See How Great My Grief Is

[cinema_babe]

I will be avoiding most social media as much as possible for a while because I am through with this.

This is not a day of mourning for *us*, we are not the friends and family of those who were lost, it is to their families to mourn. Am I filled with revulsion and does it sicken me? Yes, absolutely but I am not a mourner; we are not mourners, we have become Peeping Toms and Thomasinas rolling around in the filth of the sensationalistic news coverage. How many hours does the news repeat the same images again and again because people will sit and watch it again and again?

I feel as though we have become a nation of ghouls, hanging onto every jot and tittle of tragic events such as this, so many people falling all over themselves to show everyone how badly they feel, assorted parasites using this as an opportunity to jump on their pro gun/anti gun soapboxes, the media thrusting microphones in the faces of the traumatized. They press cloaks themselves in the pious garb of "the people want to know and have a right to know" and they'll serve the 911 calls up to us like a piping hot roast chicken on a platter.

Stop it, just fucking stop it.

Does anyone think that this dumbshow of rending garments is more fuel on the fire of those who would perpetrate such actions? Their face, their message, the gut churning terror they inflict will become more familiar to us than our neighbors faces.

Over and over again we are loudly telling them how much power and renown lies at the end of their gun.

Comments

[radiumhead.livejournal.com]

I dont give a shit. I didnt know any of em. Of course if you say that, everyones like omg, etc

[taldragon.livejournal.com]

i think part of the problem is our 24-hour-'news' culture. there isnt enough news (or what journalists/broadcasters think of as news) to sustain this so instead we're encouraged to indulge in .... grief-porn? (that's a very bad word but i cant think of a better one).

because of this scrutiny of every tiny detail, we're almost... lulled into believing we know the people?

i dont know. it's midnight and this may not make any sense :)

[ashbet]

*nods* I think grief-porn/tragedy-porn is a good way to put it.

I've been actively avoiding the news for the past two days to stay out of it -- I am sorrowful for the families who lost loved ones, but I am choosing not to indulge the vultures by giving them my time/attention/page views.

I do think you're right that the news, especially in the cases of missing/dead children, tries to suck us into believing that we know the families and we know their grief. I do my best not to get drawn into it, but there is that sense of forced/false intimacy that is created by the barrage of personal details.

I'm just so sorry that this happened.

-- A :/

[taldragon.livejournal.com]

it's not just missing kids - i remember the HUGE fuss over Princess Diana's death (for example).

[tisiphone.livejournal.com]

I think grief-porn is a good way to describe it. Yes, it's important to know about (not least because this is a serious political issue that we need to talk about, and are not), but do we really need interviews with schoolchildren and shots of sobbing parents and all the rest? No.

[cinema-babe.livejournal.com]

I also think the term "grief-porn" captures it very well. I just completely bailed on both of my FB accounts for a while because it was just too irksome. I'm tempted to check out newspaper archives to see what kind of media coverage Charles Starkweather received.

I feel like I"m trapped in Network and can't get out. All we need is Peter Finch.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

Yes

[emmabovary.livejournal.com]

I agree completely. Well said.

[1cmf.livejournal.com]

There is a good bit of study showing that suicides are infuenced by media coverage of high profile suicides. So much so that media has at least discussed a code of conduct to prevent discussing suicides in a way to promt other suicides. Its no coincidence that we are seeing a rash of mass shootings and that same sort of code needs to be implimented by media to cut down on this.

[cinema-babe.livejournal.com]

Exactly. As a matter of fact the number of these incidents has risen in the past 5 years and there is a direct temporal correlation.

nicely put

[grendelgongon.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I wish I could grab the collective scruffs of the media and many of its readers and make them read one of your posts and then go away.

This is one of those times.