I notice a certain trend in forums whenever a celebrity dies. There’s always at least one person to go into a r.i.p thread dedicated to that Celebrity and loudly proclaim how they don’t care about the celeb and how people die every day so nobody should care about the celebs. Some of them even go as far as to belittle and insult the people who feel sad about the celeb’s death (I saw it a lot with Whitney Houston,Amy Winehouse and Michael Jackson) .
If they really don’t care then why post?
Because they want to feel superior to those grieving for strangers.
Well, you’ll get a warning for threadshitting if you do that here. Most of the time I have no idea who the deceased is and really and truly don’t care. So, I don’t post.
Some people feel the need to threadshit. Probably simple as that.
Mind you I get why there is the distaste for worship at the cult of the celebrity and how the elevation of some, who as far as we can tell were not very great people in most ways, to saintly status upon death, can annoy … but, don’t threadshit. Open up a Pit thread to complain about it if you must or step away from the keyboard.
More IMHO, I think.
Is this a bad time to mention that I was never very fond of “When A Man Loves A Woman”?
part of being an Internet Person is being proud of what you hate, I guess.
I nominate this for Post of the Day! 
You may be really close. I would put it as “they care but in a negative fashion” and I’ve been guilty of it myself. Usually more politicians than singers or such but that can be the case as well. Some I consider over-rated and I just can’t resist the urge to say so; even in a memorial thread.
I find I am less willing to attribute hatefulness or even threadshitting to such posts.
I think it has to do with the totality, to be honest. At the office perhaps one or two brief comments or conversations of no more than a few sentences in length. However a thread on a message board about a celebrity death, especially one that shocks by its suddeness or circumstance, ignites a conversation, effectively between innumerable persons.
As one reads through it, it adds up to plenty of words. Perhaps even people micro dissecting circumstances or reviewing lives/works. Room for lots of back and forth.
I can easily understand how and why a poster, reading through it all, can reach a feeling of, “Sheesh, there are more important things happening in the world people!”
I find it simply reactive, not hateful or threadshitty really.
There are always contrarians. No matter what the position, someone will come along and tell you you’re wrong for liking it.
I figure it makes them feel special - they’re not like everyone else. Plus, they get attention.
I think some of it is just a reaction to the recreational grief that accompanies any celebrity death.
And the incredulity that people get so caught up in mourning someone who didn’t even know they existed.
When people place a lot of value in something you can elevate your own status by declaring it has no value. Sportsball is for knuckle draggers. All your favorite bands suck. I don’t even own a TV. And so on.
Yeah, but I think celebrity deaths are a particularly interesting case. Some people really get wound up and apparently actually distraught about some person they’ve never met and never knew (and never came within 500 miles of) dies, just because they’re fans of their work.
I personally don’t get it- I mean, someone like Princess Diana was a celebrity, a campaigner for a number of good causes, and someone who seemed to get something of a raw deal from being part of the British Royal Family.
But to see Americans crying and being distraught after she died in that accident? Bizarre in the extreme. What could Diana have actually realistically meant to a native-born American who never met her, that would be reason for tears, wailing and leaving stupid shit at memorials thousands of miles away from where she lived and where she died?
I can see some people calling out others about that- there’s a point at which grief goes from being heartfelt to being theatrical. I have to admit I was a little weirded out by the number of people who talked about weeping when Terry Pratchett died; having never met the guy. I mean, it’s unfortunate, and what I knew of him, I liked, but I’m not going to get all griefed-up over someone I don’t know.
Because the internet exists for opinionating. Or opinion-hating. People think that if you get to express positive emotions on the internet, they should be able to express hatred too.
Personally, I don’t mind a little “who cares?!” Sometimes it’s annoying, but sometimes people can lose all sense of perspective and get carried away with media-manufactured nonsense. And maybe the person who says “who cares?!” will provoke someone to post all the good things the deceased has done, and suddenly a silly celebrity becomes an admirable human being.
it’s funny how some people all of a sudden start “caring” about the deaths of soldier and other tragedies whenever there i loads of coverage of a celebrity’s death… Even funnier is that they probably didn’t give two shits about the soldiers, starving children or ( insert downtrodden group of people here)
Even if it’s not hateful for the reasons you describe, it’s still threadshitting. The point is to show contempt for people daring to think it is important enough to talk about.
It’s an attempt to shut down the conversation. Outside the Pit, you don’t have the right to do that in any thread. Your reasons don’t matter.
The reaction “how dare you find this important” will always be insulting. “Get a life” is an insult. If you aren’t wanting to insult people, don’t say it.
Grief literally cannot be recreational, as it’s not a positive emotion in any form. It’s not like anger, which makes you feel powerful.
Yes, I don’t necessarily get all that upset, but I accept that other people do. They got more attached than I did. I may not feel the same way, but I have this thing called empathy that not only prevents me from feeling contempt when other people are feeling bad, but also allows me to feel a little of it.
It would be one thing if these comments were people trying to cheer people up. But they aren’t. They are trying to make them feel bad for caring.
Even if the problem is as elbows said that it upsets you hearing about this all the time, that still makes it all about YOU. And you volunteered to read about it while opening the thread, so stop being all butthurt that you read something you’d rather not read.
It’s the same reason it was wrong for me to get all flaming mad in threads, calling everyone out. I always now stop to think about how what I say will affect everyone else in the thread. And when it comes people grieving, it’s never right to tell them they shouldn’t be.
If you can’t comment in the thread without telling people that they shouldn’t care so much, don’t comment.
Sorry, but I see, “Y’all know there are other things that deserve grieving too, right?” As commentary. Not an attempt to shut down a conversation, or to really judge the participants.
Just reactive commentary, understandable in a 3 page thread about a celebrity passing that no one has even met, I should think. I’m not really into projecting motive onto such easily explained commentary. Just not how I see it. But maybe that’s just me.