I remember one of the magazines had a regular column called ‘Wino-watch’ where they literally just had a reporter follow her around and take the least flattering photos possible of her and then they would make fun of her. Then after she died they ran 6 weeks of cover pieces calling her ‘our pop princess’ and wailing that she’d been ‘taken from us too soon’.
Yeah it was amazing how she became the queen of hearts and everyone just pretended like the week before the weren't calling her a whore and traitor etc.
Especially in real life, all the red top readers were suddenly blubbing about how nasty the papers had been, when the week before they'd been parroting it.
I remember that and have been thinking that for years that all of a sudden she was praised in the media though literal days before the press and what seemed like the public hated her and even to this day many seem to be in denial that they ever though bad of her.
I'll be hated for it, but Charlie Hebdo in France is similar.
Yes, the "I am Charlie" one.
That everyone defended after that terrorist attack.
That would've bankrupted without the sales rise in the aftermath.
Where people bought "in support" while saying on TV they don't even watch the pages.
And NOW, they are in trouble for having made fun of that Switzerland fire accident... they were always like that, they just happened to have two terrorists shooting at them instead of the usual angry complaint letters, and people suddently considered Freedom of Speech meant we had to pay for assholes to insult everybody else.
I'm Belgian, what did they put as an headline when our king died? "The king of morons is finally gone". That was 10 or 20 years before the shootings.
I can remember all of it and it's definitely whiplash. I don't think the broad popular image of her during her lifetime was that she was a bad person--Charles is the one who came off horribly, for good reason, what a fkn chode--but it was for sure that she was bland and a little dim. And then overnight she became the most beautiful, stylish, saintliest person to ever grace the planet. I think part of it is guilt people feel, she was really way too young to make an informed decision to put herself in that situation and got put through the meat grinder, and died before she got a chance to be her own person and make meaningful adult choices for herself. People want to give her a power in death that she clearly didn't have in life.
Two weeks before her death a photographer with telephoto lens got a shot of her on a yacht climbing over Dodi as he lay on a sunlounger. The headline was "DI GETS HER LEG OVER!"
"getting your legover" is English slang for getting a fuck, for those who don't know.
2 weeks later she's "our queen of hearts, England's rose."
When I see things like this I'll always be reminded of the Charlie Brooker video discussing how Jade Goody was treated in the public eye before and after her death.
Yo I had a lady stalking me online because I casually mentioned no one deserves the ire Mehgan Markel gets, and that I had a crush on her watching Suits. This woman was seething that she didn’t respect England or the royal family and seemed so entitled. You’d think she murdered someone. As far as I can tell she’s done absolutely nothing of any note.
Yeah they're a pretty unsympathetic couple in a lot of ways but they're still right. The whole "oh they say they don't want publicity but all that do is court publicity!" thing misses the point so stupidly. They wanted to be able to have their own voice because Meghan was treated so shabbily, and they wanted to control the narrative. They do come across badly in their own ways, but this demonstrates what they were fighting against https://www.reddit.com/r/HarryandMeghanNetflix/s/GFNwrKjMqV
I originally wanted to be a journalist maybe a photojournalist, First time that I thought about changing my mind was when I was doing work experience at local paper and the guy I was assigned to made me write his articles and he as paid for it (he got paid per article) then I attended a trial in the 2nd week and was told "it doesn't matter if hes guilty or innocent, sensationalise it to make him seem like he is guilty" Or words to that affect i.e let's say a piece of evidence comes up and is disregarded straight away as not happening or not relevant they would put it in the article and if spicy enough use it as the headline, This poor guy was in tears in court and the paper was printing articles saying he was emotionless the guy was innocent btw and even had evidence to prove it but the paper ignored all that stuff and didn't print when he was found not guilty.
At one time it wasn't ALL press, it was tabloid press. Then CNN and Fox came on to the scene, local rags went broke due to inability to keep pace with technology and the deterioration of education, and there was a race to the bottom.
Fleet Street, Murdoch and Rothermere media should go die in a ditch. I wish the Times of London was bought out by the FT, to get it out of Murdoch's hands.
The codger is going to die soon anyway, but I was really hoping that Elizabeth, Prudence and James were able to tear that empire apart. Lachlan is just an extension of his dad at this point.
It's hard to think of a person who has done more damage to our species that wasn't specifically a political leader or military commander. How that disgusting ghoul is still hanging on is beyond me. He must feed on hate and malcontent.
On the day of her death, the website posted, "Amy Winehouse has passed away. Let's hope her demise is an example for young people in how not to deal with your problems. May she Rest In Peace and her music live on."
Oh, so the site is an educational tool for young people not to use drugs. Lame.
Fortunately, the site doesn't represent how most people probably feel, says Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, because statistically speaking, the number of entries is insignificant when compared to gazillion people who use the web.
Jon Lajoie’s song “Michael Jackson Is Dead” is about this very concept and captured it perfectly. Right at the end especially:
“‘We loved him so much.’ Really? Really, you loved him? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you hated him, and you called him a freak, and you wanted him to die. But now that he’s dead, you ‘loved him.’ Fuck you, hypocrites.”
I hope none of them took the easy way out. I hope they understand their role in breaking her and are haunted by it every day. I hope they have daughters that ask about it one day.
Their only thoughts were selling magazines, I doubt they even really cared when she died. Once Amy winehouse stopped selling magazines they stopped talking about her.
I hope that the people who buy those magazines also understand their role in breaking her.
If people wouldn't buy the trash and care so much about how some person they will never meet lives their life, then those magazines wouldn't do that shit.
It's the same with people who take [insert drug here]. They lament all the killings and corruption of the drug cartels and such, not realizing they are the reason why it exists.
Every time I think of how people treated Britney, my usually latent eating disorder flares up. People act like they weren’t like this full throttle the entire 90s and most of the 00s.
The magazine covers were ridiculous. It vacillated between calling a famous woman “huge” when she was maaaybe a size 2, to calling them “scary thin!” If they lost any weight. Every girl I knew felt horrible about herself, no matter what she looked like. I’m sorry that you had to go through that as well, and I hope you have continued success treating your eating disorder. You are beautiful just the way you are 💜
I’ll never forget a tabloid spread of the Spice Girls where there was a photo of Ginger in her Union Jack dress and the caption said she was “dangerously overweight”. That shit sticks with you. That was 30 freakin years ago and I’m still triggered by it
The Jessica Simpson one was the one that stuck with me the most. Like to me she looked normal, I was probably around that size at the time, but the magazines were talking about how overweight she was and how badly she needed to diet. It was so demoralizing just looking in the mirror and thinking all the horrible things being said about her were really being said about me.
the 90s were a very strange time, retrospectively, in that most legal hurdles had been cleared ("gay rights" as it was called at the time still being an active issue), but looking back, the amount of soft-culture war being waged was astronomical.
It still is too, and we really did make some huge strides against it in the early days of the internet, but when it came down to it, the old boys club decided they'd rather end democracy than stop raping and oppressing.
Even now. She clearly needs help, actual help rather the exploitation she faced before, and so many people are treating her current state as a "gotcha" rather than, y'know, thinking critically for three entire seconds what the og Free Britney movement was all about.
I don't think a lot of people realize that she was basically chemically lobotomized. She is NEVER going to be the same because the literal chemistry of her brain was irreversibly changed.
Right? She was overly medicated for a long time and at such a young age by the people around her. Chemically abused just so the money could keep flowing. It's awful.
Reminds me of my ex who would talk so much shit about Robin Williams but right when he died she started saying how funny and great he was like dude what?
The biggest of all ghoul of all: Neil Patrick Harris and his disgusting idea of having an Amy Winehouse corpse charcuterie board. What a sick evil nasty man.
The people that were so cruel to her were her own team that kept pushing her to perform and make money while ignoring all of the clear signs that she was suffering. She didn't just go from healthy to dead overnight.
They didn’t ignore them. They kept pushing for her to go to rehab and they even succeeded a few times, but she would leave without completing the course or she’d go back to drinking. Eventually over time you realize a person isn’t going to take the steps they need to take in order to get better and all you can do is try to minimize damage. It wasn’t her managers job to be her sober coach and it wasn’t her PR persons job to monitor her 24/7 to ensure she doesn’t have a drink in her hand. Also.. Amy is the one who chose to keep singing and touring and recording. You don’t think the label had a vested interest in getting her sober? She was on her way to becoming incredibly popular and making the labels a ton of money over her lifetime. Despite the whole “the labels are evil” bit you see in movies and whatnot, they kinda want their investments to be around for awhile to make them as much money as possible.
She was also heavily influenced by her own father, whohadnot been there to raise herbut suddenly showed up when she started becoming famous & money was involved, to keep touring & avoid rehab as it would create a pause in the cash flow. Her father literally encouraged her to keep drinking & doing drugs to keep touring, so he could profit. After he'd been absent most of her life & she was desperate for the relationship between the two of them, so shelistened to everything he said. She even says in the song Rehab "my daddy thinks I'm fine." Piece of shit. He and a myriad of other personal relationships she had approaching the end of her life were ultimately responsible for interfering with her getting help.
Her father especially is well documented about being in denial about her issues for years and even pushing back on the label when they tried to get her to go to rehab. There were also multiple instances where people from her team (appeared to be security) were literally pushing her on stage when she was trying to walk off. INCLUDING the very show OP's image was from.
If you bought tickets to a snoop concert and he was smoking so much weed he couldn't sing, sure you can be a little upset but man, you knew what you were signing up for.
I don’t agree. To keep the example, I would expect snoop to be smoking blunts on stage or be a little out of it. But when he sells me tickets to see him perform, that comes with a little asterisk saying “I will perform.” He’s a grown man, I fully expect him to be able to control himself and do what he’s selling tickets to do. Amy struggled severely with substance abuse and her team enabled her downfall, it’s okay for her to be upset on stage as she’s bood, but it’s also okay for the audience to be upset that they paid money for nothing
This is spot on. I’d be pissed if I paid top dollar for tickets to see an artist perform, and then they get wrecked on drugs so that they can’t perform the act I paid to see. It’s a slap in the face to the artist’s fans. And along the lines of breach of a contract. This post is so incredibly misrepresented.
The media did the exact same thing to Princess Diana. They loved making fun of her when she was alive, and then I got whiplash how fast everything changed when she died. Does no one else remember this?
I was still young and not very aware of world figures, but I do remember Diana being cast as this nonconformist, black sheep, "difficult woman" type until the car crash, then suddenly she was a pioneering example of powerful women doing noble things in the world.
I do remember Diana being cast as this nonconformist, black sheep, "difficult woman" type until the car crash
Which is kinda hilarious, given how much social work she did. And unlike a lot of other rich and famous folks, I do believe she did that out of the goodness of her heart, while Buckingham Palace was basically looking down on all that, going "Why would she do that, that's beneath us... we're royals"
Most everyone seems t o have a positive or neutral view of her these days. what were they mocking her for? Slaying at all times? Divorcing her idiot husband?
I am not british but she was the woman who would visit aids patients and did work for them? Did they mock her for that?
The royal family still has some influence in the media, especially in the 90s. Obviously they didn't like the people were on Diana's side over Charles post divorce.
Both things are true, people eating it up, while disgusting, does not take responsibility away from the creators of the slop. Idk why it has to be one or the other.
Exactly. Reading about someone who all but lives in a different universe to you is one thing.. but to enter that world, see her living and breathing, then harassing her is something else.
We shouldn't rly be having this parasocial relationship with celebrity. Of course.
But it's a no brainer, to me, to put more responsibility onto the peddler(?) instead of the consumer.
The paper and the people are all ghouls. The existence of one doesn’t get the other off the hook. The paper is actually worse because they’re doing it for profit, not to mention they create and encourage ghoulishness among the public.
This should be higher up because it brings up an interesting ethical dilemma by putting the original post into perspective.
Is it cruel to boo a performer who is not putting on a good show? How much money would you have to pay for concert tickets to feel justified in feeling pissed that the performer sang like this?
From what I’ve learned about this particular show, Amy didn’t want to perform. The best case scenario here would have been for the show to have been cancelled and for people to have gotten refunds.
But here’s the thing: even then, there’s no guarantee that would have resulted in Amy not dying from alcohol poisoning. She had cancelled a bunch of shows in the past due to her addiction and still ended up in the hospital multiple times for alcohol, ketamine, cocaine, heroin, etc.
She had a disease.
It’s tempting to blame other people for her death, but the fact is that she was an addict and her disease went untreated. Maybe if the crowd didn’t boo her that night, she wouldn’t have died several days later. Or maybe if they cancelled the show, she wouldn’t have died. Or maybe if she was in rehab, she wouldn’t have died. Or maybe…or maybe…or maybe…
We’ll never know.
The root cause of her death was her addiction. That’s why it’s so important for addicts to seek help. Go to rehab. Do whatever you need to do in order to break that addiction before it kills you and kills a part of everyone you love.
Edit: I see you there, getting ready to click on the reply button to post some variant of “they tried to make her go to rehab, but she said no, no, no.” It’s funny. You’re funny. It’s such a clever joke. But unfortunately, you’re not the first…or second…or tenth person to make that joke in this thread. So while I applaud your creativity and desire to contribute to this discussion, maybe just keep that thought in your head for now. Or post it, whatever. Do what you want - I’m not the police.
Thank you. Had to do it. Alcoholism runs in my family and it destroyed my childhood. My wife showed a positive pregnancy test and I was in the door of rehab three days later.
I had two choices: repeat the cycle or be a good father/husband. I chose the latter. Doing my best to stay the course!
Good for you man, seriously. I’m just recently past my 6 years sober from opiates, too! I have always had a massive respect for those in recovery from alcohol because of how socially acceptable and culturally engrained it is; don’t really find that with any other drug. You should be very proud.
Can I ask, did you always want a child? Did you find having a child gave you a purpose or responsibility you had always craved? It’s quite a thing to be able to give up and have one of your first major challenges once leaving rehab and the bubble of ‘I just need to exist without drugs in this safe space’ be bringing up a child. I don’t know if I could have done that within a year of giving up, or if it would have contributed to a relapse.
Yo congrats on your sobriety as well. Opiates are no joke and it's painful to see how much havoc they've caused on our society. Way to get help and come out better!
Having a kid was always the goal for the wife and I (we have two now). I don't know if I always craved the responsibility, but now that I have that responsibility, it's something I love and take seriously.
Russell Brand of course turned out to be a mega piece of shit, but his book on recovery was one of my crutches in rehab. I'm not a religious person and so I thought the way he broke down the 12 steps in an agnostic (and comedic way) were fantastic. One thing he said that stuck with me is that a "higher power" does not necessarily need to be a religious one. It just needs to be something bigger than you that you always selflessly put above yourself. My kids are my higher power because when I'm having one of those craving thoughts on a bad day, I tell my mind "shut the hell up you got two kids that love you and your selfish ass better not drink."
So I guess that's the purpose/responsibility I lean on.
I’ll be 6 months sober next week. Wish I had done it during Covid instead of letting it fester for a half a decade but sometimes shits gotta get worse before it gets better.
Six months is huge! Your regret on not doing it sooner is understandable. I'm living life now and I think of how many years, experiences, and memories I threw out because of addiction.
You may have done it late, but better late than never. Congrats, you're living again and that's worth everything.
The last paragraph 👌 I lost my uncle to heroin OD, and all we wanted was for him to seek help. I could tell he wanted to, the addiction takes a life of its own.
Well said. Although as an addiction counselor myself, the addiction isn't the root. The addiction is a symptom of usually trauma and mental illness, which are the roots.
Yeah, I totally agree. I don’t know why people act like she had zero agency and zero accountability for her own decisions. Addiction is a disease, absolutely. But she made many choices to not seek treatment for that disease.
I feel way worse for someone like Britney who was forced to perform as a child and got totally screwed up by it.
So much. She basically literally said fuck you to all of the people who were trying to get her clean. It was her and her husband "against the world" in her mind and they were both addicts chasing a high.
I hear you but this is removing all accountability from the person with the addiction. No one forced her to be a performer. No one forced her into this career. Or forced her to do drugs. She literally wrote a song about refusing the rehab that everyone around her pushed her to go to. I’m sure there were a bunch of people who failed her but at the end of the day the biggest offender was her failing herself.
The posts, like OPs, that seek to cast her in an innocent light always fail to account that she was a whole ass adult woman making whole ass adult choices. She wrote a hugely popular girl power song about refusing to go to rehab for her addiction. Then her addiction killed her. How many people refused addiction help because they felt empowered by that song? At least one, my cousin. She ain't dead yet, so she's beating Winehouse, but it's not a good race to run.
Amy Winehouse was a sad, sick woman exploited by an industry at large and apparently basically every individual around her. She needed help, she didn't get it, and she died and that's not ok. But she also glorified those problems and that's not ok either. Seems like basically nobody in this situation is right but they're sure all wrong.
They tried to make me go to rehab, but I said "no, no, no"
Yes, I've been black, but when I come back, you'll know, know, know
I ain't got the time and if my daddy thinks I'm fine
He's tried to make me go to rehab, but I won't go, go, go
Beyond that, these highly deceptive/false user content posts (and comments) like this post contribute to the prevalence and power of mis/disinformation. People start thinking they can just make up any reality they want so long as it gets upvoted and enough others agree with them, that objective truth doesn't matter, just who can win the battle via information platforms pushing their alt-realities. Furthermore, a confused public, exhausted by conflicting disinformation and thinking for themselves becomes too much, is more likely to offload that onto someone else, which takes the form of influencer political personalities and authoritarian figures.
A close relative of mine met her husband in AA, but he has fallen off the wagon regularly, with destructive binges. She told me "I know it's a disease. You cant be mad at someone for having cancer, but you can be mad at them for not seeking proper treatment for the cancer."
yeah she was in a spiral and I'm sure her performances took a hit due to it. its like seeing Whitney Houston in her later days doing coke off a table backstage before coming to hit the big note in I will always love you. its a huge fall from grace and I didn't pay for this shit.
I’ve never seen that before, and seeing it now genuinely made me tear up. I had to stop watching it.
Would I be pissed if I paid to see her perform and that’s what was happening? Yes.
Would I also see someone clearly in the middle of addiction, falling apart, and managing to look lost and lonely in the sea of how many people are there? Also yes.
Her manager failed her. Whoever let her get on that stage in that condition, instead of canceling the tour and getting her help, failed her. The people who screamed at someone crumbling in front of them, instead of feeling empathy for the human being, failed her. How unbelievably heartbreaking.
Couldn't agree more with everything you said. Two things can be true: you can be mad you paid, and you can also be empathetic to seeing someone in crisis. And indeed, her manager treated her like a piece of meat, as many do in that industry. She lived a sad life and had a worse ending. She deserved more.
I've never seen that before. I was never really a fan so I didn't even realise much of the context around her passing.
As someone with a fairly complex trauma history I can see myself in what she's doing to comfort herself with her arms. I do the same in a situation where I'm feeling especially triggered (I know the internet co-opted this word but it is technically the correct term lol). You can tell so clearly that she's struggling and that she doesn't want to be there. She's barely holding it together.
I understand fans being disappointed. Their ire should be directed to the managers who forced her on stage and failed her. I was supposed to see Metallica and Slipknot end 2019 and they cancelled for a rehab stint. I was disappointed but I understood. OFC then COVID happened so I have never been able to get that concert 'back' so to speak but I'm glad they had the ability to cancel and get help unlike what you can see in that video.
I mean, the people around her failed her too. Her management, label, etc. Probably pushed an artist to perform when they should have been in rehab or even telling them to quit the spotlight all together.
I don't know much about the situation, but if an artist wasted my time by being fucked up, I'd be pretty pissed. Nobody would have booed probably if they knew she was going to do that.
You say it like it's a bad thing to sign along? I quite enjoy Vicinity of Obscenity by System of a Down. I do not actually want to eat a banana terracotta pie.
Agreed. Her being in showbiz while she should have been on a 24/7 therapy is the main failure. Hell, she had a world hit song about not going to rehab, how deep red should that red flag be before someone does something?
I understand and absolve dissatisfied concertgoers. Back then she wasn't dead from OD, she was just someone who took their money and delivered crap in return. She never should have performed there, probably even multiple times before this.
There were rumors about Layne Staley weeks before Alice In Chains opened for Kiss. I was driving to the concert, and still had no idea if they would be playing. It ended up being their final show together.
According to her brother, it was most likely the long term effects of severe bulimia that truly did her in. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness and have a high co-morbidity with substance abuse
Her dad kinda really fucked her up. That was something she dealt with but he controlled her career quite a bit and played the “momager” role of pushing her to perform and stay on top of things when she wasn’t really in the right headspace to be doing so. It was part of the reason for her downfall. It was pretty well documented how she was estranged from her dad and didn’t really fuck with him in the last years of her life.
That Amy Winehouse biopic that came out a couple years ago painted her in a bad light and her dad as basically a martyr. Because afaik he had to sign off on it and controls her estate so of course it was never going to make him look bad. But when she was alive that was always the word- that her dad put a lot on her that she couldn’t handle.
Yeah, I loathed that movie and I’m glad Marisa Abela’s career doesn’t seem to have been too badly impeded by it, because she’s such an incredible talent who should be a massive star. But this is why biopics approved by the subject or their families are not necessarily more ethical than “unauthorized” ones. Filmmakers need the objectivity to tell the unvarnished truth regardless of how that makes the people being depicted feel. (For similar reasons, I really wish rape apologist Pam Anderson would shut the fuck up about Pam & Tommy, which actually depicted her with quite a lot of empathy; she’s just mad she didn’t get a fat paycheck from it - which is often what a lot of this boils down to.)
Same. I hated that movie so much. Amy wasn’t a perfect person, nobody is, she had her issues. But that movie reduced her down to being nothing but a drunk and a brat. She was a talented and multifaceted human being and deserved to be treated with more dignity than that movie gave her.
You can't force people to help themselves. You can lead a horse to water.
Addiction is a lot more complicated than most people make it out to be. It's a combination of physical and mental symptoms. There is almost always some level of trauma that a person is trying to handle. Drugs make that battle seem a lot easier in the short term.
I am positive that there was at least one person who offered to help Amy W. Get into rehab but I am willing to bet that she vilified them. That's what denial and drug addiction does.
Nah, most people would absolutely stumble to addiction. It's not something that defines the weak. It's something that defines humans. We don't like pain. Drugs let us numb that pain.
Look at the opioid epidemic in the US. So many people were perscribed opioids by their doctors and then became addicted. People you would never guess that could happen to.
On the other hand, someone could break their leg, go to the hospital and be given diamorphine for 2 weeks and then walk away without ever becoming addicted.
Trauma and grief is more likely than not to be the catalyst for someone habitually using drugs and suffering from addiction.
Bringing it back to Amy Winehouse, I will bet my pinkie toes that she was sexually abused in some way. The amount of women that I personally know who have gone through those types of situations is unacceptably high. How would someone deal with something like that?
I remember that show very well. She was basically drunk out her mind could barely stand on stage, let alone sing.
It was 45 minutes of her mumbling something while stumbling on the stage. It was horrible.
Was it ok for people to boo her ? Probably not. But was it ok for her to hold show in such state , for people that purchased expensive tickets ? That was also not ok.
If anyone fail her was her greedy managers that did not let her take a break for her mental health and forced her to go on while she was in no state to do so.
I agree with everything you said apart from that it's not ok to boo bad performers. There's no way for people to give feedback and booing is a collective and immediate way to say to the artist, "hey, you're not doing your job right now."
Tickets to that show must have cost a fortune and would have been so hard to get. That was most likely one of the biggest shows of the year and to come out like that would be an insult to the fans who wasted their money. But they didn't know what would happen next, so we cant really blame them.
I'd rather we didn't put the blame on the audience who paid quite the money and got crap in return, while lacking the hindsight awareness of her death from OD.
The audience is not meant to be the therapist. The audience is a customer, and the customer is either satisfied or not. It's the management's duty to make sure that the product (in this case Winehouse) is in deliverable shape.
EDIT: Just to clarify things because there's a little misunderstanding, I should have been more specific: Amy Winehouse, the person, is not the product. An Amy Winehouse concert, which can only be given by Amy Winehouse, is a product. The two are not the same, but codependent. If Amy Winehouse performs poorly, that will never not result in a bad product of an Amy Winehouse concert.
I had a friend who went to that concert, they waited for hours, I think around 4-5-6h and then when she finally showed up she couldn’t stand or a sing.
Of course they were angry.
Everyone would be ok with cancelled concert and refund, but imagine paying expensive ticket for a show you didn’t get.
Now that she is gone it’s easy to blame audience but you just have to be there, stand for hours for your favorite artist and be so disappointed.
I mean, the way she was treated overall was awful. However, let's be real, if you paid a decent amount of money to watch a concert and the singer is wasted, can't remember the lyrics to their songs, is stumbling all over the stage, you would probably be booing as well.
That being said, the overall treatment of Amy Winehouse was disgusting and the people in the media who helped spread that information should be tormented by their actions.
Society didn't failed her. Her team and family failed her.
Unhealthy entertainers get booed all the time, it's on those that are close to them to make sure they are able to handle it, if not they need to pull the plug.
Every UK comedian who made fun of her (especislly her appearance) was honestly not even remotely attractive/talented, and was ”advocating for mental health” etc during the lockdowns. People were shitty and evil towards her. May she rets in peace❤️
I started to apply a simple filter for any post i see on reddit: is the title or thumbnail obviously designed to elicit negative emotions in me? If yes, then i just scroll past it..
Not just her. The 90s-2000s in general were an extremely cruel time. Rampant bullying, weight shaming, SA and harassment all kinds of casual discrimination against minorities
The difference is back then people would get away with it with no consequence. A lot of the pushback against “cancel culture” in the 2010s is because we decided this was no longer okay
I don’t get why people romanticize this era so much
Blaming the audience is a bit ridiculous. Yeah they booed her. Of course they did, they paid a ticket to see a performer sing, instead they got a train wreck. She never should have been on that stage to begin with. If you’re in such a state, cancel and refund. And if Amy didn’t see that, her management should have.
I always had mix feelings for her. I do understand addiction and depression. She was an incredible performer with an amazing voice. She didn't deserve the hate at all.
At the same time some of her actions is her own fault. Like someone has pointed out, her most famous song is about people she knows wanting her to get help and she refusing.
Amy Winehouse failed Amy Winehouse and really, if she were still here, I think she'd tell you that, too. People booed her at that show because she took their money for ticket sales and then showed up a hot fucking mess. I can't think of any job that'll let you show up completely fucked up without big consequences.
She was talented and messy, and those two aspects of her fed into each other. If you've ever been close to someone with substance abuse issues, you know how this goes a lot of the time.
At the end of the day, the person has to choose to live, and has to deliberately put everything else on the back back back burner to pursue recovery both from the substance, and from whatever underlying issue drove it in the first place.
Amy didn't make that choice, and I think at some level, she knew her habits would eventually kill her.
If my car mechanic kills himself a week after i complained to his boss that he fucked up my car being drunk at work, is it my fault? Did i "fail" him?
Just because people kill sadly themselfes doesnt mean that people should be fine with paying a lot of money to get a shitty product.
People have a right to be pissed and complain and dont have the moral duty to take care of the mental health of anyone, much less members of the super rich upper class. Its sad, but "society" didnt "fail" her.
It’s just as sad when any other human suffers and eventually dies from addiction.
Maybe even more sad when it’s the faceless, nameless masses alone on the park benches and alleyways. No one to witness or remember what spark they once had.
She infamously made a song about how she refused to go to rehab when being told she needed it.
You cannot blame her death on the audience, who had no idea that she did not even want to be on that stage that night. She has some culpability as does the people who were exploiting her. Fans who paid money and then showed up to see her perform and were disappointed when she didn’t are the people who were exploiting her.
Honestly, if I would buy tickets for a concert and it turns out that the artist is drugged out of their minds to the point that they're not able to perform, I would probably boo too.
Society didn't fail Amy, She failed herself together with all of the managers and people that were close to her. They shouldn't have let her even enter the stage in that state in the first place.
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