I Love You 2016 - Faux Grief and Wankers

I've purchased my tea light candles, my face paint, some supermarket flowers - I've adjusted my personality so that it allows me to fully experience the modern day trend of faux grief. All I need now is a vigil and a celebrity death so that I can fully experience the ruination of an entire year based on mourning folk I have never met and who I am quite sure wouldn't have wanted to know me.

2016 was written off quite early in the year with a string of deaths of the "great and good". 1000's of people have taken to social media to ask 2016 to go away or to please end as quickly as possible like 2016 is an actual person - trolling 2016 actually became a thing in 2016.

We can trace back the need to grieve publicly to the death of Diana in 1997 when a relatively small amount of people suffered a humiliating break down during the week after her death. The dignity of the British appeared lost in mountains of supermarket flowers and floods of misguided tears. 

I often ask myself why it is that I can't share in this "follow the leader" mass grief for strangers. 

The facts of the matter are these - the vast majority of us just get on with our lives : we are saddened by the deaths which make the news but we don't have the time nor energy to sit in a circle and partake in the latest sing-a-long of the song book of the dearly departed.

Social media is a tiny bubble and it's easy to get carried away with this idea that "everybody" is on social media. You only have to look at the trend stats on Twitter to realise that anything being spoken about on this particular site is only being seen by a tiny amount of the population. I don't know anyone in my small circle who uses Twitter. A big event on Twitter won't even register with Mr and Mrs average. 

We live in an age of the big statement - or is that the age of the empty platitude? If your life has been too seriously affected by the death of someone you've never met then maybe nothing bad has happened to you or you haven't lost anyone you really know.  You are lucky.

To write a whole year off based on the deaths of strangers is embarrassing - just look back at the film of the behaviour of folk after Diana died and you'll see what you look like now.

When Bowie died it appeared that the rent-a-mourner / vigil's are us mob only knew the words to Starman.....and this perfectly sums up this kind of person. 

I've loved 2016 - based on personal achievements - and when push comes to shove - that's all you'll ever be remembered for.

Tim