My mother can recall her exact location the night John Lennon was shot, the day Mt. St. Helens erupted and the night she received a phone call from a grief-stricken friend after the death of Elvis Presley. Where she was and what she was doing at these exact moments were nothing out of the ordinary, but learning about these world-changing events left a lasting impression on her memory.  Though I have experienced far less than she has in my lifetime, a few such instances have already been filed away in my own mind. Most notably, I can recall the exact moment at which I received the news of the deaths of Osama Bin Laden and Muammar Gaddafi.

In both instances (and this speaks a great deal to our generation) I was notified of the event at hand while browsing the Internet sometime between checking Facebook and my email. Indeed, the Internet serves as a tool by which global news can be rapidly transmitted in a matter of minutes. However, in addition to circulating knowledge, it can at times circulate explosive hatred and disrespect as well.

Within a matter of hours of the news being broken that Osama Bin Laden had been killed, Facebook pages sprung up all over the site brandishing titles from “Rot in Hell Osama. You ****,” to ones lauding “The Guy Who Killed Osama,” to the humorously indifferent “Omg Stfu Bout Osama the Bitch Dead the End.” Many more took the opportunity to formulate countless ­”Where’s Waldo?,” Hide-and-Seek and Anne Frank jokes.

Not only did I find most of these pages disrespectful in and of themselves, but most of them also truly crossed the line by spreading images (real or not) of Osama’s mangled body across the Internet. This phenomenon surfaced once again when news outlets around the world broadcasted images of the former Libyan leader’s lifeless corpse splattered with blood and speckled with wounds. There seems to me to be something inherently disrespectful and fundamentally wrong about circulating such images of the dead: no matter who they might have been. What disturbs me more than the actions of such men is the ability of those left after their death to revel in their destruction, to turn to the streets in blood-soaked celebration.

The loss of a life, no matter how heinous the person was in existence, is not something we should revel in. The image of a mangled body is not something we should applaud. As one of the Facebook pages for Osama’s killer stated, albeit hypocritically, “You now all realized you’re celebrating the death of a man. Even if it was Bin Laden, think about how future generations will look back at our reaction.” People are continually shocked by the images seen on the JFK assassination video. Outcries of discontent undoubtedly would have been heard if photographs of the men whose deaths my mother lived through had been broadcast throughout the country. So why is it considered appropriate to publicize the broken bodies of dead men merely because they were considered to be our enemies? Certainly every person deserves the same respect in death allotted to everybody else.

I do not assert that these men were good people in any way; however, death is not something I would wish upon anyone. Punishment? Yes. Justice? Of course. But even when the actions of a man must result in his death, that death is not something we should relish. It is something we should approach with great solemnity. For when we fail to acknowledge the gravity of such occurrences, we ourselves are acting just as inhumanely as the men we seek to abolish from this earth.