“Porsche Girl”: When a Dead Body Becomes a Meme

Are online users ethically responsible for the memes that they view and circulate? What if those memes have their origins in a leaked forensic image of a dead body? What if that same meme is used to terrorize the victim’s family? “Porsche Girl,” the morbid meme based on the photographs of a teenage girl following a deadly car crash, demonstrates the vulnerability of “memeified” subjects as well as the ethical risks involved when sensitive content is disseminated online. Using the model of distributed responsibility, this case study suggests that viewers are in fact ethically responsible (at least in part) for the online content with which they engage, but that platform regulations and overall legislation also play a crucial role. By perpetuating the circulation of a sensitive image, the harmful effects of the image persist.Keywords: digital death, bodies, memes, online abuse, Nikki CatsourasNadia de VriesAmsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA), University of AmsterdamAuthor discl...