Club 27

Amy Winehouse died over the weekend, at the age of 27. It makes her eligible to join other famous singers that have passed away at the same age. Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones and Jimi Hendrix. Current speculation is that it was a drug overdose, there has been no official cause of death released.

I’m not sure it club anyone would aspire to be a member of.

Amy Winehouse was an undeniable talent that deserves to receive the tributes she will receive. If the news was a contest there would always be a more deserving case in someone’s eyes. But I would like to say, every life lost is a tragedy, no matter what the circumstances. If a death is proceeded by years of addiction, eating disorders and every wrong move being reported in the press then I hope peace has finally been found.

But what has really interested me about this death, while tragic, she was after all a woman in her prime with a talent that a lot would kill for, is the online reactions of some people on groups, social networking sites and in the comments spaces under online media. Frankly, I’m disgusted.

It appears that it is completely acceptable to write derogatory comments about the way she lived her life. Apart from I have gleaned from the media coverage of her career and troubled private I wouldn’t dream of assuming that I know anything about what was REALLY going on in her life. Therefore, all I can say is:

Rest in Peace, Your music will be your legacy.

I wish others could have been as neutral, but sincere. Comments such as ‘Glad she’s dead, hope Lady Gaga and Beiber are next’, are simply uncalled for. The amount of, ‘she wouldn’t go to rehab, no, no, no’ is astounding, and the number of folks saying she choose a life of drugs and alcohol and she choose her end so she deserved to die, makes me think that they were probably puffing on a cigarette as they typed.

I have seen this before and it always annoys me. People hiding behind their computer.

Whenever a posting from NSW Police tells of a death on the roads, posters start blaming the driver that died. I’ll never forget the day that the wife of a truck driver had also posted early on in the thread saying her husband was driving that route that day. She would have been alerted every time a nasty comment was posted, because so many don’t read earlier posts, he’d crashed into a car and all had died.

I have a personal policy. If I wouldn’t be prepared to say something to the originator’s face or the family of the victim, I don’t post.

Isn’t this one of the cardinal rules of Netiquette?

Please people, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything.



Pinched the image from here