Why Do Celebrity Deaths Affect Us?

Understanding Celebrity Death

Celebrity Death. Why does it hurt so much?

A Celebrity Death Can Feel Like Losing a Family Member

The Effect of Kobe’s Death

Grieving a Great of the Game

Why Do We Grieve Celebrities?

Grieve them? I barely even Knew Them!

Trying to Understand Celebrity Grieving

A Guide to Grieving Greatness

One of the most surprising outcomes of the passing of Kobe Bryant was the fact that so many people who didn’t follow basketball felt hurt. I had a conversation with my teacher about this subject, and he mentioned he cried when he heard the news, even though he doesn’t watch basketball. This made me realize that Kobe’s influence reached much further than just the basketball community. Maybe we look up to celebrities without even knowing it, or maybe it takes less than we expected to experience grief. All in all, grief is a long and very complicated process. It is important to push through grief and deal with it in your own way. In the words of the great Kobe Bryant, “pain doesn’t tell you when you ought to stop. Pain is the little voice in your head that tries to hold you back because it knows if you continue you will change.” Remember that next time you feel as if grief will consume you.

1. Why do celebrity deaths affect us so much?
2. Anecdote: Kobe died
3. Expressing grief
4. The importance of community
5. Social media: Why we look up to celebrities
6. Why are athletes good role models?
7. Grieving is hard, push through

I added research and a bigger picture idea

Many fans took to social media as an outlet for the expression of their grief. I came across countless messages implying that people had no reason to feel sad because they didn’t know Kobe personally. Some might choose to grieve alone, but many people seek a sense of community to get through their trauma, and many people find that online. Kaplan addressed this in the same interview for Huffington Post when he said that “we are social creatures, we are meant to be with other people when we face adversity.” Seeking a sense of community and expressing your grief can be incredibly important steps in someone’s grieving process. According to Sobonfu Some, a very important voice of African spirituality; “Communal grieving offers something that we cannot get when we grieve by ourselves.  Through acknowledgement, validation and witnessing, communal grieving allows us to experience a level of healing that is deeply and profoundly freeing.” I previously mentioned accepting any form grief takes, and being tolerant of others in a time of grieving. According to the Center for Grief Recovery and Therapeutic Services in Chicago, our grief can take many forms based on different factors, notably “our religious, cultural/ethnic backgrounds.”

Kobe Bryant’s eldest daughter had to find out that her father passed away through a leaked TMZ blog post. The news spread through her school incredibly fast and a friend of hers showed her the article. There is no good way to receive such news, but I can’t think of a way that is worse than what she experienced. This puts my feelings into perspective. As a Kobe fan, when I heard the news, it felt like my world briefly fell apart. Why did I feel so strongly about the death of a man I had never met? I felt guilty for feeling so strongly about Kobe’s death when his family was most definitely more hurt. I then began to question whether or not it made sense for me to feel so terrible.

David Kaplan, chief professional officer of the American Counseling Association explained it as if the celebrities we follow become like extended members of our families in an interview with Huffington Post. “We grow up with these people,” he said, and by keeping up with what they’re doing on a regular basis, we feel like we get to know them and “in a sense, they become a member of our family — especially the ones we really like.” Needless to say, this feeling of knowing them leads to very strong emotions when they pass away. In the same interview, Kaplan speculates that the death of a loved celebrity triggers such strong emotions because it “reminds us of our own mortality.” This is very interesting because it goes to show that celebrities have become more than just their sport, and larger than life almost. We see these people as untouchable superhuman and it affects us when we realize they can suffer too. The way people deal with these emotions varies from person to person. What was most surprising about the passing of Kobe was the fact that so many people who didn’t follow basketball felt hurt. I had a conversation with my teacher about this subject, and he mentioned he cried when he heard the news, even though he doesn’t watch basketball. This made me realize that Kobe’s influence reached much further than just the basketball community. If Kobe’s passing was enough to genuinely affect an English teacher in Montreal that doesn’t consider themselves a hardcore basketball fan, imagine how someone that grew up in LA watching and idolizing Kobe while he played for the Lakers must have felt.

Grief is something that most people experience at one moment or another, but very few understand. It is hard to truly understand grief because how it is experienced varies from person to person. Julia Samuel, author of “Grief Works: Stories of Life, Death and Surviving,” works with grieving families and put it very well when she said “there is no right or wrong in grief; we need to accept whatever form it takes, both in ourselves and in others.” I think that this quote applies very well to the Kobe situation because of the extensive amounts of negative messages directed at people grieving publicly online. Many fans took to social media as an outlet for the expression of their grief. I came across countless messages implying that people had no reason to feel sad because they didn’t know Kobe personally. Those particular messages struck me because upon reading them I could almost hear the person who told me the same thing. Some even tried to tarnish his legacy through their comments that were so offensive that they leave you feeling nauseous. Imagine if a family member you cherish and look up to dies, leaving you feeling empty and sick. Many people felt this way about the death of Kobe.

Third-hand scene, heard about through various social media outlets

Kobe’s friends and family reacted very differently to his death. Everybody was visually devastated, many took to instagram with puffy eyes and with heavy hearts told their favourite Kobe stories. It hurt most to think about the ones that stayed quiet, notably his oldest daughter. She had been at school when the news of the accident broke. TMZ leaked the news in a blog post. The news spread incredibly fast around the whole world, her school included. She had to find out her father and sister died from an online post. She must have felt so lost in that moment, wondering if it was true, just wanting to call her father and hear his voice. News of his death induced a panic-attack because it was so unexpected, and she was eventually brought home to her mother.

Imagine you’re dealing with an incredibly unpleasant customer at your evening job, and thinking about how you need to get in 5 hours of studying and 8 hours of sleep before your 8AM class tomorrow. But you only get off work at 11:30. On top of that you haven’t been able to find time to exercise or spend time with your friends in 2 whole weeks because its midterm season. We aren’t unwilling to work hard, it’s just impossible to work as hard as we want at everything we have to do.

College students aren’t lazy, they’re not unwilling to work hard, they just feel like there’s too much on their plate and they can’t do anything about it. It’s hard to feel in control when you have too much responsibility and not enough freedom. 

What does stress feel like? 

Stress feels like you have a million things to do and absolutely no time to do them, it’s suffocating and makes it really hard to do things properly. On top of that there’s the fact that every little choice you make will have an effect on the rest of your life but you have no control. It feels hot and angry, your hands shake, your palms sweat, you’re just constantly uncomfortable and on edge.

TSSSSSSSSS!

For the following days I didn’t feel like talking to anyone about it because it genuinely hurt to think about.

Genuinely maybe isn’t the perfect word

Really

Honestly

Without a doubt

Truly

Undeniable

For the following days, I didn’t feel like talking to anyone about it because the pain I felt about the situation was undeniable.

I didn’t believe it, but deep down I felt like something was off.

Something was off.

Something was very off.

I felt something was very off.

I just couldn’t understand why I felt something was very off.

I couldn’t understand why I felt something was very off.

I couldn’t understand why something was very off.

Off.

Something off.

Off: characterized by performing or feeling worse than usual; unsatisfactory or inadequate.

It does mean exactly what I thought.

Off Bad Sour

Something was off, but I couldn’t pinpoint what.

Something was off because the mood was heavy.

Something was off because the mood was heavy, and nobody wanted to face the truth.

I couldn’t help but feel that something was amiss, something that brought a gloomy and sour fog on everyone’s day, but the truth that nobody wanted to face was right there yelling at us all.

This is a test. This is a link.