The new American Way of Death - Salon.com

[Mortis]

ttp://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2007/07/31/deathspace/

Quotes from MC and DBD. 

[nerysinci]

I read that article at work the other day, meant to come and post it. It kind of annoyed me, if I remember correctly.

[Mortis]

yep  it's annoying.

I don't care a lot for the writer.

[nerysinci]

[quote author=Mortis link=topic=9118.msg480562#msg480562 date=1186059732]
yep  it's annoying.

I don't care a lot for the writer.
[/quote]

Whatever do you mean? She was SO unbaised!!!

[JustGretch]

And a quote from Andrea, too...She wasn't mean, it was good advice.
"Come on," writes a person identified only as "andrea0121." "I know when I was 13, my parents pretty much knew my every move. I certainly wasn't hanging out on train tracks spray painting shit. Here's my lesson for the day kids, DON'T PLAY ON F'ING RAIL ROAD TRACKS."

MC is so effing cruel. She's pretty much the meanest person here. I like how they outted her with her real name, scary mofos!
Things get cruel quickly. Not even two days after his death, a MyDeathSpace user writing under the moniker "Morbid Curiosity" (real name Teresa Davis) offers up a joke. Many graffiti writers are known by the pseudonymous "tags" they spray on walls and other public areas. "I think I found his tag: 'Dead,'" Davis writes in sparkly, glitter-painted font. Getting the comment past the forum moderators ostensibly responsible for removing offensive content from MyDeathSpace wasn't difficult in this case: Davis is a forum moderator, one of five who volunteer their time patrolling the message boards.

[daybreaksdisdain]

Well at least my quote wasn't twisted to sound all rainbows and puppy dogs, *whew*!

[alliekat]

Weird.  It started off sounding pretty biased, but by the last (third) page, it took a turn.  I wish they wouldn't post so many comments out of context, though.  They try SO hard to make us look like heartless bastards.  I just don't see anything wrong with what goes on here.  Guess I'm just a bitch like that.

[Chauncy]

Interesting. MC has private blogs? 

Anyway if any press wants to contact me i am open for interviews. :lol:

[daybreaksdisdain]

[quote author=Wick link=topic=9118.msg480895#msg480895 date=1186079562]
Interesting. MC has private blogs? 

Anyway if any press wants to contact me i am open for interviews. :lol:
[/quote]

:sleep:

[MorbidCuriousity]

I'm not doing interviews any more. This writer, Jamie, who is actually a guy with a girl name is a dishonest prick like the rest of the media. I told him I would not talk to him if he already had his story written with a negative spin on it and just needed a way to twist my words. We spent a good 5 min. talking about that and he assured me it wasn't that way.

I can't believe I wasted like 45 min. of my day on the phone with him. He acted like he was really getting what the site was about.

And that post I made about the kids tag being: "dead"... I'll bet that kid would have laughed. There's a real tag artist by that name. But Jamie isn't hip to that.

[MorbidCuriousity]

P.S. Jamie, (I'm sure you'll read this) you spelled my name wrong. Jesus. I actually have a degree in Journalism and rule #1 is spelling the names correctly. It's what they teach you in intro to Journalism.

And your paraphrasing of pretty much everything I said blows.

[mydeathspace]

[quote author=Morbid Curiousity link=topic=9118.msg481677#msg481677 date=1186111839]
P.S. Jamie, (I'm sure you'll read this) you spelled my name wrong. Jesus. I actually have a degree in Journalism and rule #1 is spelling the names correctly. It's what they teach you in intro to Journalism.

And your paraphrasing of pretty much everything I said blows.
[/quote]

If you read the comments to his article you'll see that salon.com is nothing special as far as the writers go. Some of the people who left comments were very intelligent.

[Chauncy]

[quote author=mydeathspace link=topic=9118.msg481809#msg481809 date=1186119590]
If you read the comments to his article you'll see that salon.com is nothing special as far as the writers go. Some of the people who left comments were very intelligent.
[/quote]

Yeah like this one.

A Mess of Prudery and Sensationalism Infotainment unworthy of Salon

I am not immune to expressing uptight and judgmental opinions about Society Today and Online discourse. Yet this article and many of the resulting comments display a depressing reactionary myopia.

This article is another DECADENT THREAT TO SOCIETY FROM THE ONLINE YOUTH, a mix of salaciousness and high-minded scolding posing as informed opinion. It might as well be the script from 20/20 or a local news sweeps week: NEW WEBSITE DESECRATES THE DEAD - IS SOCIETY DOOMED?

The dishonest hot button manipulation starts at the headline: "Morbid curiosity and ridicule have replaced respect for the deceased"

This is a single website, not people desecrating graves, disrupting funerals or even - and this is important - harassing families of the dead. It presents material readily available to anyone who googles a name on a death announcement. The allegedly shocking incivility can be avoided by not reading and, more importantly, not participating.

Gallows humor and morbid disrespect existed long before MyDeathSpace, the web or Modern Society. As has debate about whether nasty irreverence is a valid reaction to death or not.

Jamie Pietras uses Fox News type rhetoric to imply something nefarious is going on with little proof: "By evening, total strangers have already visited Kraft's MySpace page and begun chiming in on his discussion board" And? How many comments are negative? Are they a direct result of MyDeathSpace? Pietras doesn't say, because cause and effect is tenuous at best.

Other rhetorical gems:

"If Patterson's motivations were altruistic, he revealed them in peculiar ways...a tag line read 'Myspace Deaths! We need to cut back anyway.'" Gallows humor is A New Evil!

"Twenty years ago, death was discussed in muted tones, the deceased treated reverently...The Internet has changed all that."

And we get to the hard of the real thesis: scolding the internet as a newfangled pit of depravity. I can relate, but how old is Pietras? I suspect not old enough to understand speaking ill of the dead, gossiping and snide comments about strangers predates the internet and is not caused by it.

".the response to death is more like a free-for-all than the respectful hush of yore. It's not just MyDeathSpace. Even forum postings on mainstream news sites can read more like angry restroom graffiti than even-tempered letters to the editor."

It's posts on a website, not text displayed at a wake.

"For better or worse, this is a new American way of death, where a MySpace page takes the place of your obituary and becomes fodder for worldwide forum banter." Only if you have a myspace page, die and your family has no means of deleting it. Which even at 2,800 is still a tiny percentage of humanity.

"Asked why she thought she or anyone else had a right to pry so deeply and comment on the death of a stranger, Perry admitted this was 'a good question,' though she fell short of an answer. 'I don't know,' she says. 'I just like to put my opinion out there.'" Thus proving all users are emotionally shallow if a self-righteous journalist is determined to make you look like an idiot.

"While some have written to Patterson threatening to sue MyDeathSpace or have the site shut down, there is little First Amendment basis for actually doing so..." proving this is a lawless threat requiring legislation to stop a *gasp* website using information in the public domain. Clearly this must be outlawed!

The lowest point is the implied yet evidence-free accusation MyDeathSpace retaliates against critics. Visitors who write Patterson e-mails critical of MyDeathSpace run the risk of having the text of their e-mail (and oftentimes, their e-mail address) publicly displayed..." Note how "oftentimes" is unquantified. "Salon contacted several people who are critical of the site, but none would speak for the sake of an article, fearing repercussions by the MyDeathSpace community." Oh bullshit. Are we to believe no-one would even comment anonymously?

"Patterson argues that if you don't like the site, don't come...tell that to those who arrive at MyDeathSpace inadvertently, having Googled the name of a deceased friend or relative." Tell that to the innocent victims, Mr. Patterson. Good god, did O'Reilly ghostwrite this?

This article is almost a textbook example of the sort of dishonest rhetoric Glenn Greenwald regularly deconstructs in his blog. So why did Salon publish such reactionary, exploitive junk?

[alliekat]

That^^  is awesome.  Was it one of us, I wonder?  Whoever it was deserves a hardy pat on the back.  Hooray for putting that stupid reporter in his place!

[nerysinci]

And it's kind of annoying that they call it AMERICAN. Lol. There are plenty of "morbid freaks" in the UK and elsewhere DAMMIT!!!!!

[MorbidCuriousity]

[quote author=Wick link=topic=9118.msg481990#msg481990 date=1186129044]
Yeah like this one.

[/quote]

To be honest I told Jamie exactly that, albeit less eloquently I'm sure. I said this kind of interest in deaths is nothing new, it's your modern day version of sitting around the obits at the breakfast table discussing deaths.

I said a lot in the 45 min. - an hour of talking to him. What a waste.

Oh, and I'd place him in his early 20s (since that commenter wondered.)

[[Pandora]]

Wow, MC. What a total dick. I can't believe he did that to you. Ugh, that is the part I hate about interviews. They will bold face lie to you just to get you to talk.

[MorbidCuriousity]

Jamie: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm...ndID=186834538 WUSS!  :|

Some of his other fine work:

http://www.nypress.com/17/46/news&co...ns/feature.cfm

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

[Chauncy]

[quote author=Morbid Curiousity link=topic=9118.msg482086#msg482086 date=1186149704]
To be honest I told Jamie exactly that, albeit less eloquently I'm sure. I said this kind of interest in deaths is nothing new, it's your modern day version of sitting around the obits at the breakfast table discussing deaths.

I said a lot in the 45 min. - an hour of talking to him. What a waste.

Oh, and I'd place him in his early 20s (since that commenter wondered.)
[/quote]

Yeah I know. Next time talk to O'reilly. He has a no spin zone.

[nerysinci]

[quote author=Wick link=topic=9118.msg482913#msg482913 date=1186180897]
Yeah I know. Next time talk to O'reilly. He has a no spin zone.
[/quote]

omiguh I would LOVE for some of our most articulate members to showdown with O'RLY. It would give me happiness in pants. 

[andrea0121]

ZOMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!

I'll be signing autographs at 10pm ET.  :lol:

[Chauncy]

[quote author=andrea0121 link=topic=9118.msg482956#msg482956 date=1186183014]
ZOMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!

I'll be signing autographs at 10pm ET.   :lol:
[/quote]

That you? I like when you are that way. 

[vaga]

[quote author=andrea0121 link=topic=9118.msg482956#msg482956 date=1186183014]
ZOMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!

I'll be signing autographs at 10pm ET.   :lol:
[/quote]

LMAO!!

[Digital_Utopia]

Yeah, the Chicago Sun-Times ran this story in their "Controversy" section on Sunday. Guess it's probably the main reason I signed up (other than the fact that I was especially bored today lol) I think the only difference is that Sun-Times artists drew up some "cover art" for the story...If someone would like I could dig up a digital copy of the cover/article but otherwise...exact same article.

[MorbidCuriousity]

[quote author=Digital_Utopia link=topic=9118.msg486422#msg486422 date=1186436031]
Yeah, the Chicago Sun-Times ran this story in their "Controversy" section on Sunday. Guess it's probably the main reason I signed up (other than the fact that I was especially bored today lol) I think the only difference is that Sun-Times artists drew up some "cover art" for the story...If someone would like I could dig up a digital copy of the cover/article but otherwise...exact same article.
[/quote]

If you find it then start a new topic in this section.