Liam Payne: Influencers record videos of their raw reactions to One Direction star’s death | On trend

The 18-year-old from England has been a fan of the group since she was four and said it was natural for her to post the video of her reaction, which has now been viewed nearly four million times, she was quoted as saying by the New York Times.

Following Liam Payne’s untimely death in Argentina, where he fell from the balcony of his hotel room, several videos surfaced on social media of fans filming themselves crying and reacting to the news of his death. (Also read: Liam Payne’s drug source was a hotel employee, charges likely)

One video showed someone being told on the phone that the pop star had died, while another showed a musician abruptly stopping a song as the news broke, showing viewers she was shaking. Fans even recorded themselves telling their friends who were supporters of the boy band the tragic news.

Grief goes online

Real-time reactions to even the most devastating news are increasingly being posted on social media. It’s common to see videos of users documenting themselves being laid off, getting injured, or even experiencing natural disasters like earthquakes and floods.

A few weeks ago, when Florida was hit by a devastating hurricane, a man filmed himself kayaking in a flooded living room. Surrounded by water and in a dangerous situation, he filmed himself and posted the video instead of evacuating his home during Hurricane Helene. (Also read: Florida man kayaks in flooded living room during Hurricane Helene. Viral video)

These videos tend to quickly go viral on social media and quickly capture users’ attention because they offer a glimpse into deeply personal moments. One of the first examples of sharing inappropriate moments online was in 2018, when YouTuber Logan Paul posted a video in which he and his friends found the body of a man who had apparently died by suicide in a forest in Japan.

Nothing is too serious not to be filmed

In a New York Times report, Casey Lewis, author of the youth culture newsletter After School, said such videos have been normalized and YouTube has taken the shock value out of some of these reactions. “YouTube went through the trouble of making this kind of content feel normal and how you kind of work your way through things, and then TikTok poured gasoline on the fire,” she said.

“We see people writing on their loved ones’ Facebook walls and they know they’ve been dead for ten years, but there’s still something there that they feel the need to express in a public forum,” she said.