Its a great debate Carlos and while respecting these recent views I guess i clearly fall into the pool of cynical bastards who simply has had enough of the way I see our culture gone to pot. There is possible more culture in Gulag at this moment and although I work in at the very tip of change and technology I am passionate about exactly how daft is the rate that we are evolving at. I consider myself to have a warm heart towards all human being and animals but I have never been able to join in any mass hysteria about a media spotlight event that has been beautifully whipped. Real Connected Everyday Life is where my focus is and where of course I would love to see a higher resource and response applied to. This of course is just me and based on my experiences of life so far ... I agree and have also stated that the Diana Syndrome is the first signs I saw first hand ... I have many friends in France and maybe its that cultural influence that makes me one of the cold boys ... yet they look after and respect their elders in a natural way. In discussion I can clearly see and have been clearly influenced that the UK is very lost and unbalanced. Yet before people shout for me to **** off back to my old remote frog village with Yves Montand ... i have to admit the work here is easier and I get to see my team QPR live ... which after all is all I care about on this little football forum.
Quite simply because the quality and sincerity of that sympathy is diluted to quite homeopathic levels by the fact that it is meeja orchestrated and followed by sheeple.The nice thing about being a cynic is how often you are proved right. Jesus,I agree with every word apart from possibly the last sentence.I would have thought that at the moment watching QPR is a particularly grim form of penance.
I suppose if people don't wish to express the same sympathy as others they could simply say nothing. Instead of spouting some of the drivel on here.
Different opinions are the spice of life - what a great site this would be if we only heard one side of the argument!
Odd that so far I haven't been sent a text with a joke/p*ss take of the Muamba incident. No matter who the celebrity has been it usually takes about an hour before someone either comes up with a joke or re-writes an existing joke to suit the occasion. There is always a public out pouring of grief when someone famous dies or there is an incident that captures the public's awareness, the shock of seeing someone drop to the floor with a suspected cardiac arrest in the middle of a televised football match is obviously such an incident. I am minded of the mass hysteria when Princess Diana died, the books of condolence, queues of people turning up to sign them, acres of flowers left in Kensington Gardens, hundreds of thousands of people lining the route from the funeral service to where she was buried. And for what? How many of them had met her, benefitted from any of her charity works, or gave a flying f*ck about the woman until she went rattling around in the back of an S class? It is now considered the norm to leave road side floral tributes on the sites of fatal crashes. What used to be personal grief for a few has been escalated into public shows of sympathy, the more gaudy the better. The act of Trolling is an odd thing but could be a reaction to constantly being told how you should react or think when a calamity happens. Technology makes it all the more easy and on a site based on anonymity it is bound to happen. I'd posted this on GC on Monday, come on you lot, keep up!
You mean that only the most sympathetic should say anything? I agree totally, and that person is Mrs Muamba. Anyone outside his closest circle emulating her level of trauma is clearly unhinged. I think you'll find that everyone has sympathy but there seems to be a fine line between that and public hysteria-induced obsession.
Quite odd really.From the meeja you would think that 99% of the public felt the way of this poster.Buit strangely the majority seem to appear to agree with me that the reaction has been mawkish,over sentimental and bordering on the hysterical.That should tell you something, i.e. it is being driven by external forces. If anyone is to be accused of cynicism it's the TV news directors and newspaper editors.But wait a minute,the newspapers wouldn't stoop to anything quite so low,would they?
No, I am saying that, if people, for whatever personal reason, want to express their sympathy, in whichever way they choose, they should be allowed to. Without being considered 'unhinged'.
Agree ... My point has always been the way that we have all been governed/influenced to react to a shock event like this ... shock being the focal word here and the reactions to it ... think for yourself. Pray 4 Muamba T Shirts one minute Designer Malcolm X the next.... always check out the threads on a photo opportunity ... Keep up
I only said it is unhinged for a stranger/fan/well wisher to react as badly to the news as Mrs Muamba - do you not think that's a reasonable comment? You can react how you like and you certainly don't need mine or anyone else's permission. Personally, I struggle to see how people descend into week long grief about someone who they've never met and would never return that same sentiment. I also think the papers love it because they can select the next worthy cause and shift loads of units by championing the mourning (while implying people are morally bankrupt if they don't follow suit). Doesn't mean I don't wish everyone well.
What external forces? Are you suggesting that some kind of New World Order unheard of governmental agency is influencing the masses into feeling sympathetic for someone, or mind-washed everyone into actually being shocked to see someone collapse on live TV having a heart attack, die and have to be resuscitated as opposed to the publics usual re-action of 'Oh look, another person collapsed and died in front of millions of viewers but never mind because after this is the re-run of Eastenders'. Oh wait, I see. You're trying to say the media spiced it up to sell something/get people to view there chanel/newspapers. It seemed to me it was friends of him who had supportive T-Shirts on, not a sky sports news presenter unbuttoning his shirt and revealing a 'Pray 4 Muamba' t-shirt on underneath. It was random members of the public holding up supportive signs, not some advertising hoard taken out by BT saying 'remember Muamba next time your phone bill arrives'. And whats all this drivvel about it all started when Princess Diana died? I'm pretty sure you see outpourings of grief a la Diana throughout the history of civilisation when renowned figures die expectedly or unexpectedly. Even if it isn't somoeone who's famous, when something tragic happens the public feel sympathetic as it is a microcosm of society/life as a whole. None of you can genuinely sit on here typing on your keyboard and say that when he collapsed you didn't think 'I hope he pulls through' if you didn't then what were you thinking? 'I hope he dies' or something? furthermore, I really haven't seen this so called 'Mass hysteria' as people have put it. What mass hysteria? Give me an example?.....Are you seriously trying to say that Britain is so sh*t now that people feign sympathy for no reason? We've come a long way since the Victorian ages of eating dogsh*t for breakfast and any form of emotion was punishable with a beating, when the flash of a woman's ankle was the most exotic thing you could see and you had to take a cold bath to shake off your utterly repressed feelings Rant Over
It was a shock to see it on telly at the time and it really looked bleak that evening. Messages of goodwill are the norm in these situations but, as FJ and others have stated the media descend on it like a pack of hounds after a fox and escalate it into some kind of sideshow. 24 hour news channels repeating the same bulletins ad nauseam, SSN with on the spot reports of every word that's being uttered take the overkill into overdrive. Sadly, it's par for the course these days and the papers will shift ever more copies of news that is already ready for a portion of chips...
My parents died with 16 months of each other. I was devasted, as were my immediate family and a FEW VERY CLOSE friends. I did not expect anything more from others that knew them apart from sympathy. I certainly would not have expected people that did not know them (work collegues etc) to wear black armbands for weeks on end. Muamba is NOT a close friend of mine, but as a fellow human being, I hope he is OK. THAT IS AS FAR AS IT GOES!!! Another point is, I go to the Remembrance service at our local church EVERY year. Where will all these grief mongers be when it comes to that special occassion in November when we should rightly be paying tribute to those that have died FOR us? In bed no doubt nursing a hangover!!
I cant believe he was dead for 78 minutes, he should have not woken up, never mind be able to talk to people. This is about as close to a miracle as you can get. He should be brain dead yet somehow he isnt.
No,what I am suggesting by "External forces" is this. Had the news reported that Muamba had collapsed and been taken to hospital where he was critically ill and left it at that the hoo-hah would not have taken place.Instead they all jumped on the bandwagon of grief and wound it up to warp factor 9. Now I may have a somewhat left field take on this,but I actually feel that it's a tad disrepectful to use somebody collapsing on a football field to make a news merry-go-round.Furthermore,what's this 4-Muamba about? What's wrong with "for"? Using a number "4" is an interweb marketing device - "Injury Lawyers4U" etc.This denigrates the chap's situation somewhat IMHO.On the other hand maybe I am just a grumpy old codger.
Best career move Muamba ever made. They'll have him lighting the Olympic Flame come July. Then we'll get the book and the film of his life story, He'll also be made President of Fifa before being made the first black pope. Probably.
Popes Victor I (189 to 199), Miltiades (310/311 to 314), and Gelasius I (492 to 496) were all from the Roman territories in North Africa. May well have been black.
