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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To hate when people unconnected make a tragedy all about them?

96 replies

crunchymint · 23/12/2017 12:40

Had this experience last night. We had a fatal crash near us. One friend kept going on and on about how she was driving down that road 10 minutes before and could have been hit.
It really really annoyed me. You didn't see anything, you don't know anyone who was hurt or killed, it is nothing to do with you.

Or another friend who heard the police breaking into a house to arrest suspected terrorists. She kept on going on and on about how close they were to it. The arrest happened about 0.3 miles away from her, she doesn't know anyone who was arrested, or even anyone who lives on the same street.

Just really annoys me.

OP posts:
MrsDilber · 23/12/2017 13:26

I felt like this about Soham after the awful murdering of Holly and Jessica. At the end of the day, Soham residents got on with their lives, whilst their families will grieve always.

WooWooSister · 23/12/2017 13:26

I think there's a difference between people who make everything about themselves and people who are genuinely trying to process what happened.
Someone with anxiety; someone with PTSD; someone trying to process the randomness of life or their own mortality - there are lots of people who could genuinely have an emotional reaction to an event that you consider too far away from them.
I find it odd that people criticise others' emotional responses rather than having some compassion. As a family, we've been involved in some horrible, news-worthy tragedies, I didn't give a toss if someone ten miles away was trying to make it all about them. It didn't impact on our trauma. Hence I wonder why other unrelated people feel the need to be offended on our behalf. It just seems like an excuse to be lacking in compassion whilst trying to appear 'more' considerate.

Cattenberg · 23/12/2017 13:27

I agree that a tragedy happening near you can be a shock and does make you realise that it really could happen to you.

But some people do take this quite far. A woman I went to school with is like this. As it happens, she isn't very bright, so I cut her some slack, but it is weird. If a slight acquaintance or someone she is one degree removed from dies (such as a colleague she'd never met), she grieves for them and makes out they were very close. I doubt that she's ever met some of these people - she thought she had a photo of one of them - but it was of a different person! And it was pretty odd when she mourned my next door neighbour - she might well have met him as they had a mutual friend, but she'd never mentioned him to me before.

I'm guessing that she does this for attention and because it makes her feel good for some weird reason, but I don't fully understand it.

maddiemookins16mum · 23/12/2017 13:27

Not my friend (thankfully), the news was trending on FB and it was on a post on a news article.

ThunderboltsLightning · 23/12/2017 13:29

YANBU, but like others I do think that it reminds us that we could just walk out of our front door and never return, just like that. It can rattle you a bit when it happens nearby.

Rudgie47 · 23/12/2017 13:29

I think sometimes people can be really shocked and traumatized so wont be able to stop talking about it. Like if you were a witness to a bad accident or involved in a terrorist incident etc.
Theres a woman on this street and she is always anouncing deaths. Theres a lot of elderly people so basically it happens a lot. I think she knows the person is going to die before they do. She then gets really involved with the funeral arrangements and shes not even family!!.
I wonder if she gets right well in with people hoping to be left money.

MaisyPops · 23/12/2017 13:30

For some things that are random, I get people thinking about their own mortality.
E.g. I had an acquaintance a few years back who was travelling the year of the boxing day tsunami. They were meant to be in one of the locations hit but something happened and they ended up changing their plans. They weren't there when it hit. But they should have been. I absolutelh got them thinking 'bloody hell. If it wasn't for c y z then we'd have been there'.

For things that aren't random (eg. Targrting a known victim to murder) then people are just annoying.
For things like illness oneupmanship, also stupidly annoying.

ScreamingValentaMySantaExpress · 23/12/2017 13:31

I agree with Notreallyarsed - there's a difference between a genuine near miss - being moments away from an accident or attack - and the 'I went to an Aldi 50 miles away last month;' 'My cousin's neighbour's postman's daughter was in Aldi at the time' brigade.

GoldenFlaps · 23/12/2017 13:33

"Did you hear about that fireman that was killed at ***?"

"Yes, it was awful. So sad."

"It held the buses up, it was really annoying."

I kid you not Angry

TinklyLittleLaugh · 23/12/2017 13:38

I was taking my son to a friend's house when we had the storms a few months ago. Drove down a tree lined road, dropped him off, drove back and there was a car absolutely crushed under a fallen tree, ambulances racing to the scene. I must have missed it by about a minute.

I actually went home and had a bit of a hysterical weep for a few minutes. I didn't know the person in the car, so it was really all about me, or at least me and my boy.

I later learned that amazingly, the car driver escaped unscathed.

TheOnlyWaysTitsUp · 23/12/2017 13:38

Rubyslippers, I like that term Grief thief!

When my parent died, a former school friend of mine posted on facebook about her devastation at losing a close friend - within 24 hours before I'd managed to reach all of my extended family with the news.

My parent and this friend exchanged Christmas and birthday cards, and chatted for ten minutes when they bumped into each other in town - which doesn't even fit the definition of 'close friend', let alone entitle someone to announce a person's death without permission from their bereaved family. Grrrrrr.

Swingofthings, your experience is totally different to those being complained about. That was genuinely a lucky escape.

And OP, I totally agree. I'd sympathise with a close friend who wanted to talk over feeling affected by something like that ("this thing happened, and I go there all the time, and it really made me think"), but so often it's someone who just wants the attention on them, and who tell everyone their "connection" at any opportunity.

EnthusiasmIsDisturbed · 23/12/2017 13:39

Of course when something dreadful happens and people die we are reminded of our own mortality especially when it’s close to home

But we are all guilty of liking a bit of drama and for many it’s jumping on grief bandwagons and it gains them attention and some people are just very self absorbed

My dad was caught up in the tsunami (was very stressful for myself and siblings) my mum made it all about how she was worried about me how she couldn’t sleep for worry Hmm she has had no contact with my dad for years it was just another drama for her

Notreallyarsed · 23/12/2017 13:42

People turning up at funerals to be seen to be there and sniffling dry eyed into a tissue makes me Angry too. When my best friend died a load of our old colleagues (we were nights they were days) who had treated her like shite muscled their way to the front, fake crying into their tissues. It took every ounce of my (heavily pregnant and hormonal at the time) self control not to lose my shit conpletely. They even shoved her sisters out of the way!

MrsHathaway · 23/12/2017 13:47

As a family, we've been involved in some horrible, news-worthy tragedies, I didn't give a toss if someone ten miles away was trying to make it all about them. It didn't impact on our trauma.

Hmm. During our recent trauma, the what-if-ing, and the messages from complete strangers digging for salacious details under a thin veil of concern or sympathy definitely added to our distress and reduced my ability to cope.

SilverySurfer · 23/12/2017 13:49

I can't stand it. It never used to be as bad as this - Princess Diana's death opened the floodgates and it has just gone from bad to worse. People grab on to something, no matter how tenuous, to make it personal to them - eg your friend having driven down the same road 10 mins before the fatal crash - it's pathetic.

iklboo · 23/12/2017 13:51

A woman I used to work with took a week off work because the vendor she used to buy her cigs from on a Friday was injured in the 7/7 bombing.

Namechangetempissue · 23/12/2017 13:53

There is nothing wrong with thinking how lucky you have been internallu

ThumbWitchesAbroad · 23/12/2017 13:54

I have some sympathy with the first friend re. the fatal crash - yes it DOES make you think how close you were to being the one IN that crash.

There was a teenaged murdered about 100m from my parents' house some years ago - walking home from the bus stop that I used to get off, walking past my parents' house, and then being killed. It made me feel well strange for quite a while, and even affected my feelings about using public transport. It brought things "very close to home".

It's an understandable reaction as a general thing, especially as a shock reaction - but it becomes self-serving when it's dragged on, and they're still going on about it ages later. Then it's All About Their Own Drama.

Namechangetempissue · 23/12/2017 13:54

There is nothing wrong with thinking how lucky you have been internally -its when it leaks onto social media and comes up in every conversation with anybody that it becomes awful.

PaperThinWalls · 23/12/2017 14:05

I think it is normal to feel a bit of a shock when you have come very close to something, like the tree coming down in a storm mentioned by a pp.

I live in a town where we had a serial killer a few years back. I didn’t notice any of this. It is almost like when it is something really serious and very close to home people don’t do it.

Allthetuppences · 23/12/2017 14:12

Yeah. I don't get it. We had a machete attack on our street years ago. A family/ drug type feud. So I knew there was no way i would have been caught up in it. A colleague would not let it go. You'd think a. She lived in the same street and b. Was a close personal friend or c. Was a member of the flying ambulance team that landed nearby.
The last time I bumped into her she raised it.
Obviously she was none. And I wasn't home that day. I guess it's some sort of over identification? Too much compassion?

Trickie03 · 23/12/2017 14:13

Someone who I used to go to school with regularly used to set up Facebook remembrance pages for people who had died, often the same day. She was not particularly close to these people, just felt that she was doing it so people knew that she knew the person who died.

An old neighbour tagged someone on their Facebook expressing their sympathies at their mother passing away, before they had actually heard about it (they were on holiday at the time)

pallisers · 23/12/2017 14:16

There is a phrase - the baby at every christening, the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral - to describe these people.

Original poster
crunchymint · 23/12/2017 14:19

Another friend was on her way to work when she saw a man run across the road and get hit by a car. He was killed. I totally understood how that affected her. Yes she didn't know him, but she saw him being killed and was struck how much things can change in an instant.

OP posts:
Lookingforadvice123 · 23/12/2017 14:21

SIL does this! Really annoys me and DH (it’s his sister). One of her friends was in Borough Market during the recent terror attack. Not involved, just there. You’d have thought SIL was actually a victim herself the way she’d gone on about how worried she was about her friend.