Granted, the passing of an artist you love can be quite a shock, but after over a week of seeing my newsfeed flooded, I too, think that "we need some emotional incontinence pants". 
 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/our-public-grieving-over-dead-celebrities-has-reached-insufferab/
 
I'm not talking about contributing to a thread like the ones we find around here, but people who go on and on day after day, making a spectacle of their so-called loss. 
 
I'm starting to believe that the world has become so desensitized that dying is the only way an artist can really get through to some. Who cares for a new album or new art, right? But death, now, that's something we can work with.
 
I honestly feel like a lot of people are eagerly waiting for the next celebrity to die to put on their show and be able to take a shot at the oscar for best dramatic performance.
 
I can't imagine how those people feel when they actually lose someone near and dear...

Rain.  As a semi-old codger what disturbs me most about the information age is a complete lack of historicity.  History is one of the few things in our world whereby we channel sublimity. And without that awe of the March of time and evolution we're completely lost. There's much more to Beethoven's music than how it hits our ears,  it is anchored in tradition.  Even the rockers of the seventies and 80s had there roots firmly planted in the blues tradition.
 
Now everything seems either truth-ish or false-ish.  What a burden for the young UN's.

I really, really, really liked quite a bit of what Prince did and even acknowledge his contributions and paradigm shifts to popular music in the 80s and beyond. But, geeze Louise, give me a break with all the media hype and wailing and gnashing of teeth at his passing. I'm sorry he's gone too. But this over the top public flaggelation is a bit much to take.

Sorry, I wasn't paying attention, did a prince die?  From what country?  

''If I had to pinpoint the beginning of the age of modern, recreational grieving it would be Princess Diana.''
 
Exactly. That was the turning point for me, where we seemed to lose all sense of dignity and proportion.
 
Comedian Stewart Lee put it like this;
 
''They say, it's what Princess Diana would have wanted..no, it isn't, what she would have wanted is to have not been killed, and then in death, not to have become the unwitting receptacle for the hysterical, over-emotional shrieking grief of ****s''

heh heh Jaymes quote "****s".

The internet has made all this foolishness possible. Thank you internet.

Mass grief is like a pandemic yawn. It presses down on the populace like a giant poultice. I'll never forget the sight of grown men crying at Princess Di's funeral. Left to their own devices, without the influence of those around them, they probably would have thought "Cor, Lady Di dead? Well I never, that's a turn up for the books," and forgotten about it. Instead they're pounded with the manufactured grief of the media, which causes some people to believe they should be grieving too, and then the sight of those people grieving upsets even more people, and before you know it people are afraid not to grieve in case it makes them look heartless and everyone's sucked into the monumental gravity of the moment. Before you know it people are talking about what the dead celebrity "meant to them over the years," and other people, who might not have been much of a fan, start thinking about what they meant to them as well, and they're digging deep for anecdotes too. "Raspberry Beret got me through the death of my cat in 1985." Hmm, did it now.  

What I've found particularly mawkish and somewhat macabre over the last couple of decades is the pile of soft toys, cards, flowers and scribbled notes that appear almost instantly at the scene of any tragic accident or murder.
 
What, and who is that for? Why would anyone want to commemorate the place where a death happened? I don't get it.

jamesg1213
What I've found particularly mawkish and somewhat macabre over the last couple of decades is the pile of soft toys, cards, flowers and scribbled notes that appear almost instantly at the scene of any tragic accident or murder.
 
What, and who is that for? Why would anyone want to commemorate the place where a death happened? I don't get it.

I hate to be a cynic (actually that's a lie, I love to be a cynic) but I think in many cases people trot along with those soft toys and flowers because they like to be seen laying them down in tribute.