Written by Tehneyat Waseem
Michael Jackson (MJ), the man many of us grew up listening to, grooving too, and gossiping about, the king of pop, has passed away. I got a text from my friend at midnight (no comment on that!) that he had passed away, and my instant reaction was ‘ok’. Nothing more, nothing less, and to be honest, I think it’s sad, but he had come towards the end of his career anyways, and I hadn’t heard anything amazingly great from him for the past few years, so I didn’t feel what I might have felt if we lost for example Fidel Castro.
So, as I was eagerly alerted in the middle of the night, in the morning, not surprisingly, everyone on facebook and twitter were giving their condolences. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was a little excited to see and learn whether all the hype about Iran would be replaced with status updates about MJ, and they were. I started thinking about whether a cause is only valid in social media when its audience allows it to be valid, and does this not make the cause a little teeny tiny weeny bit superficial? I certainly, as mentioned in my last blog, love it when people using social media stand together to promote or raise awareness to a cause, but at the same time, I am surprised at the shift in focus from Iran and hunger to all of a sudden to MJ. So the lesson learnt is that social media, interaction, personal contact with people on the internet, has much to do with feelings. What people are feeling is what is put out there, and what people are feeling is the message, the issue, the agenda.
This however brings attention to people using social media and their ability to put things into context, as I find it very funny that one person’s death can cause so much stirr, disturbance, change of focus, and ‘grief’. Regardless of whether people are upset because MJ’s contribution to music will cease to exist or because there is a general belief that famous people are immortal, I think that the shift in focus can be dangerous for those who are suffering out there (in Iran for example) because the shift of focus might happen at a crucial time. What is one day of status messages to the Iranian government? It means a day where they know that all media attention is no longer on them, and a lot can happen in 24 hours.
To finish off, I would like to say that today I learnt from the medical expert at the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims, that in Zimbabwe, more than 100 prisoners die every month from bad conditions in prison. At least we can be happy knowing that MJ died in his home, with his family there, not suffering from hunger, diseases, or the like. It was a natural death, and it happens to the best of us.
With all of my respect to Michael Jackson, as an individual, a man, a person, I give my condolences, being one of his fans.
Related blog post by Tehneyat: “Social Media – till death, Google, government or politics does us part”
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