I have just posted the Flamengo story on Facebook and added the comment "Terrible news". Why do I (and quite a lot of other people) do that? I am only going to upset other people who may not have heard it. It upset me so I shared it - why? They may hear it on the news so why don't we leave it until then? Why is there this insistence to be the first to report a tragedy. Is it just a social media occurrence or did people do it in person beforehand?
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Of course it predated social media. READ THE FRONT PAGE! and BREAKING NEWS! were print media phenomena before they were even radio. Unfortunately all social media has allowed is for all of us to enjoy the thrill of the scoop. -
I blame the mass media and their quest to always be the first to break a story, even to the point of breaking it before confirming it. It's contagious, now that we're all our own mini-media moguls with our little social media pages and our audience of hundreds.Comment
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I don't think I have made myself clear. Obviously, the media have always done it but why do we do it especially with bad news that will upset other people, that they don't really need to know and they may have missed in the media? I think that FF may have hit the nail on the head that we have been conditioned into it by the media doing it throughout our lives and now we do the same.
In 2016, starting off with Bowie and Prince dying (and Lemmy at the end of 2015) then onto the horrible death of Jo Cox, then the Brexit vote and finally Trump getting elected, I found myself all too regularly breaking appalling appalling news to my waking wife after I had heard it while listening to Radio 4 in the shower. I have never listened to the radio in the shower since. Why then do I do exactly the same thing on FB? If I am honest, I genuinely do feel a thrill of excitement when I announce a death on FB or, especially, on here first. It's just odd and I am pretty sure I am not the only one.
Mind you, as I have mentioned before, one of my favourite Radio 4 programmes is Last Word, the obituary show. Perhaps, I should've been an obituarist.Comment
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I do it, but only when I think it's important. (Like Frank Robinson.)
Or to be first. Because deep down, I am a twat.Comment
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I used to get excited to be the first to post about a death on the No. 1 in Heaven FB page, although it hasn't happened but maybe once or twice. I don't try any more though--someone else always posts before I do, but I realized that it was just this weird competitive thing.Comment
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It's not new. The first wolf in the pack to raise the alarm at the approach of danger was programmed to do so. We're no different. We're hard-wired communicators. To say nothing is against all our instincts.Comment
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I shouldn't worry - it's my group and even I don't get close to being the harbinger in most cases. There're half a dozen guys on the roster that seem to spend their lives trawling musicians' deaths - and I'm very grateful to them, frankly.Originally posted by Femme Folle View Post
I'm not sure I see the mystery here, however - aren't we just as quick to pass on 'good' news? I mean, such as our teams winning, our parties elected, our enemies felled, etc?Comment
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Yeah, and also the first wolf would get the first 'female responders' in that sense, so that works. What do I gain by saying, oh the guy from 'soandso' is dead?Originally posted by Amor de Cosmos View Post
I think, personally, that it is that I know who that person is, and I might wish to mention it in a way that is rapid, and also, fuck you youngsters, there are people dying... oh and you don't give a fuck", AND, I may be the only person on the earth who genuinely does not give a fuck about who people younger than me, care about.
AND, usually, no-one cares. And eventually, neither do I.
(thing that sticks out of a fish)Comment
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Yes but, by being quick to pass on good news, we aren't buggering up someone else's day, are we? Well, not all the time, anyway.Originally posted by Jah Womble View Post
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'News is news', surely? I'd not have wanted to have been kept in the dark about, say, Bowie's death simply because it might spoil my day (which of course it did). I mean, somebody's going to be the first to tell me.
That - obviously - came to me via broadcast news (6Music, in this instance), but I only learned of Peel's passing via a very prompt 'phone call from my best friend. (I remember it well - my washing machine had packed up and I was leaving the local laundrette when I learned that news. It's usually the mundane that sticks in the mind.) Far from 'having my day ruined', I was very grateful to him for the heads-up.
I heard about Mark E Smith's passing via a joke made by my cousin on WhatsApp.Comment
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I heard about MES's death via a poster called Fallchase on The Fall Online.Comment
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I would have thought it a status thing. One wants to be seen as “in the know”.Comment
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When the band Chicago's Terry Kath died in January 1978, I was away at university. My dad phoned to tell me the news at around 8am. To this day I don't know what made him do that--it wasn't like I was a Chicago fan girl or anything. I mean, I listened to their music because everyone listened to it (because of radio), but it could have simply been a way for him to try to find something to talk to me about. I was a very difficult teenager, especially that year.
ETA: The significance of saying "8am" is to say that he knew I wouldn't have been awake long enough to have heard it anywhere else.Comment
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Since becoming a father of a teenager, I have realised the somewhat difficult nature of finding common ground between father and child for conversation, even for two such garrulous folk. I now realise why my dad's opening gambits are often the prosaic "How's work?" to the slightly obscure "How's the car?". Obviously, as with my son, after a little longer, conversation just becomes normal and free-flowing but there seems to be a trepidation in starting the day's conversations.
I say this to proffer the theory that, possibly, your dad was just missing you, wanted to have a chat and leapt upon the slightest excuse to do so instead of just saying the dreaded (for a man), "I'm missing you so I thought I would phone up for a chat". Now we have a family FB group, my dad just says "Everyone OK?" and that sets everything rolling nicely.Comment
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Knock them over.Comment
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