A memorial for a person who never existed

Today I missed the first 20 minutes of House because I was trying to figure out why my Twiter background wouldn’t show up. And now twitter is down for unscheduled maintenance. So I missed Kutner’s death. It was a sad episode with multiple deaths. Maybe Fox is trying to pick up some of the addicted-to-tragedy ER fans. Maybe Kal Penn wanted to leave. I don’t know, but it didn’t seem to fit logically within the storyline.

But what I find fascinating is the Fox network’s microsite dedicated to Kutner’s memory. Visitors can view a memorial video of Kutner’s life in the world of House and read notes from his coworkers that express their feelings about his death. But what here’s what’s fascinating: Beneath Kutner’s obituary (oh yeah, that’s there too), there is a link to a Facebook page where visitors can discuss their feelings about Kutner’s loss. But when you click, Facebook redirects the link to the Facebook home page.*

Why doesn’t the link work? I think this may have something to do with it: A Facebook page dedicated to angry feelings about the Kutner character being killed off on the TV show House. Within five minutes after the end of House tonight, there were 28 members. After 30 minutes, there were over 100. My guess is that the sentiments expressed on Fox’s Kutner page were not the type of sentiments they were hoping for. So they took it down.

TV show characters exist for the sake of viewers. I think that viewers will be more angry at the network for killing of a character they liked than sad about his death.

I also think that situations like this speak to the increased bleeding between real life, online life and fictional life. The meaning of community is changing. More on that later.

*Note — the memorial Facebook page became available while I was writing this. It’s fun to see people expressing heartfelt sorrow to someone who never lived. Another note: I wonder if Fox is deleting comments, and if so, how many.

It’s been an hour since the episode ended, and Fox seems to be leveraging the presence of Dr. Kutner’s memorial on Facebook quite well. They have badges you can put on your profile, a video, a photo gallery, the obituary, and notes from other doctors. I wonder if it will earn the show more viewers. This is one of the ways that social media marketing should work.