I’d just read Ian Ziering’s tweet mourning the death of his colleague Luke Perry. Tender sentiments, sure, but the cynic in me is always confused by messages written to dead people. As though the writer is somehow anticipating that wherever our corpse ends up, we’ll find ourselves within arms-reach of a smart phone to keep tabs on just how vigorously we’re being grieved.

I recognise that such tweets—along with old-school newspaper death notices—make their own kind of contribution to the remembrance process, but I’ve nonetheless always felt a little affronted by the open letter style so many take. As though true depth of feeling can only ever be conveyed when a message is directed to the dead person and then broadcast to our 100k social media followers.