved ones, though it hurt so much to think about it that we did what we could in order to distract ourselves.
What I didn’t do, was open up the phone book, find people I either vaguely know or don’t know at all, and call them up a couple of minutes after she had died, informing them of it.
This woman spreads the tragic information of her son the same way if she were to receive good news, which is why alot of us are annoyed. And to those who say that she had no one else, it feels as though she didn’t even try to call anyone close to her, considering the time frame, and dashed straight to the computer to tell a few thousand people of the wonderfu- I mean tragic news.
Report PermalinkDavid
December 21, 2009 at 3:50 PM
BS. There is a massive difference between posting a thought on twitter and calling 50 people randomly out of the phone book. For many (like myself) Twitter is a journal, yes there is a social element to it and its short, but never-the-less its a journal or a log or a web-log or a blog or whatever, its where you put your thoughts.
Had Shellie written this in a paper journal, and at some point had that journal published, and sold a million copies, this conversation would never have happened. The only reason that this has made headlines is because it contains what seems to be the holy Trinidad of buzzwords for journalists/bloggers “dead-kid-twitter”
My point is (which was obviously missed) that nobody has the right to judge someones actions after they lose someone close to them. People do weird stuff, sometimes to cope and sometimes to escape. Were Shellie’s actions were strange… yes, malicious… no
Now she is being used as media fodder for page links and ad sales.
Report PermalinkMarc
December 18, 2009 at 10:22 PM
I gotta agree with jesus on this one..
Report PermalinkIf this stupid lady had spent less time on the bloody internet twittering and whatever and actually been paying attention to her kid, then this innocent child would still be with us today.
Obviously this ladies priorities need to be sorted out. I mean shouldnt she be busy sorting out the other 3 kids, worrying about her son, getting other things sorted before twittering.
Seriously has the world gone wrong.
LadyHawke
December 19, 2009 at 8:56 AM
I have been in traumatic situations in which my REAL LIFE friends did NOTHING to support me. It was people I have met over the internet who held my hand cyberly and gave me advice and support. If this poor woman was alone waiting for help and someone to give her solace I can DEFINITELY see her Tweeting her internet friends.
Report PermalinkAs far as her Twittering 30 minutes before the tragedy about her chickens that was NOTHING. She is a mother. She is doing things around the house and property ALL the time. Twittering a comment now and then does NOT indicate neglect of her real life. Anyone who does not have EVERY single child in their line of vision EVERY single minute could have a similar tragedy.
Children have died in home accidents long before electronic devices came along.
Quit judging people. How fortunate you are to have a perfect life.
And I don’t even have a Twitter and I can see this.
Joel Bruce
December 19, 2009 at 5:13 PM
I read in MX that she actually twittered that her son was face down in the pool about two minutes after finding him there. When the police or whoever got him out, she twittered for everyone to pray for him. He was declared dead 5 hours later, which she then twittered. She wasn’t doing these things half an hour later, two hours later, etc. She was doing it damned near real-time, like Jesus said. That’s just wrong. I don’t give a damn about this reaching out bullshit, when your son is dead or dying, you goddamned focus on it. All that is also besides the point, as what the fuck was her two year old son doing in the pool A) without floaties and all that other safety gear you get for little kids B) without her watching him. There’s no excuse for this woman. Poor form
Report PermalinkGinmar Rienne
December 21, 2009 at 2:54 AM
Is it too much for you to verify shit before you hurt somebody who’s already grieving? Jesus, what a mob. That story about her is not true.
The story’s being spread by a vicious and mediocre creature named Madison McGraw, who JUST happens to have a couple shitty novels to sell, and whose only family relations are a wee bit fucked up. Why does she hate her mother? Why does she hate other mothers? Why is she deliberately distorting the timeline?
Nobody’s outraged about chicken coops, one of which she was cleaning while the child drowned. Her oldest son was supposed to have gone to the pool enclosure to turn off a hose; the gate apparently didn’t latch properly. IT was the classic child drowning. But, no, people are rushing to judgement based on the machinations of a woman who loooooooooooooooooooooooooves publicity and is now boasting about how she’s talking to people from MSNBC.
If the mother had been calling her friends on the phone for support, nobody would give a shit. It’s that she was a mom, and used something called Twitter and had a lot more followers than Madison McGraw that turned this into a stone-the-witch frenzy.
Report PermalinkDavid
December 21, 2009 at 4:10 PM
“At 5.38pm she called the police saying that her son Bryson was dead at the bottom of the family pool. At 6.12pm she asked her Twitter followers to pray for the life of her son”
That tweet happened more than 30 min after the call to emergency (which, if she was in a metro area would have been there well within 15min). By that time the tweet was posted the Boy would have been in the care of the paramedics and not the mother. One of 2 things happened when the paramedics got there, the boy was either stabilized and later died in hospital or the boy died at the scene (obviously after 6:15pm) The last tweet did not occur for another 5 hours.
Why is everyone reading this like she was tweeting while here son lie at the bottom of the pool?
Even if you don’t know all of the facts, its pretty easy to figure out what happened here.
Report PermalinkJoel Bruce
December 24, 2009 at 9:15 PM
point still stands, why was her 2yo son unsupervised near a pool?
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