Communal grief


Yesterday, a 36-year-old Top Gear presenter going by the name of Hamster crashed a drag racer trying to break the British land speed record. He is now in intensive care in a critical condition. As Paul Calf might say: "Poor fucker."
As I scanned the pages of the Sky News website I noticed they had put up a page for people to place their messages for the Hamster.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, of people have put messages on there.

Why?

OK, there's a tsunami, bomb attack, hurricane, war, etc and people need to try and contact family or friends by posting messages online or through a major news source. That makes sense. But this? I just don't get it.

When the news broke that a British man's wife and baby had been found shot dead in their home in Massachusetts in January this year (while I was drinking free red wine on the opening night of Nottingham's new Hooters), the media soon found out that the alleged killer, Neil Entwistle, had his own website where he posted pictures of the once happy (and bullet-free) family. It had a page where their friends and family could leave messages, like an arrogant version of letter-writing or email: "Hey, why keep these things private when I can show the whole world what people think of me!" (I was going to write that he probably regrets giving people that option now, but on reflection, it's probably pretty low on his list of regrets)

After the killings, this soon became swamped with random people opening their (stunted) minds and (lonely, deluded) hearts for, well, for two dead people to read. Bear in mind 50% of their intended readership was aged just nine months and was going to struggle, even without taking into account all the bad spelling.

Anyway, I thought "Why?" back then (before emailing the posters to see if they knew the Entwistles and could provide some input to the stories I was writing, of course). The mind boggled, Bruce Gold-stylee, even more when that site was taken down and some complete stranger (American, obviously) took it upon themselves to create another website where people could continue posting messages. Which they did?!?!?!?!?!


Oh well, here goes:

Dear Richard (aka the Hamster)
I don't know you beyond the fact you were the chirpy one on Top Gear. You don't know me at all. What you were doing at the time of your accident was a risk you were willing to take as part of your job. This message will make as much difference to your chances of surviving as all the others posted by your fans. Gary
PS Love the show!!!!!!

Best example from the list, by the way, is this:

"Don't go and do an 'Irwin' on us.

Posted by: Phillip Forsyth, Hong Kong"