Name: How Do You Mourn an Influencer?
Brand: glamour.com
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How Do You Mourn an Influencer?

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This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.Then there was the case of Danielle Johnson, known as the astrology influencer Danielle Ayoka, which rocked many who had followed her. On April 8, the day of the solar eclipse, officials say Johnson killed her partner in their home, then fled in her car with her two children. While she was driving, Johnson’s two kids—an 8-month-old and a 9-year-old—were “expelled” from the car, killing the baby and injuring the child. Johnson then crashed her car into a tree, killing herself. According to the Los Angeles Times, Johnson had posted erratic conspiracy theories about the cosmic event in the days leading up to the double murder and suicide.Johnson’s crimes and death were another type of tragedy entirely, and the grief followers were left to grapple with was much more complex than those for the other influencers mentioned. Yet it still was grief, and many took to social media to express their feelings of bewilderment, horror, and shock. It even hit close to home in the Glamour offices; my colleague, Danielle Sinay, had DMed with Johnson in the past and says her death hit her harder than she would have expected.“Honestly, when I saw what happened, I felt like I was going to throw up,” she tells me. “I hadn’t ‘spoken’ to her in years, but we had talked online over the years in a ‘Twitter friend’ kind of way…. I was shocked to see we actually still followed each other, and then I started getting really scared and paranoid, which isn’t rational, but it was what I felt because I was just so shocked.”Like Sinay, others online said their emotions surrounding the loss of someone that they merely followed seemed to catch them off guard. But feeling a profound sense of loss and grief when a public figure dies isn’t an unusual experience, says Dara Greenwood, a social psychologist and associate professor at Vassar College who has done research into parasocial relationships like the ones many feel with online celebrities.“On the one hand, we might feel like we are not ‘supposed’ to feel pain when someone we didn’t know personally dies. On the other hand, we also intuitively understand the experience of both personal and collective grief over the loss of public figures ranging from Martin Luther King Jr. to Princess Diana to Robin Williams,” she tells me.Influencers, though, are an interesting type of public figure. They are not as “famous” as, say, Robin Williams, and yet much more intimately involved with their audiences. This can almost make them feel like more of a friend than anything else, especially if you follow them closely. Greenwood says she isn’t aware of any research that studies the phenomenon of influencer deaths specifically, but it’s possible these sorts of losses could hit harder than even a beloved celebrity.“Because there can be more perceived or actual interactivity with influencers, the loss may feel closer to home. To the extent that an online celebrity deliberately cultivates seemingly intimate relationships with followers by sharing their stories, talents, and interests on a daily basis, they may feel more embedded into the emotional lives of their fans and their loss may be felt more acutely,” she says.

This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.Then there was the case of Danielle Johnson, known as the astrology influencer Danielle Ayoka, which rocked many who had followed her. On April 8, the day of the solar eclipse, officials say Johnson killed her partner in their home, then fled in her car with her two children. While she was driving, Johnson’s two kids—an 8-month-old and a 9-year-old—were “expelled” from the car, killing the baby and injuring the child. Johnson then crashed her car into a tree, killing herself. According to the Los Angeles Times, Johnson had...

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