The Goal: Every single person is remembered, forever 🎯🥅
A lofty mission with a very specific objective -- to give future generations a chance...
Since the beginning of humankind, generational storytelling ensured our survival as a species. It helped carry on learnings to protect the core from the earliest times.
Example — “Your great-great-grandfather died from eating that specific berry, so don’t eat it!”
Later, it became a way to share insights into our individual capabilities, to ensure future generations were aware of the potential deficiencies they carried, and could build protective measures against them.
Example 2 - “Your father was an idiot and, despite all the warnings, decided to make poison berry soup and eat it for dinner. Your mother is the only reason our family continues to survive. Do yourself a favor… marry someone smart because there’s a 50% likelihood you’re an idiot too.”
That pattern continued for thousands of years, primarily enabled by the close proximity we maintained with generations of family and community (if we moved away from our homes, we did so as a family/community/unit/tribe/etc.). It continued until… well… it didn’t anymore.
In the last 30 years, two things broke generational storytelling as a survival mechanism. The first was that we became highly decentralized from our family units, no longer living in the same homes, neighborhoods, villages, or even states as our family, the result of which made nightly “around the dinner table” conversations nonexistent. The second of a two-punch-knockout happened roughly around the time when a young Mark Zuckerberg took his nascent social media platform to the masses, introducing pokes, likes, and comments as primary forms of communication.
Did Facebook destroy generational storytelling? Not exactly. Facebook was more of an enabler than anything. The finishing move was our response to social media and how we evolved around it. This new form of hyper-connectivity gave us the peace of mind that a simple click of a 👍🏽 on a post was enough to show another person: I’m here, I’m following along, and am gaining incredible insight from every granular detail of your child’s bowel movements you share on this godforsaken platform. The individual on the other side of the conversation felt the same level of closure as they continued to rack up likes. Why bother telling a story about how I navigated the failure of my first company when I can have an even more significant impact by sharing a photo of me backstage with a famous musician who only took the picture under social duress?
For the better part of the last 20 years, since the popularization of social media, generational and community storytelling faced an extinction-level event. The result? People are eating poisonous berries again, but this time as participants in a poison-berry-eating-challenge on TikTok, through which no less than 5 teens have already died. And what did those deaths teach everyone? Nothing. We’re back to behaving like idiots, with nobody standing up and being the voice of reason, experience, or knowledge. It’s worsening by the day as two generations of digital natives who should be confidently relying on the elder for guidance are now competing for the same TikTok social stardom. You know that dynamic all too well… a GenZ’er chasing social clout with their TikTok content is being competed with for likes and shares by their parent, who is also seeking public validation through the same forum.
So while they’re dancing away to the latest viral song, sometimes collaborating for special posts, they’re not talking about critical issues. What role will depression inevitably play in their lives? What is mental illness vs. a bad day? How do I prepare for a job interview? How do I write a thank you letter? What is a thank you letter? What should I look for before buying a home? What do I do if I purchase a home and the foundation is crumbling? I’m panicking because every cent of my savings is tied to this investment, and my partner and children are looking at me like I’m a totally crazy person. Oooh… and that berry looks supes tasty… can I try it?
Again, I’m oversimplifying my point because the issue is not social media. In moderation, I actually think there are benefits to social platforms. That said, our response to and evolution around social media has been the problem.
What does this all have to do with death and remembrance?
I believe a dedicated social forum should exist solely for generational learning. And I think that the most incredible opportunity in today’s world for capturing and sharing impactful stories is when someone dies. Death is the only event that triggers a visceral response in a community. It magnetically brings people together to grieve as a more robust unit and makes their bereavement journeys navigable through storytelling.
At Chptr, we often refer to our platform as a digital living room. The digital equivalent of that place where everyone congregates after a funeral to talk, drink, laugh, drink, cry, drink, and heal (while drinking). It’s the last safe space we find ourselves in before returning to the real world, feeling anything but our whole selves, as someone we care about is no longer in it. We created this platform to ensure that people always have a safe space to talk about their person, to share stories, lessons, successes, and failures, and, through that shared storytelling, carry the legacy of their person forward across generations and time.
I want to ensure that every single person is remembered forever and that their communities are connected through those community-formed memories forever. I believe this will result in a stronger humanity as future generations have a place to visit to learn from those who came before them.
I imagine a day when someone will be walking through a new, unfamiliar city. Maybe they just moved for a job or for the start of school. They’re alone, inspired, but feeling very nervous. Suddenly, they get alerted on their mobile device while walking by a nondescript diner. That alert will say, “Your great-grandparents ate at this diner once a month for 20 years,” with a quick follow: “Oh, and your grandfather said to stay away from the Tuna Melt. He got sick from it more times than he ever wanted to admit.” Maybe they’ll feel a little more protected, and a little less alone.
Stay away from the fucking berries, indeed.
If you’re interested in learning more about what we do, here’s a glimpse at a memorial we started yesterday for Alec Musser, actor best known for his work on All My Children and Grown Ups:
Thank you for reading, and, as always, be good to one another.
Rehan
Founder x CEO, Chptr