So, as anyone with a head on their shoulders is now aware; Whitney Houston has died. After the news broke, the inevitable happened. The significance of her death was overshadowed by the onslaught of the bad-taste death jokes that followed on Twitter. However this time, the small group of people protesting against the jokes made over a celebrity’s death, seem to have actually amassed greater numbers than those of the joke tellers themselves. Whitney Houston seems to have been the breaking point. Whereas Amy Winehouse and Steve Jobs were met with a plethora of bad-tasters upon their respective passings, the outrage that these one innocent jokes generated has become more powerful than ever before.
When we all first settled into Twitter, these jokes were that rare shock that lay amidst a sea of R.I.P.’s. However, with the speed and kinetic nature of the modern internet community, the entire practice quickly got out of hand, and before long, these jokes became a tedious competition of who could think of the most offensive and disrespectful comment one could make about the death of a someone has been ill, troubled, struggling with drugs or suddenly killed.
The outrage seems to have won out this time, and I think Whitney Houston may have, in her passing, paved the way for the end of celebrity death jokes. Not that the day will come anytime soon of course, but perhaps the end has at least begun.
I hope you’re right, but I think you might be underestimating the cruelty of strangers especially those that are cloaked in anonymity here on the web. I had the great good fortune to meet Whitney Houston shortly before she became WHITNEY HOUSTON. It was the early 80s and I was a low level grunt working on an almost completely forgotten Diet Coke TV commercial at Mother’s Studio here in NYC. She was one of the talent. I was doing some grunt-work at a copy machine when her dog, a little piece of white fluff, ran over to me. I petted it. She quickly came to retrieve her pet and apologized to me. I told this stunningly attractive young woman it was quite okay and that encountering her dog was actually the highlight of my otherwise thankless day. She was so modest and endearing, in retrospect, encountering her was truly memorable. I hope wherever she is now, she has found peace. My oldish soul sank more than a little when I heard the news about her passing.
I think it’s easy to pick on celebrities b/c it’s still impersonal. I wasn’t too happy about the Amy WInehouse jokes, and some people were just being vile. I saw where people said she was a no talent drug addict and so on. Really rough, I don’t think these people would say that about someone they knew.
Good for you. I didn’t know of all these “death joke” but I can well imagine the callous disrespect people have for others. What ever happened to civility? Thanks for posting this. Really. Thanks.
There are the poor taste “how low can you go” sort of jokes. Boring. Then there are the seriously funny ones. Not really motivated out of malice towards the subject. The subject is just a vehicle to be clever around. I know not everyone appreciates “Private Eye” humour. However, done well it can be v. funny.
Personally I think there is a big N/America – British divide over this style of sarcastic wit. My mother lives in Canada but was born and bred English upper middle class. She has lived in Canada so long that when she came back for a visit she thought Radio 4 was patronising.
I suppose the saddest thing about the likes of Amy Whinehouse & Whitney is the inevitability of it all. My surprise-ometer registered absolute zero when Ms.Whinehouse died. The subsequent ‘beatification also turned my stomach. I think a lot of the reaction that is seen across the web is actually anger and frustration at why these people, given everything are either a) too weak-willed to resist the ‘darkside’ or b) targeted as victims by the business machines that whore them out for monetary gain. The fact that, as poignantly illustrated by lameadventures on this thread, Whitney was a nice girl before it all went pear-shaped, makes it all the more sad.