Why is it that when ever a celebrity sadly passes, amongst the genuine messages of respect there is nearly always one person who manages to make it all about them??
We have to read posts about how somebody who has never even met the celebrity is 'in tears' and 'close to suicide'. Not forgetting the timeless 'I grew up watching/ listening to' this person's work. Nothing wrong with genuine messages of respect, but there will always be someone who although never meeting the celeb in question, feels more than qualified to talk about that person like they knew them personally.
Nobody cares if you're in tears, depressed or close to suicide, it's not about you!
Of course all this emotional incontinence started when Diana died back in 1997, now it's even worse with the rise of social media

Edited by fed up eagle (23 Apr 2016 10.38am)

I don't have a problem with people paying respects, just a problem with drama queens who seem to think that somebody else's sad passing is cue for them to take centre stage. I actually don't read their posts anymore, as they obviously need the help of a doctor. They are in the grip of advanced mental illness.

Edited by fed up eagle (23 Apr 2016 10.57am)

They have free speech and I won't tell them how they should post, but I also have free speech and will comment on their ludicrous and attention seeking behaviour.

I couldn't help them anyway, they need a professional and a bucket load of medication.

I agree, but then, if you are a celebrity then you are likely to me an attention seeking me me me or you wouldn't be one in the first place.

Isn't just as pointless though people 'paying their respects' as being 'heartbroken or distraught' at the passing of someone who basically they never knew - Its not like anyone actually relevant to the family or friends of said person, will be reading them on the Holmesdale online.

I think both incidences are 'about us' not them, its just a difference of scale. We as humans, see the world entirely in relation to ourselves, and to some extent experience grief not so much for the loss of someone per se, but the loss of a part of ourselves that is built around that person. We grieve, more, not because they died and suffered, but because of what they meant to our being.

Some people maybe build far to much emphasis on the identity in relation to celebrities (which are a fiction of a fiction of person), but that's still a very real experience to that individual.

I personally think its not so much a sign of mental illness, but of the shallow nature of identity in the post modern world and a malaise of consumer society - and possibly a symptom of mental illness (or a trigger for the predisposed).

There is also often an existential shock that comes from the death of the famous, compared to the personal, because it often seems 'out of the blue' (because the relationship between us and them isn't recipriocal - they don't know we exist. So when they die, it always shocks us - We generally don't see them decline over years with cancer for example, because that's something generally regarded as private not to be shared with fans in a real sense - we might experience their battle, but not the reality of their decline). So we always have hope.

Arguably the death of Princess Diana and President Kennedy were an existential shock that triggered a massive outbreak of grief, including some mental breakdowns, on a global scale. We generally don't consider it as such, because it was so prevalent, but arguably both could be regarded as creating a kind of mental break down on a global scale (After all Conspiracy Theories and Schizophrenia do have a close relationship).

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