Jade Goody's dead

Prove it, dot boy.

ha! oops... the reply fell a bit short there...

so.... here's what I tried to post, now falling a bit long:

I shouldn't extrapolate your position any further than you might have intended it, but hopefully you might see how utterly indefensible it is to suggest that you need a personal connection with someone to feel any emotions for them.
It's a good post tynan, and I appreciate your point, but you are extrapolating my position a fair bit more than I intended.

I was just off to bed again but a couple of things that may make my position a little clearer, or a little muddier*.

1) I genuinely don't see what business it is of anyone unrelated (in the broadest sense) to Jad Gooddy what she has done in the last seven years unless they have been compelled to identify with her / take part in the gossip she has generated / be fascinated by her, all of which have been artificially constructed by the media and as a result of media exposure. She leaves nothing behind for those unconnected to her that can be considered anything other than part of this construction - she is not a musician, a scientist, a film maker, a shop owner, a community centre organiser. She was thrust upon everyone whether they liked it or not - she did nothing to earn anything (love, hatred, sympathy etc) outside of her media construction from anyone unconnected to her in her personal life. Surely, then, this includes any news of her death?

Am I misanthropic just because I have no idea why anyone who has no personal connection to her should feel anything about her death? Don't get me wrong here - I'm certainly not advocating snide remarks about her death, or piss-taking - but why should I or anyone else who has had to suffer her persistance care about her? The difference between caring about her and caring about people in general is that she has spent several years doing everything possible to be in my face and in doing so has succeeded in deeply antagonising me. So why should I care for her as much as for people I have no connection with who have never appeared in papers, on tv, gobbing off and being crass and who have never impinged on my equilibrium and who just go about their daily trials and triumphs quietly and with dignity? Just because she's died of cancer I've got to be all empathetic towards her? She alienated me long ago with her antics.

2) I genuinely was unsettled by the ensuing thread 'devoted to my well-being' following my stack last year. I hadn't done anything to earn anyone's concern beyond the few people I'd met at that point and even they were so new to me and I to them that their concern made me feel embarrassed. But this forum, as a lot of people have seen, is an unusual place. And it connects people quicker and more firmly than a lot of other social areas of life - and the number of people you can experience this with is larger than any other situation I've been in.

In the last year there have been a bunch of people I've cared about and empathised with on here, some of whom I haven't met, some of whom I've done things for in the course of the first evenings, or rides, we met, just like a bunch of other people have for others and me. A couple of them I've had nothing to go on at all except some kind of vague recognition that we have something in common - but riding a certain kind of bike and being on a forum are tenuous connections when you look at it. So I'm not consistent in my lack of empathy for people if you start to extrapolate, of course I'm not. I'm also not trying to say I'm a great person, loads of people are much kinder and more thoughtfuland selfless than I am; all I'm trying to say is I have a massive beef with the media circus around certain people and certain scenarios, I don't think it's healthy and ultimately they all work to devalue the currency of incredibly private and defining emotions.

• like anyone gives a flying toss. I have no idea why I bang on about some things sometimes. I suppose it's cos I'm a chatterbox with no real life.