CP3S said:

twooffour said:

It's like with movies - in order to care-a-lot, people need a connection to a character.
Show them lots of mass atrocities (or cartoon Jedis killed), and they'll be like "oh no this is bad" for a few minutes, then move on. Do something to a well-portrayed character they've built an emotional connection to - and you've got yourself a memorable movie experience.

Which explains why I didn't give a shit when MJ died, why I don't give a shit about this, and why I haven't given a shit about all the other shocking, untimely, often self induced, celebrity deaths of the past decade.

I feel less cold hearted now.

How about the not self-induced ones? ;)

That aside, but keeping with the general topic, there's a fun little "hypocrisy" I've noticed on various boards (not news comments), cropping up in threads like this one.

No one really gives a shit about spending time on an entertainment forum, or discussing entertainment issues on off-topic, instead of doing something beneficial or important (probably rightfully so, because it doesn't disable one from doing that outside of the board). Even like partaking on some serious board discussing politics or medicine or whatever.

But whenever someone posts a thread about the death of a celebrity (i.e. an entertainment figure), there will be inevitably several people saying how this isn't as important as some mass tragedy happening to occur at around the same time elsewhere.

So if we can all obviously keep two sets of books in terms of "good stuff we like" on one hand, and "bad stuff we should care about", why can't that apply to death or some other calamity hitting one of those in the first category?
It's like, we can all talk about fun stuff and enjoy works of entertainment, but as soon as someone's dead, bam, let's care more about Fukushima? Doesn't make sense to me :)

(In terms of what one SHOULD care more about, if anything, I'll agree it's the more important events, though)