beckiwoo

And your point is Jeremy?

BristolUK

Funnily enough it popped up on this very forum in the celeb croakers thread a few hours earlier.

Pulaski

Same as yours, I guess.

DandNHill

I understand pdarwin.

This year I have lost a sister, an aunt, my ex husband and a friend. Kind of distances me somewhat from feeling any emotion when hearing about the death of people I didn't know. Other than to say "OMG, another one?"

Howefamily

Agreed. And when I see all these "F$%k 2016"memes all over FB because of these celebrity deaths by people who I know have had a lot to be thankful for, or simply have had a good year... I am dumbfounded... Like seriously??!!!

dbd33

Obviously it would be un-British to feel more than "bit of a shame, that". I'm not condoning gushing over the death of people one did not know, or even ones one did. It's within the range of "pity" to "rather a shame" that I cannot see measuring one's response.

Pulaski

So you feel sadness and pity irrespective of whether you even liked a person, not to say whether you knew the person?

With some celebrities, quite a few of them actually, I am more inclined to think "good riddance". Maybe that makes me a bad person.

dbd33

If I thought there to be something admirable about the person then yes, I'll likely feel sadness and pity regardless of knowing them. I don't think one can like a person one doesn't know.

Pulaski

OK. ..... I meant "liked" in a broader sense - did you like what they did or said?

dbd33

I think I covered that already, George Michael did seem a commendable character so I was sorry to see him go go. Rick Parfitt I knew little about and Carrie Fisher I hadn't heard of so I was indifferent to those two passing. I was not, however, more or less indifferent because they had been famous.

I felt slightly sad to see George Michael die in the same way as I feel slightly sad for drowning refugees. He's not less dead and his relatives are not less grieving because he fell from a Range Rover and not a leaky boat.

magnumpi

There is a program on CBC tonight about all the famous people who died in 2016, unfortunately the program is scheduled the last about 50 hours

dave_j

Like some others, I note the passing of these 'celebrities', but I'm afraid that I'm unable to express little more sadness at their deaths than I would for any other stranger. Most have lived a long life, for the most part in receipt of a good living for their efforts and plausits while they lived.

I'm reminded of the industrial deaths that happened where I worked in accidents to young men in their prime, and most of these went unrecorded by the media at large.

In many ways, the wall-to-wall tv coverage of these events does no more than drown more worthy news.