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

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.

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.