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...

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."

so I mean that's the thing -- I legit don't like being told I'm not human even though I know the person who wrote this is not thinking about me personally and even though I know, factually, if I asked the person "do you literally mean that" they would doubtless say "no, I am just being hyperbolic, of course I am aware that there is a broad range of reactions to the death of a public figure among humans and people who are not upset about Prince are not less human, let alone less than human, by virtue of that fact"

But it still makes me feel bad! And I don't think it's that weird that it makes me feel bad.

Indeed. Part of my meta-reaction to celebrity deaths is to second-guess myself and sincerely wonder whether I'm somehow broken because I'm not as torn up as those around me.

Cold? Robotic? Detached? Heartless? Or maybe just stoic, accepting, reserved, cautious about proportionality. cf. Cordelia vs. Regan.

Some years ago, a forum I frequented had a thread just for Bad Thoughts - started around September 2001, in fact. The thread was meant to be a place where it was okay to semi-anonymously express semi-heretical thoughts that some of us were having, thoughts that didn't necessarily conform to the accepted / expected script of those days.

When everyone in the room is joining hands and singing kumbayah, seems like there should be a safe space for saying you're not completely on board with the dominant sentiment.

Somehow even though you're agreeing with me I am almost as put off by the way you say it as I am by that guy on FB! Maybe I'm just too sensitive.

Or maybe I'm just too demanding!

Too bold!

i realized the other day that the traits prince maybe inherited from his parents aren't bad things at all and that he's humblebragging.

given my own family i have basically always read into those lines:

maybe i'm just like my father
too detached
maybe i'm just like my mother
she's narcissistic borderline

Why do we scream at each other?
We have perfectly functioning microphones

megaphones?

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."

so I mean that's the thing -- I legit don't like being told I'm not human even though I know the person who wrote this is not thinking about me personally and even though I know, factually, if I asked the person "do you literally mean that" they would doubtless say "no, I am just being hyperbolic, of course I am aware that there is a broad range of reactions to the death of a public figure among humans and people who are not upset about Prince are not less human, let alone less than human, by virtue of that fact"

But it still makes me feel bad! And I don't think it's that weird that it makes me feel bad.

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, 26 April 2016 01:15 (10 hours ago) Permalink

Both of my best friends from high school are dead (one committed suicide by driving his car off a bridge; the other got hit by a cab and died in his sleep a year later from a leftover blood clot nobody knew about), and that T-shirt makes me laugh like hell. (A former co-worker owned it.)

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?

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Monday, April 25, 2016 12:33 PM (Yesterday)

^this is a lot of it.

it occurred to me that actual living friends of mine might be hurt by those words, and I got rid of the shirt.
― bernard snowy

This is a little ridiculous now cmon

nah, it's just that emotions don't easily or precisely reduce to language.
― mandatory sex webinar (contenderizer)

Nah it's that excessive performance of emotion, emphasis on the performance and not the emotion, is a fooly look

I suspended all my curmudgeonliness last night by going to see "Purple Rain" on the big screen, in a theater full of people who sang along to every song (not just the Prince songs, but Morris Day and Apollonia 6). The audience stood and applauded at the end of the film.

It was joyous.

I experienced this several years ago it was amazing

how do you account for erstwhile non-fans (or very casual fans) who suddenly feel compelled to check out an artist's records/books/movies after their death? for me it's a combination of 'I can't believe I missed the boat while it was still afloat' + 'now is as good a time as any to reflect on this person's legacy (even though I know very little about them)' + 'maybe there's some truth to all this posthumous hype'. I rarely follow through on the impulse until years/months later, though, because I feel sheepish/vulturish for only taking notice of their work in the immediate aftermath of their demise. with Bowie I watched the "Blackstar" and "Lazarus" videos and with Prince I listened to a few rarities on youtube, but it seems like it's still too soon to start getting into either of them in earnest without feeling weird about my motives. on a rational level I know it's just a harmless desire to educate myself about artists I've been wanting to get into for years — it's not like I'm crying fake tears over them or binge-downloading their entire discographies so I can pretend I'm a longtime fan — but the feeling of charlatanism isn't easy to shake.

it's ok

there is no membership card

What a way to out yrself as treeship but

pfft, I've been playing the apologetic self-awareness card since treesh was a seedling

but I'm glad I have permission to listen to Heroes now

I felt like a poseur when I was first getting into Mozart, yo. I couldn't claim to have been a true fan back in the day, back when he was young and hungry and paying his dues in little clubs. Once he got a major-label deal, it seemed like everybody wanted on the bandwagon.

Joined the wolfgang

woah do we have a hoos 2016

xp I went through something similar when Jason Molina passed a few years back: he had achieved a sufficient level of fame (within the American indie-rock world) for me to know his name, to have seen his records & even heard a couple of songs I liked, but somehow I never found time to listen. I resisted, as properly ghoulish, the urge to immediately consume his entire recorded output -- I knew that I wasn't in the right state of mind to hear it, that I would be unable to see anything except sadness, loss, and... 'clues' (as awful as that sounds, and is) about the sickness that ended in his early death.

But when one of his most-acclaimed albums was reissued later that same year to commemorate its ten-year anniversary, I saw my chance to have an honest encounter with his musical legacy, on its own terms*; and this time I didn't hesitate to take it.

*: "on its own terms" is sort of problematic here, but I can't find any better way to phrase it... I suppose "terms" here might refer back to the terms of a will, or the terms of a contract...

... which is to say, something like the Magnolia Electric Company 2xLP reissue didn't just come together overnight, & given the long period of illness preceding his death, I think it's safe to say that Jason 1.) Had some degree of personal involvement, and 2.) Understood that he might not live to see the finished product. So I can still think of the subsequent execution by other people of the artist's will towards the art as a sufficiently neutral medium, if that makes sense?

We could then define the exact polar opposite of music heard "on its own terms" with the example of a label rushing to market a posthumous best-of compilation for an artist who, while living, was famously antagonistic towards the label bosses.

And yet... Such a compilation is not, for all that, totally worthless. For some person somewhere out there in 199whatever, owning a single CD with Miles' "Summertime", "So What", & "Time After Time" on it was probably an appealing proposition. Unfortunately, they would have had to wait until 2001 to purchase Super Hits; and then they probably would have had to wait some more, in a line for returns, once the far superior two-disk Essential Miles Davis was released a month later.

oh yeah, and because I forgot to say so in that long, confusingass post: Magnolia Electric Co. turned out to be a great record! lotta Prince & Bowie records are great too, & you should feel free to seek them out for your listening pleasure, at your own pace; it's what they would have wanted.

ooh, well played, darraghmac.

Can't read this whole thread right now, just thinking about it because Bernie Worrell is about to, um, be called home. Still wonder what the problem is for some people. Is it the mourning on teh Internetz instead of some more traditional place? The mourning for celebrities that were not personally known? The words that are used to express the emotion, such as "gutted"? I mean it seems pretty obvious that people could have strong feelings about, say, a musician's death, somebody they have listened to and thought about pretty much their whole life, probably spent a little of time listening to and discussing with flesh and blood friends, without actually confusing the way they feel in such a situation with the way they might feel upon the passing of somebody they did know personally, although not sure if the distinction needs to be made or is just fighting against somebody's strawman.