Quit Your 'Synthetic' Grieving for Peaches Geldof

Peaches Geldof was a public persona who died in the digital age, and thus all kinds of people have felt compelled to comment about her life and speculate about her death on social media. At the Guardian, Tonya Gold is not pleased about what this says about our society. "The grunt of synthetic emotion was gruesome," she writes, complaining that silence is apparently impossible in the days of the hashtag.

But isn't it touching that so many were affected by Geldof's death? No, writes Gold. "To me, it feels like entertainment posted on to a random face, a hand clutching blindly for something vivid." And along those lines: "Perhaps there is a connection between this sort of grief—which is not grief at all, but drama and distraction—and a growing deadness of spirit towards others." Click for her full column. (More Peaches Geldof stories.)