Celebrity Grief Tourism (It's not right, and it's not okay)

Amy Winehouse, Michael Jackson, and now Whitney Houston has joined the 'Hollywood Hills of the Celestial Hereafter'/VIP Room to Club Wormfood (delete where applicable). Once more, we witness The Bovine Masses jump on the Grief Tourism bandwagon and are united in an outpouring of fake sentiment and grief.

Not me, in this instance – as usual, I have what I feel is a unique train of thought to what The Bovine Masses believe and as a result I'm not subscribing to any of it due to the fickle nature of the proceedings. The above artists (and many more that I shall not mention) have all fell on hard times and had their names dragged through the mire and lost their credibility. Due to various reasons – the most common is becoming a patron saint of personal abuse by turning into a human drink and drugs cabinet, snorting and drinking cheap anything because the fame has gone to their heads and have become entirely detached from the normal realms of reality that you or I live and dwell in.

The Bovine Masses, with their short attention spans looking for a quick fix and 'next big thing' to follow that is fashionable dropped the above artists like a hot potato; their empty eyed stares and short attention spans swanning off to follow the next 'deity' – Marilyn Manson had it down to a tee with the song Dope show “They love you when you're on the covers, when you're not they love another”. Never a truer word sung, even though his music is a 'Marmite Thing' in alternative circles to some people.

These particular artists are no longer here, and they also share the same common denominator; the simple fact that a little as a week or so before their deaths, people were calling them all the unsavoury names under the sun. Guess what? As soon as they shuffle off the mortal coil so to speak, people buy their albums in droves. People are interviewed on the TV, Radio, and internet based media saying how much they love them and are crying oceans of insincere crocodile tears. The big question is, how many of those people are being sincere?

I wager that less than half of them stuck with the artists through thick and thin, and were hardcore fans of theirs. In fact, if you asked them who Whitney Houston is a week before she died I reckon they would either struggle to remember or say something along the lines of “Oh, the one that sounds like Mariah Carey whose turned into a massive drugs cabinet?”.

If you like an artists that much, you stick with them through the good times and the bad times. Countess Bastardo, for example – absolutely loves Duran Duran and sticks with them. She seen them during their heyday, she seen them when half of the band members walked out and she bought their albums when they were declared bankrupt. THAT, my friends, is liking an artist. Not this fickle outpouring of mock grief.

A typical example of this is album sales. Again, a week prior to their deaths, their albums littered all the bargain bins in music stores up and down the land. You couldn't even give their albums away in some instances in a 'buy one, get one free' offer. If you check certain sources online, you will find that online download prices from music stores leapt up a few pounds as soon as news hit that she died. She was practically still a warm and very fresh corpse and yet some slick haired marketing wanker decides to cash in on her death. I care little for Whitney Houston and I was never a fan of her music – I found her stuff to be the sugary nonsense of the 1980s that certainly wasn't the wheat in the chaff; even as a child I preferred the music of Kate Bush, Depeche Mode, OMD, Madness, Art of Noise, Sting, and The Police and probably had the makings of becoming an 'alternative' all the way back then. It was the dreadful nonsense that emitted from my sisters room when she was a teenager with the likes of such crap like Belinda Carlise and Five Star which by no means is a good memory.

But notice one thing here in this blog? I've not jumped on the Grief Tourism bandwagon here. and called a spade, a spade. Cared little for her back then, and care even less right now. Because, as a principle I can't stand a bandwagon and the notion of herd conformity on many different levels and definitions. It's a shame that such free thinking people like myself are in the minority and can see through the vast oceans of bullshit, double standards and hypocrisy that we encounter in our day to day lives.

As a closer to this, and as a free thinking individual please check YouTube for a clip from the Australian TV show 'The Chasers War on Everything'. One of the script writers made a song called “Arseholes Become Top Blokes After Death” - which explains all of what I mean beautifully and can be applied to the next time a celebrity drops dead, when The Bovine Masses start singing their praises from the hilltops. While as little as last week, they called them all the miscreants under the sun.

To deliberately misquote the the late Mrs Houston:

“It's not right, and it's not okay”.

Failbook

At this moment in time (that this very tome has been published), I'm going through a lot of personal stuff at the moment and going through a particularly black phase strewn with lots of bad luck and unfortunate circumstance – in general life is giving me a bit of a shit time and the start of the year for me, quite frankly – has been fucking awful to say the least. I feel that things cannot possibly get worse as that old chestnut of bad luck occurring to the power of three has reached the third and particularly cruel incident. But, I won't bore you too much with that and I sincerely hope that things pick up for myself as I have a thankless task of wanting to accomplish many things at the moment which at the current space in time feels like a complete impossibility.

Anyway,

As a consequence, Facebook (which shall be referred to as 'Failbook' for sake of simplicity and acidic satire from now in this blog) has really pissed me off. On paper, Failbook sounds like a really good idea – this whole social networking thing. I know many people that I don't see very often and they are scattered at all four points of the compass, alas some of them are very far away and I don't get to see them as much as I like to; this isn't an excuse for laziness in visiting people as I usually try my best to catch up with who I regard to be my friends – expenses and circumstances permitting. Sadly, the 'meatware' behind this blog is a mortal man who can be pressed for time and often has 'life things' getting in the way and I sincerely wish I could be there for each and every one of the people that I know – like an omnipresent god or something. As I said, I'm a mortal man and this simply cannot be.

I can keep in touch with many people through the medium of a central console, as it were. Find out the latest information and what they're up to nowadays, that is assuming that the person is a regular poster on there and keeps their profile regularly updated of course. All well and good, although in some instances it does feel somewhat lazy and nothing can truly replace interaction face to face with actual real living people. In fact, it's somewhat ironic that people can be so in touch; all 'bish bash bosh' and yet remain completely isolated. You can find out what someone is up to hundreds of miles away and yet you don't know what the hell is going on with the friends and family that live right under your nose so to speak.

I feel that Failbook is really taking a severe stranglehold on society and how it functions, and I will even go as far to say that the whole thing is spreading like a disease. I feel, that in many instances Failbook invades far too much into the lives of others and your own which can be used as a tool for avarice and general skullduggery. A decade ago, gossip and shit stirring could only spread via the medium of text messages which spread quick enough. Nowadays, everybody – man, wife and dog – has Failbook and shit stirring can occur on a level that is so alarmingly swift that a tsunami of shit can head someone's way quite literally in the blink of an eye.

This said, an age old computing adage springs to mind – the old maxim of 'Garbage In, Garbage Out'; post utter shit, nonsense and gossip and you will only reap back what you sew. If you keep a tight reign on it all, then fair enough and you deserve a pat on the back. Alas, your quality control you add to it is quickly undone by some other fucknugget that can't keep their mouth shut and feel that you information and private life is others public domain to be shared throughout the 'Failbookiverse'.



Let me explain further:

Recently, some events have occurred in my family which are particularly bad and come as something of a shock to the system to us all. At the moment, I'm having a particularly hard time with a few things in my life and recent events have become the dog shit icing that's on the cake made of shit. I had confided with a couple of family members about these matters and it all came to a head last week and peaked. I visited said family members and it took my mind of many things and I actually managed to feel vaguely human for once. All very well and good, considering the circumstances.

Alas, when I logged back into Failbook and returned back to my usual locale – all the events which occurred had been splattered all over Failbook by two key members of the family. In the instance of one, they told me that the status post was kept to a small core of people that they knew and that it was fine. I grumbled about it and I believed that the matters should be kept private and not for discussion on there, as to be honest their 'small core' of people included people that I didn't know or bloody well care about. Also, in defence of this culprit I will say that they're a young teenage person who unfortunately is too young to know any better and has to go through many things in life to learn things via the medium of trial and error. This may sound as if I'm letting them off lightly; but one thing for certain is that I'm not a person to be fucked with and I hold the belief of that there is more than one way to skin a cat, and that their karmic payback for the events will be in the post – I guarantee it.

The second key family member, really is old enough to know better and just blurted out all the problems all over Failbook as a status post. This, annoyed the living shit out me which made me incandescent with rage. Alas, the person is of a somewhat low IQ and if a discussion about the situation occurred it would only result in a lot of screaming, not getting my word in and the possible instance of heavy objects thrown at me in a rage – such is the reasoning powers of the family member. We all have them, don't we?

A sibling of mine had rang me about this, and was as equally as pissed off as I am about the events that was published for all the Failbookiverse to see. As a result, it has pissed me off that much that quite frankly at this moment in time I truly DO NOT have the headspace to be bothered with the place at all. Which, is sad really as I will miss hearing from people over there – people that I genuinely care about. This said, I reside 'elsewhere' on the interwebs and I can be found by them if necessary – but I will be using the medium of Twitter which I've really taken to lately since a profile change and find the whole thing a lot less moronic than the drivel and shite that I see on Failbook all the time.

I feel that all this computing technology is a waste of most users; we have top end smart phones that have the computing powers of machines that were available 4 to 5 years ago, elephantine (in comparison to a decade ago) amounts of memory our disposal with insanely quick connection speeds in the case of fibre optic broadband. And for what? For the bovine masses to post illiterate drivel and utter shite about what they had for their tea with piss poor spelling and grammar. Put it this way, I despair to the point where I firmly believe that if an alien civilisation came to our planet in the manner of Star Trek's 'First Contact' film, they would promptly speed past and not have fuck all association with that blue fucking marble that we inhabit and enjoy fucking over; or worse still, blow the place up to smithereens if they tapped into the world wide web and stumbled across Failbook as the first webpage they ever visited. This, my friends, is how strongly I dislike the place at the moment.

Incredibility, I remember watching some documentary recently that had a bunch of spoilt kids in it and they were taken elsewhere to live with a strict family to quit being a little fucktard and shape the fuck up. The head of the household mentioned that they can use a computer but not for Failbook. To which said oik replied “What's the point of a computer if you can't go on Failbook?”. What the actual fuck?!



Lately, you could be forgiven for thinking that the place has become the centre of the fucking universe. For example, with night clubs and information about pubs and what not – or even tour information for bands you will more often than not find that all this information is contained on a Failbook page somewhere, much to the chagrin of the Failbook refusenik. As a result of this, because people can't be arsed having a dedicated web page like they used to 'back in the day' and getting a loyal web designer monkey to do the work – they all put it on there now. I for one, look after the Twitter account for band promoting/gigs; the head honcho isn't very good with Twitter and I took if off their hands as a favour out of principle – I want to help my favourite haunts flourish and prosper. If used properly Twitter can be a very powerful promotional tool. Guess where the first snippets of information appear? Yes, that's correct – Failboook first. And now, I'm left in the dark due to my self imposed Failbook black out and I will probably have to contact them via email so that I can keep that Twitter account updated.

Recently, there's also been a splurge of adverts that say “Visit our Failbook page”. What if you don't bloody want to? Why can't you visit the dedicated website of the business or organisation to find out further about the product? Like a fair quantity of people don't want to be on Failbook in the fucking first place?

Originally, Failbook had good intentions to help people communicate and to network with others. Now, in many instances it can become a life ruiner if used in a negative manner which has taken a step too far with many instances, such as: being a data mine to be used for malice, happily pissing away all your personal information all over the Internet, constantly fucking about with user setting and profiles in an alleged move to 'improve' the experience when there's more to it than meets the causal eye. As a good friend of mine says, the malice has taken over and the such things have become a 'whisperers charter' which far outweighs the useful objectives of the site in general. For example, people being stupid enough to add work colleagues who will take you to the fucking cleaners for a laugh because you bad mouthed the manager on there and called them a cock sucking arse face. I'm also at odds with the 'friend harvesters' who have 400 friends or some stupid figure. How can you actually know THAT many people? I declare bullshit, and you are simply committing act of Failbookémeon because you love being a nosy fucking voyeur who likes sticking their nose in the business of others for your own dubious gratification. Not forgetting the fact that it's now come to the point where people have forgotten the acts of proper socialisation with others and now have difficulty forming relationships because “Dealing with meatware is soooo passé, maaaan”.

This occurs far less with Twitter, I feel. People can go and follow you, or leave as they please. You're also not forced to use your true identity if you so wish, very much in the manner of Myspace and Bebo. It truly does stick to the 'meat and potatoes', well, not even that really with a 140 character limit which forces the user to me more inventive and creative. I've seen many of my friends use Twitter for a very short amount of time and then suddenly the user account becomes a graveyard site, so to speak. Google+ is another; I wish that Failbook is more like Google+ as it works better and the user interface with friend circles means that faux pas don't occur and it isn't a massive headache to set unlike Failbook if you don't want certain parties to see certain information. Alas, the bovine masses are too fucking stupid to learn anything new and now Google+ could go the way of Myspace and Bebo, which is a real shame,

When things blow over, I will return as sadly, it's the bloody central hub where most of my friends reside but I think I will do some very severe culling which will upset people, To be honest, I don't feel that I fucking care any more. If they don't like it, tough shit and they can stick it up their arse. But for now, I'm enjoying the freedom and remember the times before people weren't addicted to Failbook as if it was crack cocaine and Mr Courgetteberg is having a laugh at all of them, sleeping soundly at night in a sea of cash from his shitty little website that's now got ideas above its station.

Good fucking riddance, I say.