Huffpo is reporting that Amy Winehouse was found dead in her home in North London today, but no cause of death has been determined. She was 27.
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RIP Amy Winehouse
Huffpo is reporting that Amy Winehouse was found dead in her home in North London today, but no cause of death has been determined. She was 27.
10 replies on “RIP Amy Winehouse”
I am not condoning the remarks, but here is what I think the logic is behind the lack of sympathy over her death.
Some people are not sympathetic — maybe outright hostile — to those that physically inflict their own misery/illness/deaths. There is an trope that argues “my relative/friend did not put cancer(fill in the disease) in their body, but so-and-so put coke (fill in the addiction) up their nose…”
People that hold such opinions make a distinction between people who do not choose to die (like victims of shooting sprees, for example) and those that choose to put ill into their bodies (drugs, smokes, obesity, alcohol, whatever it is). These are the same people that do not think addictions are real diseases and, as such, don’t find addiction-associated problems merit sympathy.
I am not baiting for a discussion about addiction and so forth, I only want to explain the point of view that puzzled many posters here.
Has anyone else gotten sucked into an argument on FB when someone “hilariously” posts “Guess she should have gone to rehab, but she said no no no”? I’m finding people to be alarmingly crass about this, not to mention SHE WENT TO REHAB THREE TIMES PEOPLE OMG. And I already had to unfriend someone, once he started calling my education into question and one of his friends called me “a vagina” for having depression.
Yeah. I’m also seeing a lot of, “Well what do you expect?” nonsense, which, I can’t even.
I’m really sad about the way people are reacting. I’m seeing far too many people who are either saying “good riddance” because she “did this to herself” or are putting her in some kind of competition with the tragedy in Oslo over which one people are permitted to have feelings about. Can’t we just acknowledge that one woman dying young due to addiction is sad AND that 80+ innocent people being murdered is tragic and horrible? Why is it a contest?
It’s the Pain Olympics, and everyone can take part:(
Clearly the human mind is not capable of registering pain over more than one event at a time.
Yeah, it’s not like there’s a limited number of fucked-up things that can happen in the world at once. I do get a little angry about the disproportionate attention paid to certain events, but that’s human nature.
I’d prefer to focus on the things that we can still do something about – famine, for example – but telling people how they’re supposed to feel never works.
The callousness is really disturbing. I know people tend to have less sympathy for celebrities, but seriously. The girl had issues, and I would hope that if people saying “good riddance” or making light of her death have friends or family dealing with addiction they would be more compassionate.
On the other hand, we’re assuming her death was related to her addictions, and not something totally out of the blue and random. People die young of unknown health problems all the time. If it turns out that she died of something unrelated to drug use, I am going to make sure everyone who was being rude knows about it.
Most reports I’m seeing are saying ‘suspected drug+/alcohol overdose’ – somewhat predictably.
Between that, what happened in Norway, famine in Somalia and train crash in China, it’s been a shit news weekend.