to be sick of all these so devasted x or y celeb/pop star died

[mum80]

Ok so its sad when people die young. However, I personally feel sympathy should be for those closer to home.
Disclaimer. Mum died recently so touchy.

Sorry about your Mum.

My lovely next door neighbour died on Friday after a short and hard battle with pancreatic cancer,and sad though that is, I can't even say I'm devastated about that....let alone Whitney Houston. It is sad, I'm not IYSWIM?

It'sthe grief-hagsters mentality. Hijacking other people's real grief in order to make themselves feel good and dressing it up as compassion.

And you can't even turn round and say they're wrong, because then you get accused of heartlessness....

I noticed on my FB yesterday that almost all the "Whitney RIP" posters were, erm, not exactly the brightest buttons in the button box, or at the front when God was giving brains out. Bless 'em.

Sorry to hear of your loss Mum80

YANBU Losing a loved one is terribly hard. To be devastated about the loss of someone you never actually knew and who never featured in your life in a personal capacity is attention seeking.

I do agree. Any death is sad, but the outpouring of 'grief' over someone these people have never met does seem very OTT and attention seeking. I just skim over them but it must be much harder to read things like that when you've just lost someone close. Very sorry for your loss OP.

It is sad, I'm not sad sums it up very well, Bucharest

I know someone who has
Posted pictures of Whitney all over Facebook all day with messages
'so devastated... The greatest ever' etc etc

I seriously want to shake
Her and scream 'get some perspective!'

Bet the same person said the same about Amy Winehouse and Jacko- the ones on my FB did!

A further example of the Dianafication of our society.

sorry about your Mum - but YABU.

Just because a person doesn't know Whitney or Michael or whoever, doesn't mean they don't feature in their lives. Music plays a huge role in peoples lives and touches people emotionally. It helps people celebrate, express joy, anger & the whole realm of emotions, even grief. And people feel a connection with the singers & songwriters who are writing and performing these songs.

I felt really sad hearing about Whitney - she had a difficult life. I felt something much deeper when Amy Winehouse died - really shocked. I was much more of a Amy fan than Whitney - hence the reaction.

And just because I feel sad about Whitney, doesn't mean I don't give a shit about starving babies in Africa either. It's just that they never sang "Its not right but its OK" over and over to me at a really difficult time in my life.

Thank fuck there was no FB in 1997.

Can you imagine

So sorry to hear about your mum OP.

I'm with the others who say it's sad by I'm not sad. Think the ones who take it on board to mourn what really are strangers aren't really the full ticket.

Sad, yes, possibly, as with any death, really.

Devastated is too strong, IMO. I can't think of any celebrity/public person death that would make me feel devastated.

Quite agree & YANBU so sorry about your mum. Also agree with it is sad not I am sad, well summed up.

I had a lovely Facebook cull last night, the grief hags have gone.

i was sad for a few moments. it is aways sad when someone dies,
yep I said something on fb, but apart from linking a song of hers as my 20 yr old metal head son was asking on his fb who she was..... that is it.
I don't believe you can be devastated when someone you have never met has died.
op sorry about your mum

I lost my mum recently too Mum80, so I know what you're going through. All of this faux grief for a dead sleb is just odd to me. I walked around in a daze of disbelief at the public reaction to Diana's death too - really so strange.

I am sorry about your mum OP.

I think that people can feel sad or sorry when they hear about someone dying, even if they never met them.

I've posted on here about the deaths of our first son and our daughter, and people I have never met have said that they are so sorry and that our story has brought a tear to their eyes.

I appreciated that, and I believe they were genuine. I know I've cried reading similar stories from other people.

But had anyone claimed to be devastated about it, I don't think I would have believed them or appreciated it. It could have come across as extreme or false, depending on who said it and how it was said.

It is sad that Whitney has died so young and so horribly, but most of my feelings have been for her daughter, who really is devastated.

I agree with the "it's sad, but I'm not sad" thing. But I'm sure some people do feel genuinely sad and there's nothing really wrong with that IMO. For someone who has always been a fan of her music, it's going to be upsetting (at least in the sense that it's worth a mention on FB) that they won't ever get to hear her voice again or any new songs from her. And on top of that, there are some sad personal circumstances too.

Sorry to hear about your mum.

I totally agree about the mourning of people you've never met. However, I am prepared to eat my words when Debbie Harry shuffles off this mortal coil...

To me it seems ghoulish to speak of death if it's not directly related to you.

Sorry for your loss OP. :(

Sorry about your mother OP

YANBU. I find it really strange how upset people get over a complete stranger's death. Completely agree with the situation being sad rather than being sad personally (btw, I don't have much sympathy really for WH but that's another thread).

I remember something Eddie Izzard said about Diana dying, in his Glorious tour that really stuck with me:

But I think we were thrown because it was like a soap opera; it was like a soap- front page for the last four months (mimes turning the pages of a magazine), and it was so in your face that you had to be thrown, and it happened one night. You woke up and went, ?What?? It was weird! It was something like ?The X-Files,? ?cause, you know, ?The X-Files? is huge, it?s all over the world, and you?ve got Scully-Mulder, Scully-Mulder, Scully-Mulder, front page, no clothes, no clothes? And imagine if an episode came up a Monday night, at 2:00 in the morning, and they killed off the characters, and you went, ?What? How come they finished that? I was quite- I was watching that? Just Monday night and they??? It just throws you, you know?

So- yeah, so it happened, and so there was a mother that died, and there was a lot of sympathy towards the kids, one was 17, one about 13, I think, that was understandable, and? My Dad mentioned something to me, he said- My Mum died when I was six, my brother was eight, and no one gave a shit!

It is madness, and I think disrespectful to those who have been genuinely bereaved.

I remember when Jade Goody died there was a thread and someone came on and said, "how insensitive you all are, there are people on here who are grieving." the reality is that most of these stars wouldn't give those griefmongers the time of day if they passed them in the street - they were nothing to them.

Sorry for your loss OP

Don't agree though- surely it's completely normal to feel sad when people we don't know die? Isn't that how books/films work? The fact that WH was a real person doesn't make her less 'fictional' in the sense that she was a big player in celeb soap opera. Would you rather live in a society where people went 'serves her right, the crack whore'?
Also, following the logic that you should mourn closer to home, shouldn't we say 'oh those starving African babies...you'll never meet them'...

I just never under stand why people find this 'Diana' phenomenon odd. Surely it's the most normal / everyday reaction?

"I just never under stand why people find this 'Diana' phenomenon odd. Surely it's the most normal / everyday reaction?" What, to line the streets weeping and wailing and to go down there to lay flowers at the scene or to gather outside the hospital/hotel/house/wherever the person died? Really? Not on my planet it isn't.

I disagree babigirl.

Empathy is a fine thing. Empathy has me sobbing at childhood deaths on the nightly news.

However indulging in celebrity grief for what is in essence a legend - someone you have never met and have only ever seen the airbrushed version of, well that's just pandering IMHO. I remember my uni friends sobbing when Take That split up FFS. People just jump on the bandwagon.

YANBU - it's always sad when someone dies, especially young, as others have said but it's the constant hanging-on of the grief that grates.

I got mad about this when Michael Jackson died and a friend of mine was all "oh I'm so upset, I can't believe it, can you believe it, oh my goodness it's so awful". At the time my family and I were going through horrendous times - misscarriages (of twins, me) my Dad nearly died and in the end had a life-changing operation, I think the day or the day after Michael Jackson died so this friend got short shrift from me and to be honest, sadly, I've never felt the same about her since.

I've just hidden every Whitney story from my FB page - might have even deleted a couple of people who went seriously OTT.