(Image: Private Media)

Dear Leslie,

I hope you can assist with my quandary. I find myself amorously infatuated with Laura Tingle. The intellect, the voice, the glint in the eye.

I would dearly love to profess my appreciation directly to her. However, I am not sure sliding into her DMs is the correct way about it in this day and age.

What is your take on fan mail per se?

Sincerely,

Perplexed

Dear Perplexed,

If what you’re asking me is what the best way is to send fan mail to the monstrously impressive Laura Tingle, I’d agree that the best way to ensure your intentions are not misunderstood is to either email or send snail mail to her via her producer at 7.30.

As a woman in the public eye, I can confirm that admiration and appreciation of one’s professional contribution is always welcome and greatly appreciated, but anything that touches on my appearance or otherwise strays into the personal or “amorous” is most definitely not.

Best,

Leslie

Dear Leslie,

My electronic diary and calendar are full of the birthdays and anniversaries of contacts that have died. I miss them all a lot and feel bad about taking them out, so I haven’t — yet. But it also makes me sad to see them. Just wondering if there’s a right way to handle this?

Grieving in Altona

Dear Grieving,

What a great question! The answer so far, however, is “no”. We — as in the human race — are still being surprised by the implications of living part of our lives online. Arriving at a shared view of the netiquette that applies, and who and how it should be implemented (by the design of platforms and/or our individual decisions), is still in the future.

What seems to be clear is — wait for it! — everyone’s different. While some people like or at least feel it’s important to be reminded of the deceased, others find such prompts upsetting or even distressing if, like Facebook reminders to wish the deceased a happy birthday, they are not ones we can switch off ourselves.

In fact, and like most things to do with humans, having control over how and when you grieve, memorialise and remember your dead is what matters, rather than any objective feature of how you use that control. Luckily, when it comes to our electronic contacts and calendar, we still have that control, though it flies in the face of the objectives of the attention economy on social media. In fact, says co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology Tristan Harris, social media companies are in a race for what he calls the “finite supply of human attention” and are consequently using “more aggressive emotional aspects of our mind to pull out that attention”.

In other words, the future manipulation of grief for profit by social media companies can’t be ruled out.

But back to what’s on your plate now. Given you seem to be torn between the value and pain of remembering your dead, I wonder if it might suit you better to set time aside once a year to honour them, rather than being ambushed electronically when you least expect it. Say an annual pilgrimage to a place you feel at peace where you recite their names, say a few words, light a candle — that sort of thing.

If that works, it should allow you to delete or at least minimise the electronic intrusions without regrets.

Regards,

Leslie

Send your dilemmas to letters@crikey.com.au with “Dear Leslie” in the subject line and you could get a reply from Dr Cannold in this column. We reserve the right to edit letters for length and clarity.