Glorifying Dying

I'm sick of lyin' I'm sick of glorifyin' dyin'
I'm sick of not trying, shit I'm sick of being a nigga
Destiny sent me to this dread and she said she felt led
to offer me some wisdom from this notebook she read
and it said that right then the black man's downfall
was to not know that we were not ever niggas at all, hmm


Goodie Mob “The Experience”

Ever since MJ died, I’ve been noticing that people are becoming a whole lot more vocal in their grief. Maybe it’s because I see it all the time on Facebook, but whenever a celebrity or pseudo celebrity dies, people lose their ever loving mind. It seems like overkill to me. While, I can understand friends and family being grief stricken, for the life of me, I can’t understand the outpouring of emotion over some of these people that I just know people didn’t care about when they were alive. For example, a couple of days after MJ, that guy Billy Mays died. I don’t know anything about the guy personally, but I seriously doubt that he had a large impact on the culture. At least not large enough to elicit the level of faux grief that was displayed all over the internet. I’m just saying, his death was not an OMG moment for most of the world. His friends and family – absolutely, but a stranger that only saw him on commercials? I can’t see it. I don’t think I’m being heartless when I say that.

DJ AM died the other day. People in my demographic don’t know nothing about him except that he used to date Nicole Richie and survived a plane crash. Pretty sure you didn’t cop that new DJ AM “Playing Other People’s Music” CD. Or you didn’t go to the DJ AM “Foam and Jagermeister” party hosted by Nicky Hilton. Why are you so sad? Because you heard of him a little? What’s your connection to him? Would you care if it was some regular dude that died with a bag of crack and a pipe under him? Would you turn up your nose and call him a junkie, or would that be a tragedy as well? (Don’t get me started on the word “tragedy.” It wasn’t tragic if he did it to himself on purpose. )

But for real, it just seems like people are either pretending to be sad or are actually sad just to be sad. Family, friends, someone that you have a connection with, a cultural icon -- I can understand. But I’m not gonna cry because someone I’ve heard of died. People die every day. I’ll reserve my grief for people that actually mean something to me, not pseudo-celebrities. It just seems like, people are glorifying people for dying. If they didn’t matter to you while alive, then death shouldn’t cause you to all of a sudden act like they were your favorite entertainer.