the psychology and politics of talking about CELEBRITY DEATH on the internet (and ilx)

The swirl of Winehouse activity on blogs/twitter/Facebook/ILX has kind of opened this issue up. Also, ILX's markedly diff reactions to MJ, Amy and Seth Putnam has put a lot into perspective.

Some topics for discussion:

• Is there a safe way that people who want to post Dom P and Norm McDonald jokes can post without offending people who want to grieve?

• Does the amount of grief you have over a celeb death say anything about you personally?

• What causes the weird dick-measuring contests over Facebook where people compete to see how sad they are over the loss of someone they never met?

• What causes the phenomenon of reposting and repeating the horrible things people say that outrage (or "outrage") you?

i think that jaymc, lex and k* were all otm in the other thread tbh

k8, sorry

What causes the weird dick-measuring contests over Facebook where people compete to see how sad they are over the loss of someone they never met?

your cynicism is charming. y'know, maybe, just maybe, they're not competing, but instead in their own way expressing a sincere spontaneous reaction to something painful.

aaaanyway i think that death, tragedies, traumatic shit of all kinda are really tough for us to deal with as human beings. and sometimes they strike us in unpredictable ways, no matter how remote we may feel from the given situation. some people might seem to over-emote, but i don't think that automatically means that they are putting on a show for their peers. likewise, some people might say callous things or make inappropriate-seeming jokes, but it doesn't necessarily follow that it means that they are unrepentant assholes. it's complicated, people's psyches are complicated, this world can be a fucked-up maddening place, etc.

since ilx, or at least, the ilx of today seems to aspire to be a fairly civilized venue for discourse, then i think the ppl who wanna make tasteless remarks immediately after some human tragedy could maybe find it in themselves to hold off for a time or to do that shit elsewhere. i don't think people should be banned for doing things like that; i just think that people could realize that not everyone reacts the same as them, and as a consequence they could maybe self-police themselves a little in that regard

Also, ILX's markedly diff reactions to MJ, Amy and Seth Putnam has put a lot into perspective.

lol

yes i can't imagine why the reactions to the deaths of michael jackson and seth fucking putnam might have been weirdly different and distinct in tone, even amongst a wide variety of posters.

your cynicism is charming. y'know, maybe, just maybe, they're not competing, but instead in their own way expressing a sincere spontaneous reaction to something painful.

i'm not saying everyone who engages in it does this. I'm just saying I've read enough fake-teary blog posts in my time for this to be a common thing. Especially with like the gossip blogs who have been slagging Amy relentkess for three years now being all, "OH MY GOD WHAT A TRAGEDY, WE HANG OUR HEADS"

"fake-teary." you go around slapping people with this when their grandmas die too, or just people who might have been affected at some point by another's art?

Man, I'm going to go slightly off-topic here and just use this thread as a safe-haven of sorts to express my shock that anyone still cares enough about AW to register all these "sad" and "tragic" and "rip" reactions, much less giving too much of a shit about her music back in 2005 in the first place. Sorry, I've been deliberately holding that opinion back from the other thread all fucking weekend.

(phew!)

xposts
okay, gossip blogs' sudden piety, sure, i find that kinda fucked-up. and yeah, sometimes it does seem like ppl stampede to be in line to publicly bow their heads in silence. but i mean, i'm not sure how calling ppl out for it or dwelling upon it is particularly helpful

you monster!!

he had a theory.

the theory turned out to be wrong and mostly based on his own prejudices, but he expressed it.

duno why starting this thread is reason to have a go at whiney tbh, it was suggested on the other thread and is probably gonna be useful.

TBH I don't really understand feeling more than mild sadness at the death of a celebrity. The whole idea seems to cheapen sadness. Maybe everyone wrangles over each other's responses to the death and gets holier-than-thou or anti-holier-than-thou about it because deep down most people don't have legitimately strong and deep feelings about it. You don't hear people arguing about whose response is more legit to the death of their own parent or friend -- I mean maybe you do in dysfunctional families, but not normally. I'm not saying media tragedies aren't "real" but they're not real for 99% of people commenting on them the same way family or friend tragedies are real, and I don't care how much you relate to someone's music.

I can understand why jokes might offend, but I guess I more just don't like a general attitude of callousness that it shows.

well that was part of my point up there-- it's not a rational thing. it doesn't even matter if you were a huge fan of someone. like, when river phoenix died, i quite frankly could have given a shit about most of his movies, but for whatever reason his death really hit me hard. also when you're dealing with CELEBS, with all of the status they hold and stuff that ppl project onto them in our culture, you're getting into pretty heavy archetypes. it's no wonder that some people are going to have strong reactions when their pet dionysian rockstar dies or their queen or whatever...

there are plenty of celebrity deaths that don't affect me one bit, if i wasn't a particular fan of that person, but i don't really find it hard to stfu and keep that opinion to myself if i see people to whom that celebrity did mean something express sadness. i don't understand why this seems so tough for some people? no one's asking you to fucking grieve but have some fucking manners.

tl;dr i can never work out whether people lack morals or just basic etiquette sometimes

• Is there a safe way that people who want to post Dom P and Norm McDonald jokes can post without offending people who want to grieve?

whyyyyyy would you want to post these

head in hands at the abyss of stupidity you'd have to descend into to even think about this

I just don't really buy that you can "grieve" a complete stranger.

TBH I don't really understand feeling more than mild sadness at the death of a celebrity.

it's not hard!

- artist makes art that moves and resonates and connects with people
- artist dies
- people are upset

i don't get why this is so hard to understand!

RIP Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes

Upset, sure. Unhappy. In mourning?

i think that jaymc, lex and k* were all otm in the other thread tbh

iirc k8, stan and i were saying basically the opposite thing to jaymc

i get as eye-rolly as the next guy over public grieving for celebs, but i dont really buy that someone else being distraught can "cheapen" your own sadness. but hey.

Upset, sure. Unhappy. In mourning?

who cares? i don't even know how you're defining "in mourning". i mean i don't think anyone who posted "rip amy winehouse" on twitter is now gonna dress in black and rend their clothes and hold vigil outside her house, but i don't think categorising levels of grief like that is very helpful.

if people wanna zing the dead - and i can imagine situations where i'd want to do it - i think they could use an all purpose thread like this rather than pissing people off in the RIP threads. i don't think there's anything weird about people being sad when somebody whose work they've had a relationship with dies, like strongo said. do we find it weird when people form emotional attachments to an artist's work? i'm not much of a fan of fandom but i think losing a person who has made some impact on yr life is a valid enough reason to mourn.

"in mourning" is a strawman. I was quite upset about the Amy Winehouse yesterday but it's not like I dressed in all black and sat in a darkened room lighting incense and candles all day, I mean it IS possible to be upset about something without going to puddles over it.

"fake-teary." you go around slapping people with this when their grandmas die too, or just people who might have been affected at some point by another's art?

― apichathong song (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Sunday, July 24, 2011 7:21 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

how do you even get through life if you believe everything people say on the internet?

iirc k8, stan and i were saying basically the opposite thing to jaymc

yeah, you were (stanm otm too) but i agreed with jaymc and i agreed with everything you said too.

for whatever it's worth, I think a lot of ppl are going to be naturally shocked when a young person dies (ie thats someone who's more or less my age, my child's age, etc.) and the fact of their celebrity just makes it 'high profile young person dies today.' I don't know, i guess I'm not that cynical about treating it as a tragedy, altho I'm certainly more of one when it becomes an opportunity to pile on perhaps undeserved accolades for the deceased.

My first reaction regarding Amy winehouse was "can't say that I'm surprised", but she was only two years older than I am right now, and it's not fun to think about your age-peers dying. this doesn't make her passing more significant to me than a local guy getting shot or overdosing, but it's def an oh shit my mortality moment. I remember in college a guy in one of my classes didn't make it to the second week of classes when he and another girl died in a car accident and it lowlevel freaked me out that semester. they were as much strangers to me as amy winehouse was.

yeah, you were (stanm otm too) but i agreed with jaymc and i agreed with everything you said too.

um i'm not sure this was actually possible

i'm changeable enough

generally the people who are bullshitters are probably going to couch their message in some sort of self-aggrandizement and/or moral underpinnings or go extremely over the top with it ("If you could only see me now, I'm crying, I need to be alone", "I don't know why PEOPLE didn't care more about her when she was alive"). even that isn't absolute though.

i wd like to know where i can develop the magical power to intuit what other people's motives are based on something they write on the internet

yea, that

In a way, I'm envious of people who feel deep emotional connections to celebrities, especially artists. I'm someone who places a lot of value on art and creative pursuits, but I don't know that I've ever had the sort of intense relationships to a performer where I felt like they were speaking to me, or that they'd helped me through some personal emotional event. I guess I understand that if you're that type of person, you would grieve the person's death as though you knew them personally and that snarky comments would feel inappropriate and insensitive. But that kind of relationship is really foreign to me.

I've gotten mildly, momentarily bummed out at a few celebrity deaths, mostly people who I thought were forces of good in the world whose lives were shortened too soon: e.g., Paul Wellstone and David Foster Wallace. That's been about it, though.

if anything, the idea that people can't mourn the loss of an artist cheapens the idea that art can actually affect the course of people's lives. i'm not saying that when bob mould finally kicks i'm gonna close the blinds and hang black crepe, but i'm definitely gonna feel SOMETHING considering what his music helped me get through in high school. judging people for HOW they express those sorts of feelings seems like a level of presumption and imposition i wouldnt want to admit to as a grown man.

exactly. I was pretty upset when Layne Staley died too, for similar reasons...cuz they (Alice in Chains) were a band that were a huge part of my high school experience.

pretty sure i held off the temptation to snark on the Wallace memorial thread

and whiney in answer to your question i get through life but not giving a shit about what people say about dead celebrities on the internet.

youse fuckers better keep away from the noel gallagher RIP thread when the time comes so

xpost, you're doing a great job of not giving a shit, and also of not coming after me in every thread for some inexplicable too

*some inexplicable reason

xxp

lol i think you'll have that one to yourself.

oh, you and Mark G.

i think the reason reaction to celebrity deaths are often met with such scrutiny is that there seems to be a pocket of people who think that you can only mourn 'old' celebrities that die after a long career.

you would grieve the person's death as though you knew them personally and that snarky comments would feel inappropriate and insensitive.

i don't think people do grieve as though they knew celebrities personally...it's a different feeling. it's not "less" or "more" upset, it's just different. i think a lot of the grief, especially in the winehouse case, is very much predicated on NOT knowing them personally, acknowledging that distance.

even if you don't get that, i can't see why snarky comments would ever feel appropriate.

hey strongo, what awesome art did caylee anthony make to enrich our lives to warrant the hysterical, histrionic Facebook updates of the last two months

People proclaim their right to never ever be offended by anything episode #0008250932304020 in a series...

dude this is just sad.

fuck, weingarten!

I'm in jaymc's camp for the most part, in large part because I always have the records! It also depends on whether the artist is in decline. When Michael Jackson died, I felt it less because I held no hope of future Thrillers or even Dangerous, whereas I'd probably pause if I read in the NYT tomorrow that Madonna croaked after choking on a filched Cheeto.

I'd feel sorry for the Cheeto too.

Its been an interesting parallel for me. I couldnt give wo fux about AW, know maybe 1 of her songs (somehow escaped her, dunno). The very same day she died I found out my 1st longterm partner is dead, from serious alcoholism. My reaction was "oh, ok", due to various reasons I'm not going into, but I had a "friend" go off at me for daring to not be upset and be honest enough to say so. Havent seen the guy in 25 years, he was a cirrhotic boozer and asshole, and I'm meant to weep over his grave? Dont tell me how to feel lady.

I feel the same about this kind of shit. So many self righteous "dont make horrible jokes she was a true talent lost too soon" posts on my FB. And THEN someone else starts up with the "you are all terrible people are starving in Somalia right now and you whine over a dead celebrity" and OH MY GOD I WANT TO BLOW UP FACEBOOK.

really, you have that much faith in madonna?

people who chastise you for not being the proper amount of upset are stupid and not worth your time. I had a friend get mad at me yesterday by implying that I was saying everyone should give a flip about Amy Winehouse dying, when my point was that I didn't care whether people did or didn't, but was sick of people who were saying "good riddance" hijacking posts of people that obviously gave a shit. that's dickbehavior.

(xpost)

I get that there is a period of 'too soon' at play in these cases, but I guess I don't understand why people would take comments on a dead celebrity *very* personally- whether they felt a real connection to that celebrity or not- I'm probably alongside jaymc on not understanding that type of connection very well, though.

Snarky comments aren't meant to be appropriate, they're meant to be snarky- not that i'm disagreeing with you here lex, just that I'm not sure that's the aim in posting those comments to eg an RIP thread

here's a good rule of thumb for RIP threads, or threads for tragic events, or whatever: no one on ilx gives a shit about what your facebook friends or your aunt or your cousin has to say about anything. save it for ppl you know irl.

really, you have that much faith in madonna?

every time I've said "see ya" she comes back with a good single -- her work ethic was stronger than MJ's.

Wasn't there also a 'In every RIP thread ever'-thread on ILE? Or did I make that up?

here's a good rule of thumb for RIP threads, or threads for tragic events, or whatever: no one on ilx gives a shit about what your facebook friends or your aunt or your cousin has to say about anything. save it for ppl you know irl.

wtf??

am i wrong? are there tons of posters that are just dying to know what stupid shit someone they don't know said on facebook? my bad

Was that aimed at anyone in particular Jordan?

i was interested to hear about that kind of thing.

I mean considering the title of this thread is "the psychology and politics of talking about CELEBRITY DEATH on the internet" I think talking about ppls annoying FB reactions is kind of on topic, but what would I know.

it was aimed at whoever feels the need to post about their facebook friends or their crypto racist inlaws or some shit they found on youropenbook

"Madonna croaked after choking on a filched Cheeto."

???
I'm trying to picture the actuarial table that describes this scenario, and the appropriate premium to insure against such an outcome and I can't imagine it would be more than $5.

it was aimed at whoever feels the need to post about their facebook friends or their crypto racist inlaws or some shit they found on youropenbook

i don't think this happened on the winehouse thread?

It happens everywhere else all day.

well i'm not talking specifically about the winehouse thread -- my posts are in reference to this: • What causes the phenomenon of reposting and repeating the horrible things people say that outrage (or "outrage") you?

tho this rarely happens w/ celebrity deaths specifically, tho i think it's a tiresome discussion either way. i guess i'm tangentially talking about posts like "can you believe the terrible things that people are saying about the tsunami in japan????"

because the internet is terrible, we know it. we don't need pointed out every time something tragic happens.

what abt racism in reaction to kanye v. swift, did u find that "culturally interesting" or the same deal?

I think the only celebrity death I would mourn would be Patrick Stewart.

jordan s otm. i don't have facebook because i don't care what my friends have to say. you think i care what your dumb friends have to say?

why would you be reading a message board if you apparently don't care about what anyone in the world has to say

c/d - mentioning not having FB as a badge of honor

think it's one thing to engage in a conversation about something with people you sort of know, and another thing to go hunting for the opinions of fuckwits. same reason i never listen to radio phone-ins or read youtube comments.

^^ this

ilx: best of both worlds

i don't care what my friends have to say.

Glad your're not one of my friends then.

lol kerm

nah there are generally too many opinions in the world imo

that's just what you think

i guess it's the difference between qualified opinion and not, like when somebody on the radio asks randomers who are presumably sat at home unemployed what they think government fiscal policy shd be

and y'know i get that lots of people have strong feelings about the foreigns coming over here and raping our jobs and i don't think the BBC shd be offering them a platform to inarticulately grunt and hoot for 3 minutes

yeah but that's kind of an interesting shifting debate in itself, the 'do you govern them as they need or as they want' kind of thing, and besides HYS type opinion is kinda the epitome of harmless venting anyway.

xp censorship CENSHORSHIP

http://www.gifbin.com/bin/092009/1252075516_Invasion_of_the_Body_Snatchers.gif

don't mind it on HYS just resent it when they broadcast stuff to the nation

if joe soap can't understand the expert analysis, or gets bored by it, or disagrees with it, or just doesn't want to hear it, what then? No coverage for Joe?

dunno what i'm asking here, obviously- are people entitled to hear rubbish if they believe in it or something

oh i dunno censorship is bad but willful fucking ignorance is bad too as long as i don't have to take part i guess, we're all fucked anyhow

here's a good rule of thumb for RIP threads, or threads for tragic events, or whatever: no one on ilx gives a shit about what your facebook friends or your aunt or your cousin has to say about anything. save it for ppl you know irl.

― J0rdan S., Sunday, July 24, 2011 8:07 PM (1 hour ago)

yeah this is completely otm - on every thread about a high-profile event of some sort people feel this need to post the incorrect opinion some dipshit on his faceook or twitter feed posted a minute ago and how wrong they are. no. noe. gives. a. shit.

one* obv

ilx would be soo much better if people took their metabitching to facebook...

something something google+

kevin k. is stealth publishing his ilx rulebook one stern excerpt at a time.

People form attachments. To one another. To pets. To inanimate objects. To some celebrities. This is how people operate.

it's cruel and insensitive for anyone to belittle my love for zinging celebrity worship and fan culture.. Especially at a time like this!

to.....inanimate celebrities...?

i think it's kind of weird that a celebrity's death occasions much comment at all. what is there to say? does professing grief to the internet = modern prayer?

so i guess i can understand whiney's original question without inevitably extending it to dissing dead children in the service of internet beef

am kind of dumbfounded that some ppl here would so roughly categorize aw as "a celebrity"--like, didn't we all sign up for this godforsaken site in the first place because we feel deeply connected to music (and in most cases, to the musicians that make the music we like?).

i mean it's not like, i dunno, if ryan reynolds got hit by a car and everyone was super bummed out about it. i feel like when a musician dies young, even if you don't care for that particular musician, ilx is the one place where you would instinctively give ppl room to express their sadness.

this godforsaken site

<3

Alex Chilton RIP 2010

lol

like, didn't we all sign up for this godforsaken site in the first place because we feel deeply connected to music (and in most cases, to the musicians that make the music we like?).

pretty sure many of us did, but then the lure of taking personal frustrations out on strangers via being a huge dick became too seductive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh8zcbC_Dcw

RIP threads - classic or dud?
Starting RIP threads: C/D
Being numbed by all these R.I.P. threads

Alex Chilton RIP 2010

― buzza, Sunday, July 24, 2011 11:26 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol at least cank's posts had some absurdist flair as opposed to the aspie "let me express skepticism in the emotional reactions of others" posting that folks indulge in the rest of the time.

some of us never signed up for ilm fwiw

What causes the weird dick-measuring contests over Facebook where people compete to see how sad they are over the loss of someone they never met?

This, I think, is absolutely salient and the subconscious self expression that really holds the key to the entire question.

Because I don't think I've *ever* seen people competing to express grief or sadness or loss over someone's death.

What I *have*, however, seen a huge amount of - on ILX and social media and IRL and elsewhere - is alterna-oriented dudes having dick-waving competitions about who can appear to be caring ~LESS~ about "Celebrity Cultury" or "Celebrities" in general or individual human beings that they take to be personnifications of "Celebrity."

It's really easy, if you don't actually care about a person, or a phenomenon, to register a shrug and just, you know, not say anything. It actually takes quite some amount of effort to go on a thread to crow about exactly how little you care about this celebrity in particular, or celebrities in general and tell other people that their responses or emotional reactions are, you know, ~shallow~ or something.

Because alterna-oriented indie dudes have so much ~better~ and ~important~ things to express outrage and indignation and ~BEING OFFENDED~ about. Like, IDK, annoying chicks who take their iPads out at indie rock gigs?

Because I don't think I've *ever* seen people competing to express grief or sadness or loss over someone's death.

Diana?

xp not sure how you managed to turn this into a sexism thing, but well done

i'm guessing whiney's phrase "dick-waving" may have something to do w/it

or "dick-measuring" to be precise, sorry

Tom, was the Diana thing so much about competition to show grief, or about admonishing others for not showing the "proper" amount of grief? Because I don't think that's so much a case of competition as something else.

Well done, Jordan, I'm not sure how you projected that into my post; it might actually help if you read what I did say, instead of your expectations of the kind of thing you thought I might say?

Re: Diana. Could be.

annoying chicks who take their iPads out at indie rock gigs?

― Aphex Twin … in my vagina? (Karen D. Tregaskin), Monday, July 25, 2011 5:38 AM (55 minutes ago)

c'mon karen & del — y'all know that if amy winehouse had had a dick she woulda been whipping it out CONSTANTLY

xpost or an ipad

What I *have*, however, seen a huge amount of - on ILX and social media and IRL and elsewhere - is alterna-oriented dudes having dick-waving competitions about who can appear to be caring ~LESS~ about "Celebrity Cultury" or "Celebrities" in general or individual human beings that they take to be personnifications of "Celebrity."

OTM. That position also completely misses the fact that celebrity culture exists to tear down the notion of pop stars as flawless demi-gods, not to promote it. Gossip sites and tabloids spend most of their time trying to make readers feel a sense of smug superiority, posting about how little you care about X, Y or Z dying is doing the same thing by different means.

indifference ftw

When a homeless drunk is found dead in an alley by my house, I feel bad. Why would I not feel anything when a celebrity dies? But I do think that I am intruding on the family's grief if I comment too much....it feels like attention whoring, which isn't appropriate when someone dies.

When an acquaintance's family member dies, I send my condolences or a card and move on.

xp not sure how you managed to turn this into a sexism thing, but well done

― J0rdan S., Monday, July 25, 2011 5:49 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i'm guessing whiney's phrase "dick-waving" may have something to do w/it

― dell (del), Monday, July 25, 2011 5:55 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i stole the phrase from Maura, btw

What I *have*, however, seen a huge amount of - on ILX and social media and IRL and elsewhere - is alterna-oriented dudes having dick-waving competitions about who can appear to be caring ~LESS~ about "Celebrity Cultury" or "Celebrities" in general or individual human beings that they take to be personnifications of "Celebrity."

btw, i've seen this too, and it's just as bad as internet grief-offs imo

i mean it's not like, i dunno, if ryan reynolds got hit by a car and everyone was super bummed out about it

idk that sounds like it would be p sad to me

i honestly don't think I've ever heard a single AW song start to finish and have no connection to her at all but death is almost always sad on some level i guess

oh and I didn't read this thread so I'm sorry if that's not relevant I just wanted to stick up for Ryan Reynolds cause I feel like he gets a lot of shit unfairly. Ok maybe not a lot but it would still be sad!

feel like this would be a better thread if there weren't a kind of winehouse-esque 'not long for this world' aura around whiney

I don't think I've *ever* seen people competing to express grief or sadness or loss over someone's death.

other people have

It actually takes quite some amount of effort to go on a thread to crow about exactly how little you care about this celebrity in particular, or celebrities in general and tell other people that their responses or emotional reactions are, you know, ~shallow~ or something.

no it doesn't

xpost

otm

think it's fine for people to be moved by the deaths of people they like and respect. think it's (generally) not a huge deal if people make jokes either, joking about death is probably hard-wired into humans. feel like the internet and this board is full of overstatement and bile and general rudeness, this is just another part of that really.

this is gonna turn into a twilight zone episode where whiney realizes everybody else in the world is dead and that he's been interacting with ghosts

oooohHHHHHHHOOOOOOOooooooooo

^^^ that's me hauntin some shit up

Even the bad-taste jokes strike me as more tasteful than the BBC or Guardian or whoever liveblogging celebrity deaths like it was a football match - complete with C&Ping from Twitter to fill space.

http://images.tribe.net/tribe/upload/photo/ec2/36b/ec236b7f-ea80-49c4-86b1-ac61f0228325

I read through the comments on a few blogs and message boards and they were either from people who said they "saw it coming", people who had addicts as friends or family members and the young Gaga stans trolling around to say Their Monster Queen would be remembered in 20 years while nobody will remember Amy. So disrespectful.

ronan you love the overstatement and bile cmon

people who said they "saw it coming"

this includes pretty much everyone who had heard of amy winehouse, her mother included

not sure who is being disrespected in these exchanges: mostly, message boards are too big and lively to have people regulating manners

someone upthread said that since this was 'i love music', and amy winehouse made music, therefore everyone must love her and not snark up her RIP thread

idk, ilx didn't used to be that tame, and it's not even like 1) she was an especially beloved figure or 2) the RIP thread was unusually insensitive

when did you get so dumb?

oh it was you. what do you have against ryan reynolds?

nothin' at all

i feel like when a musician dies young, even if you don't care for that particular musician, ilx is the one place where you would instinctively give ppl room to express their sadness.

― call all destroyer, Monday, July 25, 2011 3:36 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark

a sad day for ilx

*shakes head, tear in eye*

lil paradox: imho ilx is a place where you can't really lay down the law about what 'ilx' is, or how it behaves

fwiw the rip thread was not unusually insensitive, i agree. but some ppl are being unbelievably dense about why some other ppl don't feel that rip threads need serve as a backup repository for all those vital dom passantino tweets.

lol frame it however you want i guess! my post was observational, i'm not "upset"

message boards are too big and lively to have people regulating manners

i do agree with this. esp as "manners" is such a vague term anyway, "bad manners" all over ilx, not just on rip threads.

no one's suggesting "regulating" manners, that's a bit like those daily mail readers going "oh we're not even allowed to make our racisty jokes any more because everyone's so bloody pc". but if you display poor manners you shouldn't be surprised or offended if you're called out on them.

http://www.theawl.com/?p=90380

tried to make me shut my big yap, I said...

Lex otm. It's no different then people hiding behind the "free speech" bubble when their opinions are challenged - you're free to speak your mind, but I can call you a cheesedick in response.

whiney I think your problem is that you want to jump straight to the sociological speculation about the phenomenon before there is actually a phenomenon to speculate on

Lex is just truthbomb levels of OTM on this thread, consistently.

xp (don't worry there are much worse problems to have, just givin u a heads-up)

like okay here's my relevant Amy Winehouse anecdote: I brought it up in conversation at a party that night, in a sort of light-hearted sad-joking way (probably something about getting extra-drunk in her memory or w/e), only to discover that two of the people I was talking to had no idea, and suddenly I had to drastically shift registers. I didn't want to be the first person they talked to about this! I wanted to be, like, the fourth or fifth — in which case my comment would've struck precisely the right note of sympathy, rather than seeming, as I suspect it did, slightly callous.

the moral of this story is: you don't get to pick your audience, and you don't get to tell them how to react

i had something similar - i had to do a skype interview with naomi from electrik red, scheduled for 7pm my time - a couple of hours after the news first emerged. i sent her an email just before 7, basically asking whether she was okay to do it then, we could wait do it later that evening if she wanted, she replied saying 7pm was fine. so she got on skype and i said i wasn't sure how she'd feel after the news and of course she had no idea because she hadn't checked the internet that day yet, it being morning in LA. and then we had to do the interview! totally weird! kudos to her though, not awkward at all.

no one's suggesting "regulating" manners, that's a bit like those daily mail readers going "oh we're not even allowed to make our racisty jokes any more because everyone's so bloody pc". but if you display poor manners you shouldn't be surprised or offended if you're called out on them.

indeed.

x-posts galore as this is tl;dr for total obviousness but, I've typed it so I'm posting it.

Though I think using the term "manners" is a bit of a red herring because too many people think of "manners" as being some constructed and arbitrary list of which finger to lift your teacup with, when really what's lacking is some potty-training level of, like, *how* social interactions with other human beings work.

Human beings have emotional reactions to death, and it doesn't matter whether it's the death of someone you know intimately, or human beings thousands of miles away (or even never-existent human beings in a novel or a film, because hey, people can even cry at the death of fictional characters at the end of a film.) People have different reactions - some people's reaction is to go blank, some people's reaction is to resort to black humour or gallows humour as a coping mechanism. But it's one of those universal constants, that with consciousness of life comes the knowledge of the existence of death, and human beings usually have some reaction to the death of a person of whom they have known.

The only difference with a "celebrity" is that the scale of "persons knowing of them" is a bit bigger. I mean, is there some dividing line between who is "allowed to" grieve for someone? I would almost definitely grieve for my mother or father, but how about some third cousin in South Africa that I've never even met, but am still related to? How about the man in my cornershop, who sells me bus passes and soda pop, who I see every day, and I don't even know his name, but if he was found dead on the floor of the shop, I would still feel sad, and shocked, and feel like my life was somehow *diminished* for his disappearance? How about the artist I listen to every morning when I wake up, and every night before I go to bed, whose music comforts me at my lowest point and makes me feel less alone. If the person who made that music, whose words and emotions spoke to me through that music, if they died, would I not be allowed to grieve, just because we'd never met, even though their words had such an intimate effect on me?

An RIP thread to me, is a bit like a funeral, for people you've never met, but still had some effect on you. And it's generally accepted that you don't act like a douche at a funeral - not out of some arbitrary idea of "MANNERS!" but as respect for those present, who are in an emotional place, and may be slightly more likely than usual to be hurt by douchelike behaviour. I mean, yes, we do know that there are ILX0rs who have walked into an actual funeral and tipped beer over people's heads, but it's generally accepted that it is the *beer-tipper* who was acting in the wrong, rather than the people who were upset or ~offended~ or whatever by that action.

Though I think using the term "manners" is a bit of a red herring because too many people think of "manners" as being some constructed and arbitrary list of which finger to lift your teacup with, when really what's lacking is some potty-training level of, like, *how* social interactions with other human beings work.

i don't even support or really want to defend anyone trolling rip threads, i just find talk of "manners" a bit daily mail actually, and i think a bigger issue here is long-running ilx dislikes/personality clashes. plus i'd expect anyone bemoaning a lack of manners to be mannerly themselves, generally.

That's why I think that the term "manners" is unhelpful?

There are kind of two questions raised by my post above (at least)

1) is an RIP thread ~exactly~ analagous to a funeral, or is it different enough that there are different expectations or standards of behaviour there?

2) is beer-throwing just so ~inherently~ funny and hilarious that your resulting LOLs outweight even the disruption to a funeral-like atmosphere?

Like, I can see a lot of wiggle-room and discussion to be had over question 1, but if your answer to question 2 is "yes" then basically you can GTFO as far as I'm concerned.

(I don't think everyone knows about the beer-throwing incident so I don't know if everyone understands what you're talking about.)

i certainly dont

1) is an RIP thread ~exactly~ analagous to a funeral, or is it different enough that there are different expectations or standards of behaviour there?

i think to a large extent it's another thread, people annoy each other on ilx frequently and irritating behaviour is not limited to insensitivity on an rip thread. this doesn't justify it but i don't think it's necessarily a distinct and special problem about rip threads, not least in this instance where it's so obviously just posters who dislike each other or like to try and rile each other anyway.

is beer-throwing just so ~inherently~ funny and hilarious that your resulting LOLs outweight even the disruption to a funeral-like atmosphere?

not my LOLs, i wasn't involved, but think the answer is the same, it's people antagonising each other, people seeking reactions in posters they have problems with, people providing those reactions. then the cycle repeats.

Nope, me either.

Fwiw, it certainly does't seem like the snarkiness in RIP articles and threads (I'm referring to the internet in general here, not just ilx) comes from a place of gallow humor as a "coping mechanism", its simply out and out trolling.

^^^that's a good distinction to make

I don't actually have a problem with black humour about death, or celebrity death, it's ostentatious and lame "OMG I *went there*" or "I'm only saying what people were all thinking" responses that irritate me. Legitimate objections to RIP-thread reverence (eg "this dude beat his wife for years") are fine and even necessary.

The Dom post is a bit different - it reads more like slightly bored going-through-the-motions to me. Like he felt obliged to say something controversial about Amy Winehouse and get it down as quickly as possible, bit like those dudes who race to review Radiohead albums two minutes after they've heard them for the first time.

(xposts - an RIP thread is not remotely like a funeral, unless it's for someone people knew personally)

xpost - as someone who has def trolled in the past, I can def say that trolling is like a "gallows humor coping mechanism" for life.

matt v close to it imo. RIP threads aren't funerals, fair discussion on negative aspects of the person shouldn't be off limits but a backlash is pretty inevitable, trolling is trolling no matter the thread or context

I don't think ppl in general (sorry, Ronan, if you thought that was directed at you, it was two posts I sewed together) need to know the exact incident in order to understand why beer-throwing at a funeral is an inherently upsetting and unfunny thing, even if beer-throwing under other circumstances is funny or and slapstick and hilarious?

But that's exactly it. It's not coping-mechanism, it's trolling, analogous to beer-throwing in that there are places where it's fair game or even expected, and places where it's just "if you cannot control yourself in this situation, or you think that your right to LOLs outweighs other people's expressions of loss, then the problem is *yours*, not the people so ~offended~."

But, as meme-ified on the other thread, diff'rent strokes.

[if] you think that your right to LOLs outweighs other people's expressions of loss, then the problem is *yours*, not the people so ~offended~."

i think this is a v good insight.

hard to know w/o climbing inside someone else's head but in the main I feel like people who state their lack of sympathy for celebs who die in self-inflicted circumstances are being sincere

likewise the 'why fret about this when [larger non-celeb affiliated tragedy] just happened' brigade

neither are positions I tend to take myself but I don't see it as trolling is all

Wait, what's the beer thing, now? Is this a UK idiom?

xp i don't think those two positions are trolly as much as they are sort of dumb

'why fret about this when [larger non-celeb affiliated tragedy] just happened'

this type of statement usually doesn't bother me, but the Winehouse reactions and reaction-reactions and reaction-reaction-reactions made it really unbearable

likewise the 'why fret about this when [larger non-celeb affiliated tragedy] just happened' brigade

I think for full consistency you should also reverse it and berate people for being happy about [small celeb affiliated happy event] when there are millions of people getting married around the world.

Not keyed to anyone else's posts on this thread -- I think trolling and snark are a way to keep humanity at arm's length, and think it's sad and gross even (or especially) when I mess up and indulge in it. My general reaction is "goddammit, if you wanted distance and detachment, why didn't you just withdraw, instead of making everyone else recoil?"

veering into 'celebrity is weird' territory tbh

Not keyed to anyone else's posts on this thread -- I think trolling and snark are a way to keep humanity at arm's length, and think it's sad and gross even (or especially) when I mess up and indulge in it. My general reaction is "goddammit, if you wanted distance and detachment, why didn't you just withdraw, instead of making everyone else recoil?"

weird combination social awkwardness/exhibitionist streak.

xp to wmc I don't know, snark etc can be a way of keeping distance from emotion etc, but then maudlin lachrymosity isn't something you'd want to see endlessly generated in threads without challenge either.

Not a comment on winehouse thread specifically, just a wider kind of point

yeah, because there are definitely no modes of expression in between those poles

Well, people are unhappy to see talent wasted. If drugs are involved, they are unhappy that someone would waste talent and opportunity on DRUGS. Your average person cannot afford a drug lifestyle, so there is frustration and anger.

Then there is stuff like the guy who fell over the railing at a baseball park, well that was just plain stupid...too many people demanding our compassion.

...

I don't think ppl in general (sorry, Ronan, if you thought that was directed at you, it was two posts I sewed together) need to know the exact incident in order to understand why beer-throwing at a funeral is an inherently upsetting and unfunny thing, even if beer-throwing under other circumstances is funny or and slapstick and hilarious?

I agree 100% with this.

xp: wait waht

weird combination social awkwardness/exhibitionist streak

not sure if it was what you were going for but seems like this could describe any of at least three people/types of people germane to this thread

but then maudlin lachrymosity isn't something you'd want to see endlessly generated in threads without challenge either.

agreed, and CAD is otm in the next post

Maudlin lachymosity often looks too much like hero worship en masse and scares people. However, it is possible that your average mourner lost a loved one in a car crash / drug overdose / suicide etc. and so the celebrity death provides an outlet for that.

i'm just mad because i can't afford a drug lifestyle

mencap, it describes just about everyone who frequents a message board ime

CAD thanks for yr input there, was unaware of anything between hateful contempt and uncontrollable wailing on the human reaction to emotion scale. Cheers.

The sad truth is that families and friends are often not adept at dealing with the death of a loved one, a lot of grieving people get the silent treatment. Some people turn to celebrity RIP forums as an outlet.

I get mad when talented people waste their life on drugs. I hate hard drugs and the damage they do to less fortunate people.

I don't think an RIP Thread is *exactly* like a funeral, but there are enough obvious similarities to draw an analogy. Mostly in that there will be a higher proportion of ppl in an emotional weird-place, and also in that there are different expectations of behaviour.

It's always a bit weird, that moment that a "classic or dud?" thread (in which the ways in which said artist is a dude are totally *open* to debate, and negative criticism, even to the point of trolling is to be totally expected) becomes an RIP thread.

It's not that you can't make, you know, legitimate commentary on the artist, negative or positive, after their death. Just the understanding that, well, people *may* be grieving or en-saddened in there, or in an emotional or vulnerable place, and just not in the mood for trollery-for-LOLery.

CAD thanks for yr input there, was unaware of anything between hateful contempt and uncontrollable wailing on the human reaction to emotion scale. Cheers.

― CH3C(O)N(CH3)2 (darraghmac), Monday, July 25, 2011 11:08 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

lol i'm just trying to point out that, and i think i can say this even considering hm's valid point from earlier re: generalizations abt this site, we do not generally deal in "maudlin lachrymosity" here (as compared to like, randoms from one's fb feed or whatever). so i'm not really sure abt the utility of snark on rip threads because i generally don't know what it's responding to.

weird combination social awkwardness/exhibitionist streak.

― apichathong song (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Monday, July 25, 2011 3:04 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

but I may be veering into "breakdown of established formal codes of behavior leaves everyone at a loss in social interactions these days" territory

which is a whole 'nother rant

well yeah, i was rly arguing against snark on rip threads as a pretty pointless exercise, tbh, and as kate said there again, if you want to engage in it, the 'who me?' response to the inevitable backlash is nagl.

xpost: nah i don't think it's all that weird on the internet these days, and of course takes many forms. if you were the "quiet guy at work" and stood up in the break room during a relatively serious discussion of a celebrity death and said "guess she's smoking rock in heaven now" i think you'd still get some looks though.

so i'm not really sure abt the utility of snark on rip threads because i generally don't know what it's responding to.

― call all destroyer, Monday, July 25, 2011 3:12 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

A lot of the time, people, especially on ILM, identify so heavily with the music, and thusly with the creator of that music, that the grief and "maudlin lachrymosity" isn't disproportionate, but perhaps misplaced, because they are dealing with stuff from their own life, that they have identified with the "celebrity" musician. When death is involved, it gets personal, and it's not weird or odd or shallow to feel that way. Because that's one of the great things about music, that it expresses those emotions we can't properly articulate. But emotions do get tangled up in it and that whole "WAHT? when did ILX get all cuddlestein mountain that I can't snark on a RIP thread" is just disingenous and yuck.

xp (obv. I am using "all weepy" there to describe a reaction which goes beyond [& is much more annoying than] 'respectfully posts condolences on an RIP thread')

^^^ otm
xpost

One reason I personally see a disconnect (and in b4, "this is probably saying more about YOU and who YOU hang out with ROFLMAO SUBWAY DROWNING SANDWICH AMIRITE") is that I've never really seen anyone I know really AFFECTED by a celebrity death in the way ppl talk about it on message boards and Twitter.

I mean, I was p bummed out when Kurt Cobain, Chris Farley, Joey Ramone and Jam Master Jay died, but I certainly didn't cry on any occassion (though, I wore a black armband and my Ramones tee to class). I've literally never seen one of my friends or family members crying when a celebrity died. All my memories of Michael Jackson had to do with bonding with my mom, so I called her that day and she was pretty whatevs about it. If someone came up to me on any of these day and made a joke, I would have probably responded with "oh, fuck you :/"

Not saying this should an excuse for ppl to troll or post zings, but i def can relate to some ppl's jadedness in the wake of Amy W

It depends on the RIP thread to an extent, didn't notice many people getting angry at poor taste on Jeremy Beadle RIP although I can accept that if 'Beadle's About' had made a deep emotional connection with you then you might not see the funny side.

And I'm not even going to think about what will happen when Thatcher dies.

surely this is just the difference between people feeling unfettered about expressing themselves online in a way they wouldn't in real world because they'd be greeted with shrugs and raised eyebrows by most of the people they meet?

I have to admit getting annoyed sometimes when someone is too defensive when someone criticizes their favorite dead star. I feel justified in this because I consider myself a sensitive person. I see this kind of behavior as weak.

My mom bawled her fool head off when Elvis died, but I think thing were different back then, she felt like she had spent the greater part of her life being a huge Elvis fan. Of course I felt for her.

i mean it's not as if people DON'T get weepy over people dying they didn't know in real life. (i remember plenty of eye-rolling at the tv in the wake of the prince di thing.) but i think a lot more people just feel free to express "anguish" (or wtfever) in 140 characters of text sent to people who are presumably their friends who share some of their mindset than to walk around in real life as if jfk just died and deal with people's reactions.

whiney doesn't that get into like projecting yr expectations around how other ppl react to stuff (especially bad or traumatic stuff)? like, it's hard to tell when ppl are AFFECTED, isn't it?

surely this is just the difference between people feeling unfettered about expressing themselves online in a way they wouldn't in real world because they'd be greeted with shrugs and raised eyebrows by most of the people they meet?

I dunno, I reckon there are plenty of people making Winehouse jokes in pubs and offices across the UK right now. It's the difference between knowing exactly who your audience is and it being, potentially, anyone on the internet who happens to read it.

surely this is just the difference between people feeling unfettered about expressing themselves online in a way they wouldn't in real world because they'd be greeted with shrugs and raised eyebrows by most of the people they meet?

― apichathong song (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Monday, July 25, 2011 11:23 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is a v good point

Strongo, I'm more interested in the question "what are people trying to pack or unpack within themselves once they feel unfettered?" But interested, you know, at an emotional distance -- because I mainly like to study you all like bugs pinned to corkboard.

whiney doesn't that get into like projecting yr expectations around how other ppl react to stuff (especially bad or traumatic stuff)? like, it's hard to tell when ppl are AFFECTED, isn't it?

― call all destroyer, Monday, July 25, 2011 11:26 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the post was about my friends and family, i'm not saying strangers

well i mean i'm a sociopath so i'm not really a good judge of how people react emotionally.

What kind of callous *(&^ would make an Amy Winehouse joke? Then again for some people this is their way of expressing their sadness and don't mean it. It's all about the tone.

i'd make any amy winehouse joke, but not on an amy winehouse rip thread, basically

politics of messenger bags

Thoughts from David McAlmont that might be relevant.

Re RIP threads and funerals: I'd be slightly more comfortable with this analogy if loads of RIP threads didn't come about merely from appending an "RIP" to the title of the main thread dedicated to that person. I don't like the idea of a thread meant to discuss all facets of and opinions about someone's life and career suddenly narrowing its focus just because that person is now dead. If people want RIP threads to be places for respectful mourning, I'd rather that new threads were started for this purpose, and all other chatter and discussion could continue on the previously existing thread(s).

It's odd because I read that McAlmont piece almost immediately after a slightly handwringy Guardian technology columm that I think Sickmouthy posted on twitter?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/24/internet-anonymity-trolling-tim-adams

Re RIP threads and funerals: I'd be slightly more comfortable with this analogy if loads of RIP threads didn't come about merely from appending an "RIP" to the title of the main thread dedicated to that person. I don't like the idea of a thread meant to discuss all facets of and opinions about someone's life and career suddenly narrowing its focus just because that person is now dead. If people want RIP threads to be places for respectful mourning, I'd rather that new threads were started for this purpose, and all other chatter and discussion could continue on the previously existing thread(s).

I don't think this is an unreasonable point but it does seem kind of... odd for lack of a better word, to not expect discussion in an artist's thread to narrow its focus when the artist dies; it's a more extreme form of the same type of discussion focus that happens on a general thread about an artist that happens when a new song and/or album comes out. An event happened that is spurring/driving conversation and different events have different general conventions around them re: how seriously people expect the conversation to be taken.

seems like I should say something here

I've literally never seen one of my friends or family members crying when a celebrity died

the only one I can think of is my mom crying when John Lennon died. I cried too. otoh I was 8 yo.

after that his heart withered to two-sizes too-small

I'd rather that new threads were started for this purpose

I understand your point but it's not likely to happen, is it?

Oh, maybe "narrow its focus" was the wrong way to put it, since obviously the thread is going to cover the most recent salient event in the person's life. I guess I meant more like "narrow its emotional tenor."

But that's a passing thing and perhaps quite appropriate after a person's demise.

"goddammit, if you wanted distance and detachment, why didn't you just withdraw, instead of making everyone else recoil?"

The most OTM point among many on this thread.

It doesn't mean that a year later we won't revive w/some new tidbit and in yet another emotional tenor than at the time of death.

xpost to myself

I understand your point but it's not likely to happen, is it?

I don't know. Sometimes new RIP threads are started instead of revives. E.g., R.I.P. Teena Marie was started while teena marie - c/d, s/d already existed.

this is the most absurd group therapy seshes in a long time, holy shit - people react diferently to death and tragedies of any magnitude, and it takes only a little decency to refrain from armchair psych bullshitting about why they feel the way they do

haha i almost started a thread about this :3

i see along with the name kevin has also adopted the strongo-circa-2006 smdh vibe.

I dunno, I reckon there are plenty of people making Winehouse jokes in pubs and offices across the UK right now. It's the difference between knowing exactly who your audience is and it being, potentially, anyone on the internet who happens to read it.
Yeah, there has to be some sort of feedback. You try out your shit AW joek and everyone goes "uh, so" and you won't tell it again or try to come up with something better. Online, you get every cretin and his brother going "lool should have gone to rehab, huh?" because it's hard to gauge the reaction and see that your joke is dying on it's arse.

I think that's where this whole thing of reaction-reaction tweets and c/p comes from, people trying to find of a way of going "these jokes are shit, try harder or quit".

People will laugh at death; it's a way of coping. Rare is the wake without laughter. But it's usually a) funny jokes that are b) not snide shit at the deceased's expense. When it's unfunny *and* at the victim's expense, ppl who are even slightly fond of the deceased will push back.

otm

I haven't even heard a good winehouse joke instead of norm's tbh

i hope you didn't mean that was a good winehouse joke

i liked norm's joke

I just want to know about the beer-tipping.

honestly i didn't even see where the joke was in norm macdonald's "joke". amy winehouse was an addict? uh we know dude. and?

"it's all about the delivery"

honestly i didn't even see where the joke was in norm macdonald's "joke". amy winehouse was an addict? uh we know dude. and?

When you start by saying "RIP Amy Winehouse. We lost a true..." there's an expectation that the end of the sentence will be something positive like "vocal talent." Norm circumvents this expectation by defining her in a way that's not worthy of celebration. The joke is in that contrast. And it's also partially a comment about how her addiction had overshadowed her career as a singer, to the point where lots of people knew her primarily as a tabloid figure.

it's really not a good joke

^ comedy expert

how is it a meta-comment on winehouse's addiction overshadowing her music rather than macdonald doing exactly that himself? who is that fucking guy anyway.

^ comedy expert

i feel like celebrities and their lives/deaths are a kind of intermediate place between fictional narrative and real life. And as someone said upthread, it is common to be upset when a sympathetic character experiences tragedy in a novel/tv series/movie. It is less socially acceptable, as adults, to publicly grieve fictional characters, outside of fan culture for that particular thing. Grieving for celebrities is more socially acceptable (i think the impulse is similar to the response to a fictional character's misfortune), because the celebrity is actually a real person.

^ comedy expert

^ comedy expat

do you all believe that life is over after death

yes.

speaking for everyone.

xxp I'm not sure but you definitely can't make any more records

lol amon

would you know my name

if I saw you in heaven

I am trying to remember if this was real but wasn't there a mad tv sketch where clapton ran out of songs to write so he started pushing people out of windows so he could make music

If U were killed tommorow I
wouldn't be at your funeral because
Id be in jail for killin the pussy who killed you

..._...|..____________________, ,
....../ ..---___________----_____|]
...../_==o;;;;;;;;_______.:/
.....), ---.(_(__) /
....// (..) ), ----"
...//___//
..//___//
.//___//

WE TRUE HOMIES
WE RIDE TOGETHER
WE DIE TOGETHER
send this GUN to everyone you care about including me if you care. C how many times you get this, if you get 8 of these your A TRUE HOMIE

1LUV

why 8?

trying to figure out what you can do with eight guns that you can't do with seven

never forget:

http://adsoftheworld.com/files/images/hard_rock_cafe_clapton.jpg

'there's a dead toddler behind every song'

xxp I'm not sure but you definitely can't make any more records

― bernard snowy, Monday, July 25, 2011 3:05 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

Bitch, please.

http://vigilantcitizen.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/tupac-shakur.jpg

I am trying to remember if this was real but wasn't there a mad tv sketch where clapton ran out of songs to write so he started pushing people out of windows so he could make music

Are you thinking of this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1mzDR3onnI

I was really pissed off when Batman died! On the other hand people who didn't appreciate Batman all of their lives like I did deserved this kind of cruelty.

Old people whose deaths are going to precipitate way too much internet ink:

George Takei
Adam West

"what's it going to be like when thatcher dies" otm

celebrity death internet prob the worst internet

an extremely bad celebrity death tweet demonstrating expertise of a very popular group

Darius Kazemi in PHL ‏@tinysubversions Mar 23
Phife was often deeply allusory/intertextual. In 4 lines he refs: a Tribe song, 2 R&B groups, 1 movie #RIPPhifeDawg

rolls eye all the way around

http://i.imgur.com/KxhEUjA.png

putting RIP on threads is the most disgusting shit

i blocked the term "prince" and all the tweets are still abt prince

this is gonna be the one that finally renders the internet unusable

WELP THERE WE GO

somebody better go back and add RIP to every prince thread... because...

he was one of the great pop artists on my lifetime, as was Bowie.

music did not fucking die with them.

my step sister gave me sign o the times for my 11th birthday the world must know

god help these poor souls when someone they actually know dies
#trenchant

may their souls be at rest

it's going to suck around here when kate bush dies

ilx is a refuge from social media cause u cn just not read the threads

i blocked the term "prince" and all the tweets are still abt prince

― lag∞n, Thursday, April 21, 2016 1:23 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is kinda amazing p sure were at peak

jfc

http://i.imgur.com/1Jsk5fE.jpg

this is gonna be the one that finally renders the internet unusable

― lag∞n

party over, out of time

bless

http://i.imgur.com/PTak3Ko.png

this is gonna be the one that finally renders the internet unusable

― lag∞n, Thursday, April 21, 2016 1:24 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.avclub.com/article/prince-says-that-the-internet-is-completely-over-42808

rip

there is no good time to talk about how celebrity death internet is bad

honestly no one be mad at me this thread is all i have u have the whole internet

also i may have posted something obnoxious on facebook

and something inscrutable on twitter

i am listening to prince tho irl

real fans emote & overshare

ok i'm stopping

Can we remove "ilx" from the thread title?

what i want to know is what does rush limbaugh think about prince

*tunes in*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv2PgWmQ1Lo

joe otm but for a lot of ppl id imagine prince is the exception as far as this behaviour is concerned

when tim smith dies my response will be like a month of the grandest mourning. he is my exception

Tim Smith is an English broadcaster and radio personality in the U.K. He started out on university radio whilst studying in York at St. John's College. In 1984 he worked for several stations including BBC Radio York and BBC Radio Shropshire.

im not sure which celebrity will cause me to rend my garments online but im sure there is more than one, i am no better than the rest out here ruining online

i am a big prince fan fwiw i like him for instance much more than david bowie

Timothy James Smith (born June 14, 1986) is a Canadian professional baseball outfielder for the Quebec Capitales. Prior to beginning his professional career, he played college baseball at Arizona State University. Smith has also competed for the Canadian national baseball team.

30 is too young :-( rip tim

morrissey dying will be big for me but no garment rendering because he's a deeply petty, racist man

rending obv duh

i am a big prince fan fwiw i like him for instance much more than david bowie

― lag∞n

this is a good start but please go deeper on how much he meant to you, key moments when he helped you come of age when nobody else understood

umm i think purple rain was the third album i ever bought

wait wait wait no sry PRINCE TAUGHT ME IT WAS OK TO BE A WIERDO FREAK NERD WHEN EVERYONE AROUND ME WAS SAYING IT WASNT OK

typical lag∞n appropriating this tragic incident as just another weapon in his relentess assault on david bowie

david bowie more like david... boobie

for shame, a human being(?) has died

the guy who fell to earth

purple raim

i take it back celebrity deaths are good

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CgllHbNU8AAt1tB.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CglhSGqWsAA2XkW.jpg

A beautiful tribute.

http://i.imgur.com/Cv0RK7m.png

lol

im screaming

xxp hes coming at u watch urself

u could end up in an internet beef im just saying tread lightly

im not replying its perfect already

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CglltKTUkAAlPSY.jpg

love Joyce

joyce taught me that anything is possible rip

what hurts the most is that i thought the music died when bowie died and then i only found out it was still alive when it died when prince died

I do kind of wonder what I'm missing (as a person), when others (ilx and everywhere) talk about ("I can't..."), not being able to breathe, feeling sick, cannot process etc. I love Prince's music. Have all his 80s stuff, ignored everything since, which means I was never an ultra fan. On a practical level, he wasn't making music I'd listen to anymore, so I don't feel like we're missing out on future creativity. But I would have counted him as one of my favorite....30? musicians or so (not that I really do lists like that).

I never thought about him day by day, or imagined meeting him. I was surprised when I heard the news today, but I don't really feel a loss. Perhaps I just don't relate very strongly to people I've never met. So I wonder: why does it seem to physically hurt other people? What form of connection did they feel that went beyond love of his music?

a lot of ppl dont know the music has been dead all along music is literally the embodiment of death and is worthless

the only thing that matters is keeping track of how bad the internet is

my two cents is people are mostly mourning themselves getting older, remembering dreams they had, and want to hug other people online about it but the lack of boundaries and groupthink-y scale of the internet gives the spectacle a pretty gross and repulsive side especially when you think about what mourning means when it's for the death of people who are present in less-mediated more embodied ways in literally everyone's life.

http://i.imgur.com/jFWzAdB.jpg

I do kind of wonder what I'm missing (as a person), when others (ilx and everywhere) talk about ("I can't..."), not being able to breathe, feeling sick, cannot process etc.

I dunno, when Keith Emerson died I definitely felt a little sick and found myself unable to concentrate on anything for like...an hour at least. But I've loved ELP since I was like 8 years old.

i can't concentrate on anything for over an hour period, no RIPs required!

I am vastly sadder about deaths of people who were NOT globally famous, hugely influential, and extremely wealthy.

I feel equally sad about every death 😇

(shit, that came out pretty flippant - it is shorthand for a longer and more nuanced view)

i feel the appropriate amount of sadness based on the various circumstances of each death

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/03/next-up-for-silicon-valley-defeating-death/

This doesn't really bother me except the "2016" meme is fucking infantile, it's like everyone's into talking about the 27 club or whatever bullshit all of a sudden

http://www.geekfill.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/You-know-youre-old-when....jpg

I was too young to experience peak prince and I haven't been alive long enough to have acquired deep personal spiritual w/e relationships with artists. Maybe the fragmented pop market from 90s onward made these kinds of religious figures less possible. *shruggies*

just pretend like prince and david bowie are still alive imo same diff

they live on in my heart, my record player, and my basement

this is what it sounds like when nerds cry

holy shit is amy winehouse dead?

wait wait wait no sry PRINCE TAUGHT ME IT WAS OK TO BE A WIERDO FREAK NERD WHEN EVERYONE AROUND ME WAS SAYING IT WASNT OK

im presuming this thread is a safe space for us to be cynical--but yeah this^ sentiment is the one that drives me crazy in it's narcissism. that and the "im feeling this more than your feeling this" stuff, of course. something about twitter in particular is really bad in this way because there's a total lack of any intimacy with whom you are communicating which would make such sentiments meaningful--its always for an audience.

I have two strains of thought on this issue.

First, consider the deaths of the following celebrities or near-celebrities:
- Adrienne Shelly wrote “Waitress” and died before its release.
- Jonathan Larson wrote “Rent” and died before it opened.
- Eva Cassidy died shortly after releasing her first solo record.
- That dude who wrote “Hey Jealousy” was fired then killed himself shortly after its release.

These are not the greatest artists or artworks of all time, nor are they among my favorites, but their deaths strike me as sad in a different way than David Bowie’s death. Bowie had a pretty good run. Lou Reed had a pretty good run. Prince died pretty young by modern terms, but yeah, he had a pretty good run. They have bodies of work that are, in a sense, immortal. Even if one of them could have put out another interesting album or two, their legacy is solid.

There was no point at which the people in my Facebook feed were going to accept Bowie’s death. So it is ultimately a matter of degree, and is arbitrary. People were going to say “Oh noes, how tragic, what a loss, too soon!” whether Bowie (or whoever) died at 70, 71, 72, or 87 and a half. For some people, there may in fact be no point at which fans are going to say “Eh. He had a good run.”

Early deaths of those who probably still had vital work to do – yr Cobain Winehouse Hendrix Marley Lennon type – are a middle case, and mentally I treat those somewhat separately.

One thing I do know: Bob Dylan is going to die. And everybody in yr Facebook feed is going to be like “Oh noes, how tragic, what a loss, too soon!” Whether it happens ten days, ten weeks, or ten years from now. Some people just don’t want their faves to die ever; they are setting themselves up for disappointment.

When Bob Dylan dies

i often ponder dylan's death--it's gonna be a huge deal but somehow i dont think it'll produce the kind of gushing that bowie or prince have. no one identifies with bob dylan.

BOB DYLAN TAUGHT ME HOW TO BE MYSELF isn't exactly something someone can credibly say.

:(

McCartney will be a big one too. Maybe not Michael Jackson level big but hey, look out

(i fucking love bob dylan way more than prince or bowie, btw--just think the social media ramifications will be...unique)

Anyway I think Puffin is right. Bowie's death is a bit harder to take knowing he was still capable of making great music, with Prince it's like...I dunno I love a lot of his music but I didn't even bother to listen to his new albums anymore. I know that sounds cynical when talking about someone who was an actual person and had a family and all but that's the level of engagement I had with him, he made music, I listened to it. He was a legend, he'll live forever and rightfully so.

Not soon enough when Dylan goes tbh

rude, he will have meant a lot to me

I did not mean to be rude 2u and I apologise for that

I can be deeply affected by the death of people like Jason Molina or Vic Chesnutt, whose art openly dealt with death or at least some overall sadness/despair/bleakness. There's this ambivalence about loving this kind of music, about embracing these sad feelings and knowing perfecly where the music comes from, but as long as they can make music about it it's not so bad after all. And then all of the sudden it's over, the bad things have won, and it's real and it's brutal.

My thoughts about this usually get bogged down in Sorites Paradox territory.

Most people agree someone who dies at age 17 died "too soon." Most people don't think someone who dies at 107 died "too soon." So where does death change from tragic to explicable? 75? Okay, but why then and not 74 or 76? It's arbitrary and subjective, but it is one of the formulas for What One Is Supposed To Say At Times Like These.

either bob dylan taught me how to be myself or i have yet to be taught (plausible)

but yeah not looking forward to the glib superlatives, or to the word "poetry"

I don't know about you guys, but I will certainly be the only person in my social circle who will say of Dylan "Eh. He had a good run."

i tweeted a lot about Prince today, at one point listing my 10 favorite albums by him, and some rando hopped into my mentions to say "Someone just hit Wikipedia super hard," that kinda pissed me off, like what even possesses you to pull some weird presumptuous 'i'm a real fan and you're not' shit on a stranger on today of all days?

McCartney will be a big one too. Maybe not Michael Jackson level big

are you kidding me, McCartney's death will be a tsunami

I dunno, when Keith Emerson died I definitely felt a little sick and found myself unable to concentrate on anything for like...an hour at least. But I've loved ELP since I was like 8 years old.

I didn't even do any of this stuff when Lou Reed died, so obviously I'm dead inside. I did contribute to the Prince RIP thread because he was fucking great and someone had just texted me to say, "No way, now Prince is dead!"

When Chester Charles Bennington dies

when i was thinking abt this after bowie died i came to the conclusion that princes death wld be the ultimate internet death, dylan and mcartney r too old imo

mj went out before peak social media

definitely one of the most linkable deaths

xps
that's plausible--they are certainly less likely to be the inspiration for millennial self-fashioning.

rip madonna

Was about to say, but she's out of favour, isn't she?

lol you forget Facebook is full of olds now, McCartney and Dylan will crash the servers

madonna def huge but feel like she has a p narrow demographic of hardcore fans, stevie cld be big

just felt a lil bad speculating on stevies death maybe hes the one for me

Bowie's final album was the best thing he'd done since...1978?

Lou Reed's final album was basically terrible, but I only liked maybe five or six songs out of his entire career, plus Metal Machine Music.

Prince...I really liked Purple Rain, fucking loved Sign O' The Times, haven't paid much attention at all in at least 20 and probably 25 years. In fact, in my grumpier moments I felt like people who were still talking about how great he was were saddos who couldn't let go of the '80s.

When Paul McCartney dies I'm probably gonna take a few days off the Internet, not because I'll be overwhelmed with grief but because I can't stand the Beatles' music, never mind his solo tripe, and the Internet will be a total fucking nightmare from my perspective. It'll be the pop music equivalent of the mass public displays of grief/worship you saw when Kim Jong Il died.

I don't think Dylan will engender the same reaction, because he's spent so much time over the last four decades purposefully alienating worshippers.

with mccartney & dylan, i figure most people will be kind of relieved, like they've been waiting to cross that one off the list forever

I'll be glad I'm not American when McCartney dies, that place will just go fucking crazy.

... especially if Ringo checks out in the interim and McCartney's the last one standing (there).

When Paul McCartney dies I'm probably gonna take a few days off the Internet, not because I'll be overwhelmed with grief but because I can't stand the Beatles' music, never mind his solo tripe

you might need a "temporary secretary" for these days off!!

stevie dying will definitely elicit fewer stories about how everyone is horny

Wonder? Nicks?

B.

if an artist in their prime dies thats a diff thing imo, not sure weve had that w an iconic artist during the social media era

Dig, if you will, the Venn diagram of:

- People rushing to Facebook to say how they are torn to pieces about Prince dying "too soon"
- People who would be irritated if they went to a Prince concert and he said, "I am now going to play my new album in its entirety."

(And yes I know some mature artists do good work in their later years. But when the Rolling Stones start dying, no one is going to be calling up the radio station and asking for anything post-Steel Wheels. It'll be motherfucking "Satisfaction.")

erm, "when MORE Rolling Stones start dying," I suppose I should say.

On a practical level, he wasn't making music I'd listen to anymore, so I don't feel like we're missing out on future creativity.

This is a little weird to me because I felt that he was probably #1 on the list of people who really could just make an amazing (and frequently mistakenly proclaimed) return to form, like when there's a new Prince single it's always "yes please this could be it" even though it never was.

He's definitely been #1 on that list since David Bowie a) made an amazing return to form after years of mistakenly proclaimed rtf and b) died.

if an artist in their prime dies thats a diff thing imo, not sure weve had that w an iconic artist during the social media era

― lag∞n, Thursday, April 21, 2016 4:41 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

winehouse?

I don't see 'dying too soon' and 'past his prime' to be contradictory, I loved his music and death is sad. Can't I just mourn?

not on this thread pal

In fairness, older artists can do more than return to form, though - one other thing they do is champion younger artists. Write blurbs, produce new acts, serve as a mentor.

Still, imma be real: for most classic rock acts, "Here's something from the new album" generally can be translated as "now's a good time to go pee."

(And to VHS - yeah, a mournful moment of silence, a glass raised in gratitude for a life of great art, sure. Telling everyone in the Internet about how you're crying your eyes out during a candlelight vigil at the gates of the deceased's mansion is OTT tweenage self-regarding performance.)

xxxp Lisa kudrow

O and voluminous props to His Purpleness on the "fostering and championing new acts" front.

Indeed, that's something he did from the beginning and should be praised. Vastly more than Lennon etc.

Jezebel reaches peak cynical: http://themuse.jezebel.com/predicting-the-worst-prince-covers-at-coachella-this-we-1772346276

what a time to not be alive

2. Grimes (“Batdance”)

lmao

xp That reminds me that a few days after Elliott Smith died, my wife and I happened to see Mary Lou Lord play solo at Iota in Arlington; yes she did play "Half Right" and yes it was heartbreaking and very lovely in a sad way.

i'm just glad that all my facebook friends have seen fit to shut the fuck up about bernie for ten minutes.

This is what it sounds like when big banks cry

lol at anyone thinking that reaction to Dylan's death will be "eh." Only if he outlives the last boomers still able to type.

O I absolutely agree that Dylan's death will create a bolus of maudlin boomer nostalgia that will probably be visible from space. Ditto McCartney, Jagger, Starr.

(Just to be clear I meant that _I personally_ will not be among those most visibly griefstricken. I like his records plenty but I'll probably somehow manage to go to work, do some shopping, clean out the gutters, feed the cats, etc.)

btw Leonard Cohen is 81.

changed my mind abt celebrity deaths theyre good i made a successful tweet thats a screenshot of a gbx facebook post thats a excerpt from an article thats a stevie nicks quote https://twitter.com/on3ness/status/723266340694315012

I'm going to see Cecil Taylor on Saturday night - it's gonna be my fifth time seeing him, but my first in 10 years, and a big part of the reason I'm going is that he's 87 and rarely performs at all these days.

good call

i posted a couple of prince things on facebook. and same with bowie. prince and bowie! i mean come on. but i stay away from most endless FB death moans. lemmy seemed to go on forever on facebook. i mean, lemmy, who he hell thought lemmy would live to be a hundred?

i do get a little cranky eye-roll feeling with all the wailing and gutted people. but people usually react differently than i do to lots of things.

i remember feeling really strangely sad when i heard that cynthia robinson died from sly & the family stone. nobody really cared on facebook.

it's just endless though. obviously. best to avoid the internet when the big people die if people's reactions bother you.

unless u love to hate things

man i know i'm being a total asshole but it's like i read some of these grief postings and it's like... my goodness how do these poor people continue to live after experiencing such a painful loss????

xxp lol @ seeing jelly-o headshot after closing tweet

:D

"my goodness how do these poor people continue to live after experiencing such a painful loss????"

they are usually fine and posting stupid shit in a day or two.

the perverse part of me always wants to write something on FB like: "i can't even...gutted...i was his biggest fan. i will definitely be playing the collection tonight." and post a picture of a beat up "diamonds and pearls" cassingle and the "batdance" 12-inch.

but i would never do that.

"I'll never forget the first time that Tony Conrad and I made love..."

i miss humor a little bit. from people. in general. but these are tough times. FUCK YOU, 2016!

BUT, i also try to remember how deadly serious people can be about the heroes/artists/celebs they worship. like REALLY serious. and i don't really want to fuck with that. it's their thing. everyone has their things.

Cool smug detachment bros.

"Look at all these weirdos that experience loss in a way that I don't understand because I just can't even" *checks Twitter followers and jerks off into sock, lols about human connection and emotion*

Lonnie Mack died today! awww. Lonnie was great.

xp well we can't all have a close personal connection to prince now can we

gutted at death of human connection and emotion

i don't laugh at anyone. or think people are weirdos. i'm a huge fan of lots of people. and i feel for people. i DO think that the internet breeds....something. some desire to share...something. a lot. forever. i don't know what it means though.

and ftr jjj your remembrance was by far the best prince thing i read today.

Right but despite that existing in my case, why shit on people for feeling stuff? I saw a bunch of people posting personal responses, not just empty shit. If that's boring because it's interrupting your Twitter feed, maybe you suck at being a person and should get your shit together.

Xposts

pre-internet people didn't grieve for days for...uh...red skelton or whoever. you read about it in the paper and then you got back to the business of making america great again.

Wait what the fuck Scott, Lonnie Mack died? That also blows.

i don't twitter. i loved prince. not shitting on anyone. it's just a bit much sometimes for ME. and i keep it to myself. except here. on the thread about the psychology and politics of talking about celebrity death on the internet.

one of the best live shows i've ever seen. lonnie. at the lone star. in the 80's.

Xpost yes you are right, when Elvis/Lennon/etc died people shed one tear and got back to work because that's just how things went back then

this is what i wrote on the internet today:

Scott Seward
10 hrs ·
i bought 1999 the week it came out and he ruled my 80's from that moment on. i can't believe he was 24 when that record came out. how is that even possible? he seemed immortal/ageless even then. like smokey or stevie. just preternatural. oh, you got me good this time, death!

i wish u heaven...

https://scontent-ord1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpl1/v/t1.0-9/13083376_10154724654237137_2391911010098435769_n.jpg?oh=7af82f28d2ef3223e58e85e92727880a&oe=5772D524

there are good public rips and there are bad public rips, i'm just v. uncomfortable with the fuck 2016 omg bowie and prince type of stuff, it makes people sound like they lost track of their celebrity trading cards.

also, i'll always love you, cynthia. r.i.p.

http://image2.findagrave.com/photos/2015/327/155337010_1448370844.jpg

like it's not intrinsically bad that multiple public figures died, any more than it is that any other humans died

what

sorry yall :(

the psychology and politics of talking about CELEBRITY DEATH on the internet is the same as the psychology and politics of talking about the senior at your high school that died in a car crash or some other accident, including the annoyed and cynical reaction to the reaction performed in this thread.

Right but despite that existing in my case, why shit on people for feeling stuff? I saw a bunch of people posting personal responses, not just empty shit. If that's boring because it's interrupting your Twitter feed, maybe you suck at being a person and should get your shit together.

Xposts

― Here, let me Danesplain that for you (jjjusten), Friday, April 22, 2016 12:02 AM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

omg go away let us have this thread u jerk the whole rest of the internet is there for yr self righteous grandiosity

i mean maybe u suck at being a person who know its... possible

http://i.cdn.turner.com/nba/nba/.element/img/2.0/sect/statscube/players/large/kelly_olynyk.png

this thread isn't annoying because it's shitting on people feeling stuff. it's annoying because it thinks that 'shitting on people feeling stuff' isn't part of the (celebrity) death reaction.

wldnt say either part of that statement are particularly accurate or at least precise

shitstead

"omg go away let us have this thread u jerk the whole rest of the internet is there for yr self righteous grandiosity"

Haha oh man. This is so priceless.

Remember when you were fun?

fuckoff shithead

im still fun and while i know you are a self certified expert on a life well led and having yr shit together i will still dare to offer some advice: if brining out the fun in others is what you want try not hollering at them to get their shit together and accusing them of being bad at life, not only do ppl tend to react in an unfun manner but its actually extremely unconvincing as far projecting the shit-togetherness and good-at-life doing that youre aiming for, thats something to the extent that it exists at all is better demonstrated rather than proclaimed

I'm saying that my (very fond) memories of hanging on the old DC threads wth you do not jibe with this cynical shit!

yeesh

i have always been cynical... and fun, prob two of my more prominent personality traits, i contain multitudes and yeah those dc thread were good times

Also I think the prince reaction (prob because of his utter refusal to let YouTube videos exist) has been oddly verbal and descriptive? There's not a lot of person died insert video going on so maybe I think this reaction is little more thoughtful

some of it is great alot of it is just "rip" which is fine if a bit monotonous after a while but also on the very low end theres stuff like this

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cgl9859WIAA17Eu.jpg

thats a cheerios ad

also imo its fine to be a petty curmudgeon abt this itt were not out there insulting ppl to their faces or facebook profiles prince isnt really a god or a family member to ppl who arent his family everyones gonna be fine

i mean i even shared some prince content myself today (see upthread) but feelings are complex u know and i dont like to have my feeds disrupted in this manner

there has been nice stuff written for sure. none of what i have said applies really to bowie and prince. they are both better than dead presidents or heads of state to me. people totally losing their shit makes sense. it's all the rest of the over the top responses to the daily and weekly public person deaths. i dunno. and people weighing in on people they didn't even like and all that. "say what you want about glenn frey, but when i was 10 years old..." i blame internet. no biggie. old news. whatevernevermind. people want to feel connected to stuff. they SHOULD be cleaning their house instead. it's a pigsty! have you seen those bathrooms?

I have to admit between bowie and this it was the last straw and I had to unfollow a swathe of people this morning. For crimes of volume more than anything else.

Theyd not notice or care anyway so its all good.

the crazy thing abt bowie is how long it went on that was personally very scarring for me, there was one music writer who was posting screenshots of some spreadsheet he had going for weeks i had to unfollow

but wasn't it all worth it for that one SFJ article?

hahaha idk i missed i unfollowed

worst part about today was that none of SFJ's exes loved Prince

Bowie still hasn't stopped on my feed, it's reached daily express/princess Diana levels of BREAKING: Still Dead

not trying to pretend im some sage at one with the universe or anything but theres def a big aspect of ppl mad at the injustice of death which is reasonable but on the other hand we all know thats part of the deal right

i think the anniversary thing might even bug me more. do people have weird calendars for that shit? "Happy 183rd birthday to Stephen Foster..." "It was on this day that Eugene V. Debs died 90 years ago..."

i don't see the appeal.

people, by and large, pretty obsessed with death. LOCK THREAD.

i like to think that internet celebrity death politics made me a better person w/r/t bowie, i never cared about him or enjoyed his music but i remembered how i felt when amy winehouse died and refrained from being a curmudgeon

it's really nice & often moving to see how much artists meant to people

i'm mourning prince without the OTT crying in public or all night on twitter, but i am not going to criticise those people bc when madonna goes i may well end up being one of them

we all want to connect and communicate and are always at some level thwarted, also there are all these boxes now u cn just very easily type things into

although on another level i also like how when old celebrity ppl die the shock and grief morphs into a celebration of their life and art - but when young celebrity ppl die it's just worse on a gut level. i'm thankful for mj and prince and what they gave us but i feel closure (well give it a week with prince), i'm honestly still angry and not really over amy and aaliyah

agreed

the deluge of content tho i just dont know obvs not gonna pretend im not fascinated by it and a huge consumer of it but it does seem kinda bad

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cgn_z6uU8AAKm6F.jpg

lol newyorker

people, by and large, pretty obsessed with death. LOCK THREAD.

― scott seward, Friday, April 22, 2016 1:54 AM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

mods

and yet not a word about it on applebee's twitter

couldn't rustle up one purple mozzarella stick

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/apr/21/from-bowie-to-prince-famous-faces-we-have-said-goodbye-to-in-2016

exactly two months later, another hahaha come onnnn guys stop this immediately it is deeply stupid

That article names seven people

For me, the effect is cumulative. It seems to me (there may be perceptual bias involved) that everybody is dying this year. I feel overwhelmed by a sense of loss. The people passing away are markers to me of a world passing away. The new world I see, the world that is left, is colder and crueler than the one I knew (not exactly the best of all possible worlds to begin with). It seems marked primarily by strife and tribulation.

As someone who likes Prince's music, I view his death as probably a good thing, as much of his life seemed to have been devoted to keeping people from hearing his best work. As a human, I mourn his death as I do that of any other human, but I didn't know him, and from what I did know I never got the impression that he was a particularly good person. As a symbol, though? Well, Prince was a hell of a symbol.

Guys maybe when we talk about celebrities and death.....

we talk, really, about....

ourselves

and

life

Bowie still hasn't stopped on my feed, it's reached daily express/princess Diana levels of BREAKING: Still Dead

I can beat that, one of my friends on FB posts some shit on John Lennon, two or three times a week, sometimes daily.

Man when Elvis goes it's gonna be nuts

not after he said that racist thing about ray charles AMIRITE

heh

all I'm getting from this thread is that y'all have a lot of obnoxious FB friends

Agree with everything that paulhw posted last night.

For me this thread is less about any individual reaction than the flattening and dispiriting effect of experiencing it over social media, where even the best intentioned remembrances seem like feeding the content mill.

Probably safe to chalk that up to the flattening and dispiriting effect of social media's existence.

right. and being cynical about all this is less about policing genuine emotion (though yes some people are over the top) but actually the opposite: it's about how those genuine emotions give way to performative histrionics, content mill-ism, and light as a feather think pieces in which "what it all means" is sorted out and codified.

tbh I don't think it's about judging whether other people's emotions are "genuine" or "performative" -- I think either a) people just get the benefit of the doubt on that point, or b) we accept that on some deeper level we are all performing whenever we're in a public space (maybe even when not) so there's no point in trying to make this distinction.

RATHER: I find that when I react badly to people broadcasting their sadness about an artist's death, it's because it feels like a rebuke to my own relationship to that artist; does it mean I didn't really get Prince's music at all, even though I THOUGHT I loved it, because I'm not crying right now?

And so I have to step back and take a breath and say none of these people posting these things is meaning to rebuke me or indeed thinking about me AT ALL, they are bonding with the people around them (in Twitter space and in physical space) and why shouldn't they?

I mean it's not like people are "IF YOU'RE NOT SOBBING RIGHT NOW YOU'RE LESS THAN HUMAN," that would be dickish I guess but I don't think it really exists? I guess I'm saying that it's easy to defensively read that in when it's not actually there.

Actually it's about death tics in music journalism

KUDOS

I have yet to see any of these over-the-top reactions, most people are just saying "oh damn" or posting videos or w/e

The only comment relating to Prince's death that I've taken severe umbrage with was overhearing a coworker saying, "So sad, first Doris Roberts, now this."

The only comment relating to Prince's death that I've taken severe umbrage with was overhearing a coworker saying, "So sad, first Doris Roberts, now this."

That's funny though. I'm assuming it wasn't intended to be though.

I think taking umbrage with people because they consider different celebrity deaths to be of different importance than you is never ever ever a good look, though!

She was 90. Makes it funnier in fact.

I do kind of wonder what I'm missing (as a person), when others (ilx and everywhere) talk about ("I can't..."), not being able to breathe, feeling sick, cannot process etc. ...I was surprised when I heard the news today, but I don't really feel a loss. Perhaps I just don't relate very strongly to people I've never met.

― paulhw, Thursday, April 21, 2016 11:55 AM (Yesterday)

^ where i'm at. then again, it was years before my dad's death really hit me.

when did the word "gutted" become so ubiquitous?

I'm going around work today talking about what a terrible year 2016 is. "First Scalia and Nancy Reagen, now Rob Ford and Prince."

i asked that gutted question awhile ago. it's just an internet thing. that the brits gave us.

The most meaningful connection for me with these events is sharing them with my class. They're working on art right now, and we're listening to a Prince CD I made last night; I showed them all three network reports from yesterday (ABC/CBS/NBC all broke into regular programming). I don't have my own kids--I'm sure parents experience something similar.

(Same as contenderizer--my parents took a few years to sink in.)

gutted sounds like medieval torture.

"I am drawn and quartered at this news"

Scary that it's reached the US.

What next? Numpty?

First lord Lucan now some other people, it's getting spooky

It would be 'wanker', except most Americans sound funny saying 'wanker'. It will probably become that tiny bit more acceptable to say 'cunt'.

I am really not interested in allowing grief police to steal the people's oxygen. My timeline is about 1/3 proud Minnesotans, 1/3 music and style people, and miscellaneous others who make up the rest. There's not a vapid or infra-digital share to be found on it.

A dingo ate my baby!

I feel like with Prince and Bowie the whole mourning industry--even the content mill whatever--was OK insofar as it was an occasion to revisit their work/celebrate it. I was less interested in hearing people talk about how sad they were. In the past I would have said I thought the the "nothing makes sense" "the sun has gone dark" reactions were disingenuous but then I found I actually did feel quite sad when Bowie died so

"I am drawn and quartered at this news"

― ryan, Friday, April 22, 2016 10:25 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

I hadn't listened to Prince for years though and I am digging the hell out of this greatest hits CD. Know what i'm playing at my party tonight

im put inside the iron maiden and they are tightening it and the spikes are piercing my skin at this news

dare u to post a picture of the greatest hits captioned with "the best prince album" on fb treesh

Am I right in thinking that Canadians say wanker

wanker is p funny and i support it coming to america

I'm gutted that wanker died.

i was totally gonna post: GUTTED THAT WES CRAVEN DIED.

but then i didn't. or maybe i did. i laughed anyway.

if the online morning for prince is lesser than for bowie im actually gonna be mad

i think that'll mainly depend on the news cycle.

Bowie : "Whoa, that dude from Labyrinth died." :: Prince : ???

"The guy who wrote that song for the Bangles is dead?"

that guy who had a cameo on New Girl died

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0MSi7Ldxnc

It seems to me (there may be perceptual bias involved) that everybody is dying this year.

bc boomers have so many celebrities and they're all old now

Prince wasnt old though

when i heard he died my first thought was that 57 does feel awfully young in 2016 but i think it's more that there are just so many celebrities that have some level of cultural cache that even in a year where a regular number of ppl died it is going to seem like so many famous ppl are dying bc there are just so many famous ppl. and that trend will only increase. so get ready: 2017 is going to be the worst year ever (until 2018).

The guy who wrote the sound track for Tim Burton's Batman died?

(it's probably going to be people who only remember him as the source of TAFKAP-related mirth)

he's the guy from the Chapelle skit, "game...blouses."

the guy from mad magazine's parody of "purple rain" died?

http://www.imprintimaging.com.au/nigs/files/mad1.jpg

<3 Mad parodies, the language of my youth.

I am vastly sadder about deaths of people who were NOT globally famous, hugely influential, and extremely wealthy.
― up is where sentence-ending prepositions make me throw (Ye Mad Puffin)

Something else from last night that lined up with my own feelings--although sadness isn't quite the right word for me, it's closer to nostalgia, which is a kind of sadness anyway, so I don't know how to describe it. The guy from Thunderclap Newman really resonated with me a couple of weeks ago. I don't know why, maybe it feels more private, more specific to your own life, or maybe it's precisely because the person had a brief moment of fame and then went back to obscurity.

I did laugh when I saw someone tweet, "Damn, Chyna got Farrah Fawcetted."

people keep posting lyrics from 'Let's Go Crazy', which makes me wonder if they know Prince was found in an elevator

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CgqNp7tUkAAFDWp.jpg

Prince is an outlier from this aspect of the trend, but Mordy OTM about how the Boom demographics may affect the conversation as the death toll of rock grows.

1: Boomers certainly do have a lot of celebrities. No, Boomers didn't invent celebrity, but they took it to an unprecedentedly personal level (cf. how every bobby-soxer had to declare which was her favorite Beatle).

The advent of the "singer-songwriter" encouraged people to assume the singers MEANT what they were singing. Frank Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald (or whoever) may have performed songs by Cole Porter (or whoever), but those were understood to be standards and you regarded them as interpretations. However, when John Denver or Joni Mitchell or James Taylor or Dan Fogelberg or Paul Simon or whoever sang a song, you were allowed to think that the words were honest expressions of that singer's thoughts and feelings.

2. Conveniently there's also a glut of potential mourners (because there are so very many people in that age bracket).

3. Many of these folks are oldsters, who may have shaky netiquette, and/or are just discovering social media. They may have a different filter for what is appropriate vs. OTT in terms of online expression of their private grief.

(Again, not necessarily applicable to Prince and Prince fans - but I gathered the thread is about the whole phenomena of how we respond to celebrity deaths these days.)

I know we like to make fun of boomers but if Drake and Paul Simon died next week I think the fans of the former would be harder to take

it's always annoying to read about drake though.

i hope drake dies

Feels like there are probably more people under 30 than people over 50 on social media. I'm pretty sure Drake would trend higher than Paul Simon if they died on the same day.

It's probably a bit unfair to blame boomers for all this. It's basically just that humans and social media don't really work well together.

http://i.imgur.com/TW8rhpP.png

i don't think boomers are more to blame than millennials. they were just the first generation to have this kind of omnipresent celebrity culture on this scale, but the following generations were born into this lifestyle and have perpetuated it equally as well as the boomers themselves.

it's just weird now bc we're seeing it speed up but once sped up it's just going to go faster and faster

need more and more celebrities to care about :)

i actually resent celebrity death internet discourse/content for ziplining me from a moment of genuine grief at hearing the news to over-saturation and indifference in a matter of minutes. like comparing my reactions to the death of lou reed (radio in a long car trip) david bowie (radio in car to work then read twitter at work) and prince (twitter), i think in the latter within minutes my eyes just glazed over

i don't think boomers are more to blame than millennials. they were just the first generation to have this kind of omnipresent celebrity culture on this scale, but the following generations were born into this lifestyle and have perpetuated it equally as well as the boomers themselves.

Yes, agreed. We (speaking VERY generally) learned how to feel personally connected to rock stars (e.g. Cobain) from the way our forebears/parents felt about rock stars (e.g. Lennon).

So when Kurt died, we mourned in the same style that our parents/forebears mourned John, because that was the model presented to us.

http://i.imgur.com/Up75a1B.png

http://gawker.com/i-would-die-4-views-the-worst-of-the-internets-prince-1772491218

lol the comments on that article are a lesser version of our and that's okay/and here's why thread

Xp to rushomancy re prince not being a good person: if there is anything to be gained from the Internet celebrity death reaction, it's all the ppl coming forward with how much of a philanthropist he was. Apparently as a JW it meant he couldn't/wouldn't publicly talk about it.

Who is a good person I wonder.

i wish they had a purple filter to put over my facebook profile photo. i never do that with other photos on principle but i think this time it would look cool.

fwiw, Prince got several positive mentions on Minnesota/Minnesotans C or D, but so did Bob Dylan

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CgrdEFFVEAA2b3v.jpg

http://www.awesomelyluvvie.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/CycleOfTwitterGriefTagged.png

i actually resent celebrity death internet discourse/content for ziplining me from a moment of genuine grief at hearing the news to over-saturation and indifference in a matter of minutes. like comparing my reactions to the death of lou reed (radio in a long car trip) david bowie (radio in car to work then read twitter at work) and prince (twitter), i think in the latter within minutes my eyes just glazed over

― de l'asshole (flopson), Friday, April 22, 2016 2:12 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i mean, at a certain point you have to choose how you want to experience these things. i put on CNN for a minute after the news broke but then i was like 'fuck this, i don't care what Don Lemon has to say about Prince' and went back to primarily listening to the music and delving into the corners of social media where people were talking about the music and not being too annoying.

thats weird how it cycles back to the rumor? xp

Yah lol the graph should be linear

But seriously, have you guys heard the rumor that Prince died? Confirmation?

UNLESS it's Elvis

Xp to rushomancy re prince not being a good person: if there is anything to be gained from the Internet celebrity death reaction, it's all the ppl coming forward with how much of a philanthropist he was. Apparently as a JW it meant he couldn't/wouldn't publicly talk about it.

― just1n3

that's good to know! i just tend to assume the worst about people i don't know- keeps me from being disappointed.

On Thursday, I was in a George Saunders-like corporate workshop in a former community college in a suburb of a small American city, and saw the news spread through the workshop of 40 medical-marketing professionals that afternoon.

http://i.imgur.com/rOms55J.jpg

better

Printhe legend, yeah. re Boomers and their celebs, the Baby Boom was like right after WWII 'til the early-mid 60s, prob no later than '64. Prince was born in 1958, so he was a Boomer, yeah, but so far, most of the fans I've seen testifying (anecdotal evidence) are Gen X, who remember him from videos and radio in the 80s, early 90s.
My impression is that he peaked, creatively and commercially, a long time ago, although still putting out good tracks, if you don't mind cherrypicking, or fairly strong EPs inside uneven albums. Still a force of nature in concert though, apparently a good citizen of his commnnity and neighborhood, and overall an invigorating, enduring presence, which made the sudden crash that more unnerving *though maybe not as unnerving as Bowie suddenly showing up with an actually good album, then vanishing for good).

Also of course, the Gen Xers maybe well remember his shows, but I'm talking about the earliest impressions, like maybe from before they were allowed to go to shows, or shows like his, with the ooo-ooo pantyhose and all.

Prince was born in 1958, so he was a Boomer

Yup. That qualifies, although he's at the very tail end of the big parade.

1964 is supposed to be the cutoff, so not really at the tail end tbh.

In my view by '64 the boom was just an echo.

tail end of boomerhood really the forgotten foghat/van halen generation. not what people think of when they think of horrible smug self-righteous selfish boomers who stopped the vietnam war in 1975.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CgxhGliW0AASlo_.jpg

wonder how many Kohl's cashiers tried that one

re: anil dash tweet. one of the grimmest elements of celeb death are the people who claim to be (and no doubt are) superfans but v quickly move to monetise it. short story writers wailing and clanking chains then following it up with "if anyone is releasing a prince short story collection pls get in touch!". keep an eye out for all the up-coming prince-themed clubnights and events popping up where zilch, or v v little, goes to charity. man's gotta earn, i guess

deranged comment on this worthless article in my local paper:

2 days ago
PurpleRain
Hi nice article. I've been so devastated by the news my doctor has had to sedate me both yesterday and today as I was hysterically screaming. Maybe since you're brilliant at collecting you could help me find a poster of him like he was in delirious lying on the bed half naked? I've looked everywhere and really want a large poster of this.

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/prince-death-manchester-fans-tribute-11224079

Read more: Review: Prince @ Manchester Academy, Friday

wow what a comeback

I've been feeling really disappointed the last few days because of all the outpourings of purported grief over Prince. I mean, I love his music and think he was an amazing and groundbreaking musician, but I guess I just don't understand all of these over the top displays of emotion. I have a lot of really personal connections to Prince music, but I don't know, it just seems inappropriate to force those personal experiences on other people. Just becomes more about the person who is "grieving" rather than the person who is gone at that point.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just an asshole.

everyone grieves in their own way beloved

all the outpourings of purported grief over Prince

In some cultures there is a tradition of professional mourners, who scream and wail and tear at their breasts and loudly proclaim how desolate the world will be without the deceased. Even though everyone knows the professional mourner does not feel the grief they are acting out, these histrionic displays are accepted as a show of proper respect for the dead person, which the family may not feel up to providing one their own.

Likewise, fans of Prince may feel that writing ott comments on the internet are the most proper way to publically express their true fanship. It is a formal display of respect, even if they understand that it is all an exaggeration and a show.

the reactions lol

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CgvtcV8UgAAFXNA.jpghttps://pbs.twimg.com/media/CgvtcV9UkAUsOYH.jpghttps://pbs.twimg.com/media/CgvtcWDVEAAmnRz.jpg

(Xp) Is it an exaggeration and a show?

Fanship/fandom are very silly words, verrrrry silly words

[extremely online voice] fandom is the highest human expression actually

There are no silly words

Only silly walks

goolies

(Xp) Is it an exaggeration and a show?

(shrug) I can't directly interrogate their feelings, so I don't know, but it would surprise me if many people felt the sort of anguished 'there's-a-deep-hole-torn-in-my-very-soul' grief that their words express, over a person whose presence in their lives was entirely virtual. Their grief may be as eviscerating as they say, but I imagine they have not yet felt the whole force and crushing weight that grief can inflict, and think their temporary feelings of distress are the same thing.

Interesting? Do you believe that people who mourn the passing of their pet also don't know what real grief is?

It's kind of a silly argument, because to each their own, right, but I think there's a distinction to be made between generic celebrity and intrinsic part of the very fabric of pop culture, which is to say, life. You didn't have to be a fan of Prince to recognize his impact, and while that impact was no doubt different for different people, it's still there. So when someone major like Prince dies, it's like a brick in the foundation of everything we know being removed, at least for a couple of generations. He was part of the peak of the monoculture.

Do you believe that people who mourn the passing of their pet also don't know what real grief is?

No. A pet is a real, tangible and integral part of most pet owner's lives. The hole a pet leaves behind is undeniable.

Whenever I catch myself thinking "I must be seeing some kind of performance, this person can't seriously be that torn up about the death of writer/musician/artist/actor X," I remind myself that I've felt that same kind of of grief over the outcome of baseball games, and I'll bet it's hard for some people to believe that I'm serious when I express that.

Good point.

And if people were taking the time to say "oh spare me from the parade of people on Twitter pretending their life is ruined because the outcome of today's sportsball game wasn't to their liking" I would want to punch those people in their fat face, at least while I was still in grief mode.

So I think it's worth striving not to be that dismissive person.

there's a distinction to be made between generic celebrity and intrinsic part of the very fabric of pop culture, which is to say, life

electric word, life.

O and

https://twitter.com/brianphillips/status/723882078211727360

It's kind of a silly argument, because to each their own, right, but I think there's a distinction to be made between generic celebrity and intrinsic part of the very fabric of pop culture, which is to say, life. You didn't have to be a fan of Prince to recognize his impact, and while that impact was no doubt different for different people, it's still there. So when someone major like Prince dies, it's like a brick in the foundation of everything we know being removed, at least for a couple of generations. He was part of the peak of the monoculture.

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, April 24, 2016 3:41 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This

I wasn't a serious Prince fan, and I was never a Bowie fan, but both deaths did still hit me. Not like the death of a relative or a friend or an artist I've really invested in, but still.

^this

Somewhat well-known boomer journalist my mom knows was blowing hard on FB about how people care about Prince but not the Syrian refugees, and I am like 95% sure this guy cried when John Lennon died but would say "that's different."

Anyway I think Puffin is right. Bowie's death is a bit harder to take knowing he was still capable of making great music

I'm sad that hope has been removed of me ever seeing a Prince concert, which everyone claims was the best shit ever.

[extremely online voice] fandom is the highest human expression actually

― lag∞n, Sunday, April 24, 2016 6:57 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ilm is crying out for this as its new board description

News flash: crying when a celebrity dies is not exactly deep grieving. People cry at movies all the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYyd42O5jbg

And when Glen Campbell finally passes, along with Bernie Worrell and Bruce Langhorne, to name a few, no doubt we will get another schoolmarmish censure for being upset on the intranetz: "Who do you think Glen Campbell is- yo mama?"

http://www.comicscontinuum.com/stories/0602/23/beast2th.jpg
For Hecuba! What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her? What would he do. Had he the motive and the cue for passion. That I have?

http://uploads.neatorama.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/640PhilSilvers-500x375.jpg

saw this on facebook and felt sad :(

https://scontent-ord1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtf1/v/t1.0-9/13012893_503617719825054_3203082867730710243_n.jpg?oh=0a4f5ea707e4d5e38e6c130f5ae6c98b&oe=57B9B5E4

as a child i was very nearly obsessed with pop culture, as i'm sure many people here were or still are. there is no sense confronting someone who admires a particular celebrity or explicitly stating such admiration.

however, personally, while i quite liked a few of prince's songs, i'm at a point where my enjoying any type of art, whether it is considered low or high, does not affect my emotional state. in the end, i consider it more entertainment than a deep connection. if out of a particular artwork a great conversation is engendered, i would consider my interaction with the people with whom i am speaking to have a greater impact than the artist. likewise, if a particular artwork is thought-provoking, there would not be a deep connection with the artist, but a memory of myself interacting with my environment from which this thought stemmed. my attempts to create an image of the artist is an illusion, and so i would refrain from doing so.

put another way, i see celebrities and artists who i don't know as having personalities that are variables which do not matter much, because i can never really know if my interpretation of their artwork may or may not be a reflection the artist, so why bother thinking it as such? it could be a case of extreme pragmatism. an artist can be a complete asshole but produce the most sympathetic piece. some think it impossible, but in my experience speaking with artists and generally reading interviews, i don't think it impossible.

celebrity deaths ultimately do not arouse in me any strong emotions of grief or sadness. i suppose some people go through mental gymnastics subconsciously that cause them to feel some deeper connection to celebrities, but it surely is at least partially a figment of their imagination. it is the eternal excitement of the teenybopper exclaiming, "oh my god! she was looking at me when she sang that song!" she may have, or may have not, and he will never know, but out of this fountain springs a wealth of creative thoughts that is the source of many fantasies, whose origins are soon to be forgotten and which the mind replaces with the creation of a mere myth of its inception.

User name invalidates comment

Fanship/fandom are very silly words, verrrrry silly words

― Daithi Bowsie (darraghmac), Sunday, April 24, 2016 2:55 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"fanaticism" is technically the correct term to use, right?

User name invalidates comment

― some men just want to watch the world Bern (Noodle Vague), Monday, April 25, 2016 6:59 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you're absolutely right. usernames that make reference to new wave via a play on french words sound much more authoritative.

The Hamlet quote "What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba" was extremely appropriate, imo, and speaks to the phenomenon very succinctly.

no doubt we will get another schoolmarmish censure for being upset on the intranetz

I got no beef with being "upset" and I'm not censuring anyone for that. Being upset, being sad, or being distressed are perfectly understandable reactions to a celebrity death for those who felt a close spiritual kinship with the artist in question. Framing those emotions as "I feel totally gutted and hollowed out" should be considered in the same light as saying to a living celebrity "I am your BIGGEST FAN!" It's a sign the person has all-consuming fantasy life centered around the celeb. When you see that, you have to ask what's all that about?

What do you think 'all that's about', JRatB?

Oh, I never thought of it that way..

Xpost

I plead guilty to making mock. But Aimless is right that it's an interesting question. The thread premise is about the psychology of how we react. There is a meaningful distinction between asking "why do people react this way" and saying "people shouldn't react this way."

Cf. Lucretius, who wondered why people feared death but didn't fear sleep (shit, maybe it was Heraclitus?). The point is not (just) to censure people for feeling a certain way, but wonder aloud why they do. Considered en masse, I don't think we're just being cool detachment bros, or saying that people shouldn't mourn - rather, trying to unpack the fact that they do.

New wave? Might wanna check that provenance Pierre

Puffin is right tho, analysis is a thing and "ought" is a different, silly thing

Nouvelle Vague is a French cover band led by musicians Marc Collin and Olivier Libaux. Their name means "new wave" in French, and refers simultaneously to the French New Wave cinema movement of the 1960s, to the new wave music movement of the 1970s and 1980s, which provides many of the songs that the band cover, and to bossa nova (Portuguese for "new wave"), a musical style that the band frequently uses in its arrangements.[1]

Everyone's right!

I assumed M. Menard was talking bout his own ID, forgot my lme pun. Which isn't a joke about the impossibility of authenticity

Smiles

I assumed M. Menard was talking bout his own ID, forgot my lme pun. Which isn't a joke about the impossibility of authenticity

― some men just want to watch the world Bern (Noodle Vague), Monday, April 25, 2016 7:53 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"noodle vague" est une référence a la nouvelle vague, n'est-ce pas ?

It's also important to note that it is actually often v. important and also cool to judge others

Oui, but purely circumstantial. I was joking about the Borges routine your name refers to in light of your questioning of how real people's internet thoughts might be. Not maliciously ribbing you btw

"bossa" means hump rather than wave, which is "onda". although it is used in the same way we would use wave to mean a trend.

absolutely useless bit of pedantry that

Oui, but purely circumstantial. I was joking about the Borges routine your name refers to in light of your questioning of how real people's internet thoughts might be. Not maliciously ribbing you btw

― some men just want to watch the world Bern (Noodle Vague), Monday, April 25, 2016 8:05 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you're point is taken, sir! my apologies for any confusion.

well...your, of course

Dunno, could be a hump-free howler in there at some point

No problem Pierre, where I wasn't clear it was my own fault

so e.g. not to belabor this point but someone in my feed just posted a picture of a nice letter Prince wrote to Suzanne Vega and captioned it

"If this doesn't warm your heart/make you cry, I'm not sure you're human."