Is the UK suffering from mass hysteria?

[User135644]

The Queen's passing is sad and seismic and the funeral will be a special occasion.

However, people genuinely seem to have gone mad.

I will watch the funeral. Mostly to see who is invited. I'm sure Cliff has an invitation.

Yanbu. Fucking bonkers.

I live in a really deprived area and ironically it's here that seems to have really given into madness, tributes and shrines in people's windows, fallings-out between friends who've disrespected the queen, all sorts.

I think my face will be stuck in a permanent cringe before long.

It’s definitely a subset of people though; everyone I know irl is just getting on with life as normal.

Madness - really. Hardly. Bit of an extreme view and clear misunderstanding of the word.

Sky news about the queue -

"Some 291 people received medical assistance on Wednesday, with 17 needing hospital treatment, London Ambulance Service (LAS) said.

A further 144 people were treated on Thursday, with 25 people taken to hospital.

The majority of incidents attended were faints and collapses, resulting in head injuries, the LAS added".

Wait now up to 24 hours. I think it might be getting out of hand.

😯

For the record, I'm mad as a box of frogs so to speak, or one tree over the hill. Etc

Yes!

It's insane. My mum's got colleagues at work who 'can't stop crying.' Whose life is so empty that they get this invested in semi-fictional creations from Hello magazine?

No one I know gives a crap. I'd be very surprised to see an under 30 really caring. The people they're interviewing in the queue look like absolute head cases.

No one I know is that fussed tbh. Happy to have Monday off work. Most were a bit sad initially that an old lady died but are now so over all the circus.

I think the reaction is a lot less than the media, especially the BBC, is showing.

I'm starting to think it really is a class issue. I'm seeing this too. The less, um... fortunate are the ones attention seeking and drawing 'RIP LIZ' in the window, whereas people with... fuller lives have better things to do.

That's an interesting analysis.

I do think her death is symbolic as well. It was the last real link to another time. The country is not in a good place right now, an awful lot of upheaval as you say. The Queen was a source of stability through everything that has happened since pretty much WW2.

As I said in the OP a sadness in her death is natural and it's seismic. It does all seem very OTT all the same.

I don't think so. Personally I do feel that this marks the end of something important, and that people are feeling that in whatever way they are feeling it. I don't feel cynical about it, which has surprised me.

I have no urge to join it, but I pass the queue on my journey to and from work (at Lambeth Bridge, where it turns towards the Palace of Westminster). And at 7am, seeing it is surprisingly touching. Because by then people have been waiting for many hours in the dark to say thank you and goodbye to The Queen.

It won't happen again in my lifetime. Because this marks a change. And I'm not at all sure it will be a change for the better.

TooMuchToDoTooLittleInclination

Yes, they keep starting thread after thread.

To be fair, there was much, much more hysteria and distress when Diana died. We saw weeping/wailing in the streets. I won’t be the only one who recalls hearing a woman cry out in anguish as Diana’s coffin made it’s first appearance on that Saturday morning.
With The Queen, there has been cheering, clapping (all in celebration of her I would add), people having a bit of a ‘jolly’ up in London and being part of a big event. Yes, there are solemn moments, and these will climax on Monday morning but I haven’t seen mass hysteria.

It's got fuck all to do with class.

I'm still sad. I'd have been in London if my health was up to it. I don't mind being mocked, though.

Really? Not even the ‘leaving marmalade sandwiches for a dead monarch’ bit?

I definitely think it’s bizarre to spend hours and hours to walk past a closed coffin 🤔

I was listening to LBC earlier, and found it extremely striking that all the Queen/queue stuff was being juxtaposed with a discussion of how the average U.K. family’s living standards are now lower than those of Slovenia and Poland. I think what’s going on right now is both a sort of response to our increasingly broken society, and masking many of the issues that urgently need recognising and dealing with.

Not sure what mass hysteria you are referring too?

the calm respectful way peoples have left flowers? Or the com respectful way people are queuing to play their respects. ?

or the calm respectful way the public have been meeting members of the royal family?

people will always act over the top in these times. But for the most part people are pretty normal.

Well, seeing as the last monarch died 70 years ago when most of us weren't alive, there is no "usual" pattern for Brits at all. Some people seem to think they should be acting in a certain way based on footage of the time. But lots of social practices and norms have vanished since 1952 thank god. Life for everybody is very very different to what it was then, so yes, I regard it as hysterical the need to cling on to archaic practices.

1952 - average age for women to marry in 1952 was 21 and their place was in the home, looking after their husbands (who were considered the head of the household). The Education Act had not even been around for 10 years and the Clean Air Act hadn't even been thought of. There was no central heating. When someone died in the family often they were laid out at home and friends and family visited the house to "pay their respects" and sat with the deceased. Curtains were kept closed.

I could go on but the point i'm making is that life then is unrecognisable to us. So why are people so insistent in following archaic practices when it comes to the queen dying? It has become a pantomime.

*queuing to walk past

Dunno where you're seeing all this hysteria? I live in London and I haven't seen any, everyone's just going about their every day lives as usual 🤷🏻‍♀️

What hysteria? Where the fuck do you live!