Paul Walker, Irony and the Insensitivity of the Internet
Minggu, 01 Desember 2013
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The jokes about drifting, the I guess he went too fast this time, the people who just couldn't stop laughing about how ironic it was that he died the way he did.
Paul Walker, the star of the Fast and Furious movie series, died in a fiery car accident yesterday when a friend of his drove a Porsche into a utility pole, then a tree.
Many people called it a hoax immediately, which it wasn't. This time.
Earlier this week, there was a hoax about him, and the details were eerily similar. This time, though, it wasn't a hoax. It was real.
He was really dead.
Once people seemed to digest the fact that it was a real news report, the irony jokes started. Was it ironic? Sure. Should it be funny? No. Death is never funny.
The internet can really force you to hate humanity sometimes, and this was one of them.
Never mind that the characters he played in movies were just that - characters. He loved fast cars and was a driver, but his day job was
acting.
Never mind that he was actually a good guy, who did good work, who gave time and money to worthy causes, who was at a charity event that he organized to raise money for typhoon relief when the accident happened.
Never mind that he left behind a daughter, and even if he had to accept a microscope looking at every detail of his life, his child didn't ask for that.
People forget that celebrities are real people. They hide behind their keyboards and spew insensitive remarks and generate memes.
If Paul had been one of their friends, their brothers, the father of their child, I can promise you they wouldn't be so quick to make a joke out of his death.
Suddenly that death might carry meaning for them.
Just last month a dear friend of mine wrapped his car around a tree. Speed was a factor. A fast car was a factor. There's no good reason his car didn't explode. He was lucky. Paul wasn't.
Sometimes fate just decides it's your time to go, I suppose, and I don't think it has a damn thing to do with what your day job is.
Then you have the people who declare that his death is insignificant because _______ children starved today or ___________ military members died today or whatever other reason they can conjure up in the world.
It's not anyone's right or place to dictate who's life or death is greater than another's.
If you are discounting the death of someone just because someone else died too, you're missing the point of grief entirely, particularly when it comes to people like him, who lived in the public eye. Even if most of the people mourning his death never knew him personally, he represented something to them. People followed his career, related to his characters. He was a stranger, yes, but he was a familiar one.
To plenty of people, he wasn't just a person on a screen. A friend of mine knew him in real life.
Besides which, a death is a death is a death. Maybe I've just lost too many people. The end of a life is something worthy of pause, regardless of who it was. It should require people to maintain a basic level of respect for human life, if not for him then for his child.
Pausing for a moment to reflect on the death of one person does not diminish the deaths of other people. Not at all. The media focuses on it, briefly, because it is newsworthy when a celebrity dies, not because his life was worth more, but just because more of us knew who he was.
The internet universe is a strange one. On one hand, there are all the people who take things too personally, who get offended, who feel it necessary to proclaim to the world every time something offends them. On the other hand, you have the trolls who live for that, who love to get under people's skin, who get off on upsetting others.
At the end of the day, we could all be better served to find some center. To understand that our emotions about anything that happens online are that - ours. If you thrive on drama and are drawn toward it, it will find you. If you can see both sides of an issue, if you can respect how other people react, if you can understand that everyone brings a different perspective to everything that happens, you'll take a lot less personally.
It's not about you, anyway. It never was.
Right now, it's about a guy who happened to be famous and died way too young. It won't stay that way for long, not in a world with an exceptionally short term memory. Let people be sad for a second. Something else will happen soon enough anyway.
Rest in peace, Paul. Thoughts and prayers to your friends and family, as well as to those mourning the man who lost his life in the accident with you.
Never mind that he left behind a daughter, and even if he had to accept a microscope looking at every detail of his life, his child didn't ask for that.
People forget that celebrities are real people. They hide behind their keyboards and spew insensitive remarks and generate memes.
If Paul had been one of their friends, their brothers, the father of their child, I can promise you they wouldn't be so quick to make a joke out of his death.
Suddenly that death might carry meaning for them.
Just last month a dear friend of mine wrapped his car around a tree. Speed was a factor. A fast car was a factor. There's no good reason his car didn't explode. He was lucky. Paul wasn't.
Sometimes fate just decides it's your time to go, I suppose, and I don't think it has a damn thing to do with what your day job is.
Then you have the people who declare that his death is insignificant because _______ children starved today or ___________ military members died today or whatever other reason they can conjure up in the world.
It's not anyone's right or place to dictate who's life or death is greater than another's.
If you are discounting the death of someone just because someone else died too, you're missing the point of grief entirely, particularly when it comes to people like him, who lived in the public eye. Even if most of the people mourning his death never knew him personally, he represented something to them. People followed his career, related to his characters. He was a stranger, yes, but he was a familiar one.
To plenty of people, he wasn't just a person on a screen. A friend of mine knew him in real life.
Besides which, a death is a death is a death. Maybe I've just lost too many people. The end of a life is something worthy of pause, regardless of who it was. It should require people to maintain a basic level of respect for human life, if not for him then for his child.
Pausing for a moment to reflect on the death of one person does not diminish the deaths of other people. Not at all. The media focuses on it, briefly, because it is newsworthy when a celebrity dies, not because his life was worth more, but just because more of us knew who he was.
The internet universe is a strange one. On one hand, there are all the people who take things too personally, who get offended, who feel it necessary to proclaim to the world every time something offends them. On the other hand, you have the trolls who live for that, who love to get under people's skin, who get off on upsetting others.
At the end of the day, we could all be better served to find some center. To understand that our emotions about anything that happens online are that - ours. If you thrive on drama and are drawn toward it, it will find you. If you can see both sides of an issue, if you can respect how other people react, if you can understand that everyone brings a different perspective to everything that happens, you'll take a lot less personally.
It's not about you, anyway. It never was.
Right now, it's about a guy who happened to be famous and died way too young. It won't stay that way for long, not in a world with an exceptionally short term memory. Let people be sad for a second. Something else will happen soon enough anyway.
Rest in peace, Paul. Thoughts and prayers to your friends and family, as well as to those mourning the man who lost his life in the accident with you.
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As a postscript to this post, I would like to clarify something. I did not name the friend he was with, though I was fully aware of his identity, intentionally in this piece. The reason for that is the reaction of people online who have vilified him already. Grief is difficult enough when done privately. His family and friends, in my opinion, deserve the right to mourn him privately, certainly without blame being laid at his feet. For that reason only, I will not name him. Paul's friends and family will never be afforded the luxury of private grief precisely because of his fame. I have my reasons, none of which have anything to do with valuing one life more than another.
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Judul: Paul Walker, Irony and the Insensitivity of the Internet
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