Jamie Quattrocchi's family battled online comments after death
One seemingly unavoidable side effect of the digital technology revolution is the incivility online that tends to ramp up at a time when people are at their most vulnerable.
Caroline Quattrocchi knows that only too well. After her son Jamie was swept off the rocks at Peggy's Cove in April, she experienced the incivility first hand.
No matter how painful, Quattrocchi said she read each and every comment left online after news stories were published.
She said people were very willing to weigh in anonymously about her son's death.
"People went as far as to comment on our own memorial Facebook page that we set up for Jamie," she said. "We, in fact, put the intent at the top that it was a place to share positive memories."
Quattrocchi said she replied to many of the comments personally. For some of the more vicious ones, she send a private, direct message and asked the poster to remove the comment.
"I was strong and mature enough to see those comments were a reflection of them and the person they were, and not me or my family," she said.
What bothered her the most was how uninformed many commenters were about the circumstances surrounding her son's death.
She said he was not on the black rocks or too close to the water. Witnesses tell her there were no waves like it either prior to or after the one that swept him away.
She admits people at Peggys Cove have been reckless before.
"It happens, people do that, but in this case, that's not what happened," she said.
Comments she read included saying it was his own fault, it was nature's way of taking care of stupid people and taxpayers shouldn't be paying for rescue missions. Most of the postings were anonymous.
"While people have freedom of speech, it's pretty insensitive and without any integrity to be invading people's privacy writing on such a space designed to help us to heal and they used it for hurting," she said.
After confronting a number of online posters, many of them took down their comments, but it leaves in her mind a bigger question.
"What motivates people to respond in such an insensitive and hurtful manner," she said.
Quattrocchi said she'd love to invite some of the commenters to her home to watch her family grieve and see if they can make those same comments to their face.
"No one's going to do that. No one is brave enough to face it head on. They're hiding behind their computer and making these comments and don't have the information, don't have the backbone," she said.
She calls it a "character crisis" that people feel comfortable responding to their tragedy in the way they have.
"I'd be willing to bet that the people who are making these rude, insensitive, judgemental comments on social media are not the people paying it forward," she said.
"They are not the ones doing the random acts of kindness."
