RIP Robin Williams

Off Topic
82

It is only natural and human that people empathize with a man who endeared themselves to them with his performances. It only makes more sense when you consider how many people have been touched by suicide or depression.

To learn that someone who appeared to have it all and brought so many smiles is depressing for a few reason and one is that it is hard to imagine how much pain a man was in to make it to 63 and find it was still not worth enduring.

You don’t need to worship celebrities to get that. You just need to be a human being with an ounce of compassion.

83

[quote]pushharder wrote:

Same with Albert Einstein (not that Williams was the Einstein of comedy but maybe, subjectively, he was close). But there was no sense in getting “immensely depressed” when Einstein died.[/quote]

Are you saying people weren’t upset over the death of Einstein when he passed? I have no idea, but he was important enough for it to be publicly announced on television

[quote]pushharder wrote:
Williams was talented, no doubt, but he’s really only “special” to many because his vocation placed him in the limelight.[/quote]

Maybe - but I think anyone who is genuinely upset over his death is likely tying his passing to the emotions felt from watching him on screen.

84

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]MinotaurXXX wrote:
To those who are angered by all this and to those who are greatly saddened by this, I’m not going to say one’s right and the other’s wrong.

However, not everyone who pays respect to a recently deceased celebrity - be it movie star, athlete, scientist - have lost perspective.
[/quote]

They have if they’re “overly” or “immensely depressed.”[/quote]

Maybe. I’m not one to psychoanalyze and pass judgment on a stranger’s emotional response to death - no matter the cause or celebrity status (or lack thereof).

Some people out there such as myself can feel saddened, take a moment to reflect and pay tribute, and then move on.

[quote]debraD wrote:
It is only natural and human that people empathize with a man who endeared themselves to them with his performances. It only makes more sense when you consider how many people have been touched by suicide or depression.

To learn that someone who appeared to have it all and brought so many smiles is depressing for a few reason and one is that it is hard to imagine how much pain a man was in to make it to 63 and find it was still not worth enduring.

You don’t need to worship celebrities to get that. You just need to be a human being with an ounce of compassion.

[/quote]

Well said.

85

[quote]CLINK wrote:
Using words like “selfish”, and “coward” (as they’ve used on Fox News) is way off the mark. [/quote]

lmao… Fox News could cure cancer and you’d bitch and moan they put doctors out of business. Fox has jack and shit to do with anything, but just couldn’t resist a partisan jab could you?

Just a quick note you are doing the very same thing here, you’re bitching at other people for doing. You haven’t a single clue what anyone commenting here or using those words went through.

Maybe, just maybe, the dude on Fox News you hate sat in his room at 18, tears running down his face for hours holding the knife to his elbow, ready to go up and down so it gets done right, mind so clouded and ruined hope was a foreign concept, and maybe that same Fox News “asshole that needs to grow the fuck up” actually had a single instant of clarity, one tiny shimmer between blinking tears off his eye lids and thought about his mother, whom he hated, having to find his limp lifeless body on the floor. So Fox News guy put the knife down, and went and got help.

Maybe Fox News guy is the grown up that has actually been there, and you can’t fathom other people have a different opinion than you so they must have to grow the fuck up…

[quote]
Walk a mile in someone’s shoes before you judge.[/quote]

I agree, maybe you should practice what you preach?

Glass houses, stones… All that.

86

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

…What gets me is the media circus. I am disgusted by the (lucrative) marathons of mawkish bromide and vapid hyperbole that the media run in the aftermath of a well-liked celebrity’s death. Should we all just pretend that there weren’t kids dying in the United States on the day that Williams expired? Innocent kids who never got the opportunity to make money and have sex with beautiful people and eat expensive meals at exclusive restaurants? This is not to mention the fact that all the Wolf Blitzer/Shep Smith/“now-we’ve-got-Henry-Winkler-on-the-phone” bullshit detracts from the actual tragedy of the actual man who actually killed himself…

[/quote]

This.

I absolutely loathe this.
[/quote]

I mostly agree, but have a couple of points:

  1. There is a distinction to be made between:

(A) suicides from clinical depression and

(B) suicides because one is avoiding something unpleasant (e.g., prison, debt, war) or to cause pain (e.g., committing suicide to emotionally harm others (“I’ll show them!”) and suicide bombers).

While related (and can overlap), the two situations are distinct.

Situation (A) is a medical situation and marked sympathy should be presented. It comes from within and is horrid.

Situation (B) is a social situation that comes from without. I candidly don’t have much sympathy for one who choose to end his or her life because the going got rough.

I think the two sides of this discussion are muddling Situations (A) and (B). The two situations are not the same, logically, medically, or theologically.

  1. The media circus of sympathy and fond memory causes “cluster suicides.” You see this in high schools. (The surprisingly excellent 1988 Christian Slater movie “Heathers” shows this well.) There are a number of studies showing a spike in suicides after a media frenzy like this, especially among kids. It’s almost as if suicides are contagious.

So, while I do understand the need not to mock those with depression, it does not sound like Mr. Williams had that problem. He had a lot of debt, had to do crappy commercial work to pay off bitchy ex-wives. This sounds a lot more like Situation B than Situation A, but I suppose we will never know.

Regardless, because of point 2 above, I do object to the fawning over Mr. Williams. There will be cluster-suicides “inspired” by Mr. Williams.

87

[quote]Jewbacca wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

…What gets me is the media circus. I am disgusted by the (lucrative) marathons of mawkish bromide and vapid hyperbole that the media run in the aftermath of a well-liked celebrity’s death. Should we all just pretend that there weren’t kids dying in the United States on the day that Williams expired? Innocent kids who never got the opportunity to make money and have sex with beautiful people and eat expensive meals at exclusive restaurants? This is not to mention the fact that all the Wolf Blitzer/Shep Smith/“now-we’ve-got-Henry-Winkler-on-the-phone” bullshit detracts from the actual tragedy of the actual man who actually killed himself…

[/quote]

This.

I absolutely loathe this.
[/quote]

I mostly agree, but have a couple of points:

  1. There is a distinction to be made between:

(A) suicides from clinical depression and

(B) suicides because one is avoiding something unpleasant (e.g., prison, debt, war) or to cause pain (e.g., committing suicide to emotionally harm others (“I’ll show them!”) and suicide bombers).

While related (and can overlap), the two situations are distinct.

Situation (A) is a medical situation and marked sympathy should be presented. It comes from within and is horrid.

Situation (B) is a social situation that comes from without. I candidly don’t have much sympathy for one who choose to end his or her life because the going got rough.

I think the two sides of this discussion are muddling Situations (A) and (B). The two situations are not the same, logically, medically, or theologically.

  1. The media circus of sympathy and fond memory causes “cluster suicides.” You see this in high schools. (The surprisingly excellent 1988 Christian Slater movie “Heathers” shows this well.) There are a number of studies showing a spike in suicides after a media frenzy like this, especially among kids. It’s almost as if suicides are contagious.

So, while I do understand the need not to mock those with depression, it does not sound like Mr. Williams had that problem. He had a lot of debt, had to do crappy commercial work to pay off bitchy ex-wives. This sounds a lot more like Situation B than Situation A, but I suppose we will never know.

Regardless, because of point 2 above, I do object to the fawning over Mr. Williams. There will be cluster-suicides “inspired” by Mr. Williams.[/quote]

Could this be a combination of A and B? I ask this because he had a history with alcohol and drugs.

88

[quote]Jewbacca wrote:

So, while I do understand the need not to mock those with depression, it does not sound like Mr. Williams had that problem. He had a lot of debt, had to do crappy commercial work to pay off bitchy ex-wives. This sounds a lot more like Situation B than Situation A, but I suppose we will never know.
[/quote]

Not really, given that he had a long history with depression according to all the write-ups of his death.

What evidence leads you to believe that it “sounds a lot more like” your selfish depression than clinical depression or mental illness?

89

[quote]debraD wrote:
To learn that someone who appeared to have it all and brought so many smiles is depressing for a few reason and one is that it is hard to imagine how much pain a man was in to make it to 63 and find it was still not worth enduring.

You don’t need to worship celebrities to get that. You just need to be a human being with an ounce of compassion.

[/quote]

You’re missing the point people are trying to make, much like Crink’s little hypocritical rant.

Not one person I’ve seen lamenting this man’s death has any single hand knowledge of his life. He might have been a really shitty person in his personal life, people don’t know.

But, the over all point isn’t that one shouldn’t have compassion for RW, it’s there are plenty of people out there that need compassion that the same people super upset about RW ignore every single fucking day of their lives.

There is a child sitting in a Hospital in Boston right now that is not going to die next week thanks to everyday people. There is an organization of regular folks, who in their spare time, donate time in money into a program that brings victims of tragedy from all over the world to this hospital in order to save their life that they otherwise would have lost.

No one laments on social media and makes threads for the kids that don’t get transported, no one has compassion when one of these regular folks passes, and no one gives two flying fucks if one of those people has depression.

And that is the point. Not that people have compassion for RW. That is fine. It’s that it seems because dude got paid to play pretend all his life he gets more than someone who sacrificed time and meals with his own kids to save some stranger kids life, simply because he could.

90

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

[quote]debraD wrote:
To learn that someone who appeared to have it all and brought so many smiles is depressing for a few reason and one is that it is hard to imagine how much pain a man was in to make it to 63 and find it was still not worth enduring.

You don’t need to worship celebrities to get that. You just need to be a human being with an ounce of compassion.

[/quote]

You’re missing the point people are trying to make, much like Crink’s little hypocritical rant.

Not one person I’ve seen lamenting this man’s death has any single hand knowledge of his life. He might have been a really shitty person in his personal life, people don’t know.

But, the over all point isn’t that one shouldn’t have compassion for RW, it’s there are plenty of people out there that need compassion that the same people super upset about RW ignore every single fucking day of their lives.

There is a child sitting in a Hospital in Boston right now that is not going to die next week thanks to everyday people. There is an organization of regular folks, who in their spare time, donate time in money into a program that brings victims of tragedy from all over the world to this hospital in order to save their life that they otherwise would have lost.

No one laments on social media and makes threads for the kids that don’t get transported, no one has compassion when one of these regular folks passes, and no one gives two flying fucks if one of those people has depression.

And that is the point. Not that people have compassion for RW. That is fine. It’s that it seems because dude got paid to play pretend all his life he gets more than someone who sacrificed time and meals with his own kids to save some stranger kids life, simply because he could. [/quote]
I want to take this quote to say something I think is fucking awesome.

Our very own Doogie on here just spent the last 6 weeks donating bone marrow cause he was on a transplant list from 2004 to save a 36 year old guy who he does not know. Things such as this from an every day guy go unrecognized so I want to stand up and clap for this man.

Okay carry on

92

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

You’re missing the point people are trying to make, much like Crink’s little hypocritical rant.

Not one person I’ve seen lamenting this man’s death has any single hand knowledge of his life. He might have been a really shitty person in his personal life, people don’t know.

But, the over all point isn’t that one shouldn’t have compassion for RW, it’s there are plenty of people out there that need compassion that the same people super upset about RW ignore every single fucking day of their lives.

There is a child sitting in a Hospital in Boston right now that is not going to die next week thanks to everyday people. There is an organization of regular folks, who in their spare time, donate time in money into a program that brings victims of tragedy from all over the world to this hospital in order to save their life that they otherwise would have lost.

No one laments on social media and makes threads for the kids that don’t get transported, no one has compassion when one of these regular folks passes, and no one gives two flying fucks if one of those people has depression.

And that is the point. Not that people have compassion for RW. That is fine. It’s that it seems because dude got paid to play pretend all his life he gets more than someone who sacrificed time and meals with his own kids to save some stranger kids life, simply because he could. [/quote]

You can’t feel compassion towards people who’ve never touched your life in any fashion. I’m not sure why you would even expect that.

Secondly, while admirable there isn’t anything particularly special about donating time to causes. Most people could do it if they wanted, but simply choose not to. Conversely, only a very small amount of people could ever reproduce what Robin Williams had done.

93

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

And that is the point. Not that people have compassion for RW. That is fine. [/quote]

That may be your point, and it’s a fine one, but it’s not the point expressed by some of the people in this thread.

CLINK’s principle point was about the classless, ignorant (I mean the term literally) bullshit that is always flung around in the aftermath of a news item involving suicide. You’re right that he doesn’t know that the people talking that nonsense haven’t dealt with depression themselves, but he is right that what they’re saying is childish and stupid either way.

If you discover that Robin Williams offed himself in order to avoid something like debt or criminal charges, go ahead and call him a coward. Maybe I’ll join you. Until then, if you (universal you, not “you” as in Beans) insist on tossing insults at a suicide the relevant details of which are unknown to you, you are in the unenviable position of being both a fool a dick.

Edited

94

[quote]countingbeans wrote:
You’re missing the point people are trying to make, much like Crink’s little hypocritical rant.

Not one person I’ve seen lamenting this man’s death has any single hand knowledge of his life. He might have been a really shitty person in his personal life, people don’t know.

But, the over all point isn’t that one shouldn’t have compassion for RW, it’s there are plenty of people out there that need compassion that the same people super upset about RW ignore every single fucking day of their lives.

There is a child sitting in a Hospital in Boston right now that is not going to die next week thanks to everyday people. There is an organization of regular folks, who in their spare time, donate time in money into a program that brings victims of tragedy from all over the world to this hospital in order to save their life that they otherwise would have lost.

No one laments on social media and makes threads for the kids that don’t get transported, no one has compassion when one of these regular folks passes, and no one gives two flying fucks if one of those people has depression.

And that is the point. Not that people have compassion for RW. That is fine. It’s that it seems because dude got paid to play pretend all his life he gets more than someone who sacrificed time and meals with his own kids to save some stranger kids life, simply because he could. [/quote]
Yea but why is that so bad? I mean really. If I’m going to be very, very frank, I don’t give a shit about any number of random people that I’ve never met dying whether they’re kids or adults or depressed or not, because they’ve done nothing for me, and I have no attachment to them.

On the other hand I grew up obsessed with watching Steve Irwin on TV; he provided me with entertainment and knowledge, and I was fucking sad when he died. That’s just our biology. You grow a psychological attachment to people who provide you with value. We’re designed that way. It doesn’t matter what he was like in real life. It doesn’t matter that you never personally met him. All that matters is that you felt that benefit and that attachment.

It’s not hypocritical even in the slightest. Some kid dying of not getting his heart transplant didn’t make me laugh for 10 years of my life. Is it sad? Obviously. If I knew him or his friends or his family or had some connection to him, I’m sure I’d be sad when he dies, but I don’t. You might think an attachment to an actor is fake and absurd, but it’s still more than you will have to someone whose name you just read on a donor list. There is literally nothing there, and biologically your brain has no reason to form an attachment with that person.

If we grew psychological attachment to EVERY random person who ever died we’d probably go insane. If we grew no attachment whatsoever we’d have fared significantly worse throughout history given that our survival was based on strong social bonds between individual groups and families. The attachment and sadness is part of natural selection; keeping your offspring and loved ones safe. It’s just applied a little differently in this age.

Does all that make sense?

95

All of you seem to be missing that his show just got cancelled and he was on the verge of going bankrupt because of the ex wives’ alimony that he was literally working himself to death to pay.

The guy has had obvious problems with constantly seeking an audience to make himself feel complete due to the negligence of his parents as a child.
He was basically Pagliacci with the added weight of the vampiric whores the state “justice” system turns ex wives into.

96

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]Jewbacca wrote:

So, while I do understand the need not to mock those with depression, it does not sound like Mr. Williams had that problem. He had a lot of debt, had to do crappy commercial work to pay off bitchy ex-wives. This sounds a lot more like Situation B than Situation A, but I suppose we will never know.
[/quote]

Not really, given that he had a long history with depression according to all the write-ups of his death.

What evidence leads you to believe that it “sounds a lot more like” your selfish depression than clinical depression or mental illness?[/quote]

News reports stating as much. Again, note my post clearly stated “I don’t know,” and that “we will never know.”

97

[quote]TooHuman wrote:
All of you seem to be missing that his show just got cancelled and he was on the verge of going bankrupt because of the ex wives’ alimony that he was literally working himself to death to pay.

The guy has had obvious problems with constantly seeking an audience to make himself feel complete due to the negligence of his parents as a child.
He was basically Pagliacci with the added weight of the vampiric whores the state “justice” system turns ex wives into.

[/quote]

This touches on my earlier question to Jewbaca. Could there be a possibility that it’s a combination of A and B and not just ‘either or’? That’s where I’m leaning for now.

98

[quote]TooHuman wrote:
All of you seem to be missing that his show just got cancelled and he was on the verge of going bankrupt because of the ex wives’ alimony that he was literally working himself to death to pay.
[/quote]
I don’t know that we missed it, it’s just not what’s being discussed.

But yes, he had lost all his money due to having to pay his ex-wives a 30 million dollar alimony. His house had been on the market for years unsuccessfully. And he felt ashamed and depressed at the failure of the new venture that was his return to acting. On top of that, this is pure speculation, there were things in the story that made me wonder if his current marriage wasn’t dissolving as well.

99

[quote]TooHuman wrote:
weight of the vampiric whores the state “justice” system turns ex wives into.
[/quote]

Alimony sucking him dry is what his actual friends say was the problem.

100

[quote]therajraj wrote:

You can’t feel compassion towards people who’ve never touched your life in any fashion. [/quote]

False.

[i]noun: compassion; plural noun: compassions

sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others[/i]

Why the hell do you think these people give up their time and money to save kids they have never, ever known for a single second?

It certainly isn’t for the e-props they get on facebook or the phat royalty checks they get from acting like a goof ball on TV.

[quote]Secondly, while admirable there isn’t anything particularly special about donating time to causes. Most people could do it if they wanted, but simply choose not to. Conversely, only a very small amount of people could ever reproduce what Robin Williams had done.
[/quote]

So… Because “most people could, but choose not to” the people that actually do aren’t particular special?

Really?

You’re smarter than that.

And let’s not sit here and place some ever lasting intrinsic value on playing pretend. Does he have a talent for it? Sure. Does Derek Jeter play a good short stop? Yes. They both still play for a living.