The pre Thanksgiving push of exams, essays, and group projects 

is upon us. We should all buckle down and study. (Should.) If 
you aren’t feeling it, here are five ways to productively procras-

3B

Magazine Editor:

Ian DIllingham

Deputy Editor:

Natalie Gadbois

Design Editor:

Jake Wellins

Photo Editor:

Luna Anna Archey

Creative Director:

Cheryll Victuelles

Editor in Chief:

Jennifer Calfas

Managing Editor:

 Lev Facher

Copy Editors:

Hannah Bates

Laura Schinagle

Emma Sutherland

THE statement

THE LIST

COOK YOUR MEALS FOR THE WEEK
Therapeutic for the body and mind, and an effective way to 
ensure future productivity.

“MASTER OF NONE”
Aziz Ansari’s new Netflix comedy is a masterpiece in its 
own right, richly mining issues of race, gender, sex and 
adulthood.

GOOGLE HOMEWORK STRATEGIES
We’ve killed many an hour looking for that perfect 
Facebook-blocking app. Ugh, #millennials.

BUZZFEED, BUT BETTER

GRADES ARE A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT

MUSKET’S “SPRING AWAKENING”
The U’s first student-run theater company is putting on the 
award-winning play four times next weekend. Don’t miss it.

NAP
Pretty self-explanatory.

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5 

On virtual death

O

ne of Facebook’s most 
peculiar capabilities is the 
“legacy contact feature.” 

Only recently implemented, the 
functionality allows users — usu-
ally loved ones — to inherit control 
of the Facebook accounts of the 
deceased.

A 
quick 
“Remembering” 
is 

affixed before the profile name, 
maybe a profile picture or cover 
photo is updated, and the account 
survives.

What was once a picture on the 

mantle has become a full-fledged 
social media profile.

Objectively, 
this 
is 
almost 

impossibly odd. While our tangible 
bodies are laid to rest, our Face-
book profile keeps on humming, 
still attracting likes and receiving 
“Happy Birthday!” posts. A hasty 
Facebook stalk unearths an eerie 
archive of past comments and 
unsettling time stamps on status 
updates. Our Internet selves — who 
are, arguably, often our most elabo-
rate fabrications — survive our 
real selves; a corporal end does not 
necessitate a virtual one.

On an entirely separate note, the 

most frightening thing happened 
on the day before Halloween: my 
favorite website was shut down. It 
would be impossible to understate 
Grantland’s importance to me nor 
my slavish devotion to its publica-
tion; I was slightly embarrassed 

by how sad I was from the end of a 
website.

In an era of lists posing as arti-

cles and blog posts with more gifs 
than words, Bill Simmons’ site was 
refreshingly 
(somewhat) 
tradi-

tional.

Sure, there was a series of pod-

casts called “Food News,” and the 
site ran a full-length piece scru-
tinizing a single picture of Nicki 
Minaj’s appearance at a random 
kid’s Bar Mitzvah (it ranks as one 
of my all-time favorites), but Grant-
land also allowed its almost univer-
sally talented writers the freedom 
to write what they wanted, to dive 
deep into their own oceans of inter-
est and produce thought-provoking, 
complex long-form criticism.

That kind of latitude is rare in 

an industry preoccupied with beats 
and word counts and short atten-
tion spans.

I read their stuff every day. I 

dreamed of working there. The 
writers seemed so at ease and 
so comfortable that Grantland 
seemed like that pipe dream you 
have when you’re younger that you 
and your best friends will all work 
at the same place.

And some form of the eulogy 

above has all been published online 
in the past couple of weeks numer-
ous times, by people more impor-
tant and more talented than I, 
but the simple fact is this: clicking 

Grantland on my favorites section 
now produces a solitary, somber, 
“It was a good run.” To access the 
archives, it tells me, I must use the 
navigation above.

I don’t aim to equate the death 

of a human being with the shut-
down of a website owned by ESPN. 
What’s interesting is how we, as a 
culture, have decided to memorial-
ize both equally, with a URL and a 
permanent home in cyberspace.

What is the point of death, of 

endings, if our dependence on 
the Internet has produced such a 
disfigured and superficial sense 
of immortality? Why do we love 
so passionately and grieve with 
such force if only to be constantly 
reminded of our loss by, well, its 
presence?

This is all representative of our 

gradual, collective devaluation of 
endings. Franchises are rebooted, 
spin-offs are planned, updates are 
released — everything finds a new 
home. And when things do finally 
end, they are memorialized in the 
same space they were once thriving. 

The Internet and everything 

it has touched has simply become 
too big for just the living; it now 
houses the hollow remembrances of 
things past. A grave requires work: 
digging, laying, crying, visiting, 
remembering. A dead man’s Face-
book account is just another tab in 
a window of many.

B Y N A B E E L C H O L L A M PAT

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4 

Wednesday, November 11, 2015 // The Statement 
 

ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHERYLL VICTUELLES

