fans mourn @joshgroban by attacking each other

So it happened again. I tweeted this.

You'll note I changed back to my original avi, my pet parrot, rather than the eagle with the pink cap.


I got a response.

She said

I said:

Here's the link to the instagram photo that we're talking about

https://www.instagram.com/p/BlBnKQTl8QI/?taken-by=bendybombshell

You'll note that at first I was confused and thought she was talking about the conversation I had the previous day with Daisy

Here's my blog about that

http://straightarrow372.blogspot.com/2018/07/rip-roaring-discussion-re-joshgroban.html

It just didn't occur to me that she could object to my sending a beautiful, artistic photo of scantily clad people.  Josh is no prude -- unlike some of his fans.  He would love that photo.

Apparently, fans are obsessed with the idea that if they could control what was tweeted to Josh they could have prevented him from leaving twitter.   They express this by attacking other fans.

In fact, historically, ever since Josh became famous, he has had a horror of fans attacking each other over social media posts directed at him.  He's talked about that repeatedly.  I included a screen shot of one of his comments in my immediately previous blog.

What was even worse was that if he defended a fan who was being attacked, then fans would attack him for getting involved.

I'm reminded of the five stages of grief:

Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance

Obviously, these fans are in the Anger and Bargaining stages, where they feel like somehow they could control whether he leaves by controlling what is tweeted to him -- not really understanding what was bothering him in the first place.

I withheld a political tweet just before he left, because I was worried that politics was what was upsetting him.  Of course, I don't know that. I'm just speculating.

rip roaring discussion re @joshgroban -- Ahh, it's been a while

NB: My interlocutor apologized and requested that her name be removed from the blog -- so I've edited it out.

It's been a while since I've been in one of these types of discussion.  I used to get into them all the time.  Screen shots follow

First, what she said:

Then what I said. Ugh. Sequence is lost here, but there never can be perfect sequencing in twitter discussions, because sometimes one party tweets in response to one tweet while the other person is composing a second tweet -- so the response ends up not being in sequence.

Links I referred to above, which you can't follow in screen shots.

https://creativesomething.net/post/55508909341/the-link-between-depression-and-creativity-and
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/whats-the-link-between-creativity-and-depression_us_592f3441e4b00afe556b0aac
http://straightarrow372.blogspot.com/2014/05/bipolar-boy-band-tweets.html
https://www.facebook.com/152218818163790/posts/583451145040553/
https://peterhollens.com/mad-world-depression/

This is reminding me of how people used to attack Lizzie, when she had thoughtful conversations with Josh on twitter. He always defended Lizzie. He always hated when fans attacked other fans for not being sheeples. He never wanted people to just fawn over him. He valued discussion.

He pleaded with fans over and over not to attack each other and to let him defend himself. It drove him crazy watching fans hurt each other.

I totally don't get [deleted]'s complaint at all. Why would I have to have had coffee with Josh to know that he said he was leaving twitter at the advice of his shrink? Why would I have had to have coffee with Josh to know about his many comments on twitter and in interviews about his many dark moments?  Why would I have to be in his family to respond to a tweet in which he himself raised mental health issues?

I think some fans grew up in families where discussions of any type were not welcome.  People were just supposed to brown nose those in power all the time.  I supposed that must be the dynamic in abusive families. If you aren't always saying nice positive things to the abusive daddy-o, he's going to beat you up.

Josh didn't grow up in that sort of family and neither did I. Well, half and half. My mom loved vigorous discussion and debate.  My dad hated them.  He didn't want them occurring in his presence.  My mom and I had to wait until he wasn't around.

Also, I think some fans still feel that mental illness, such as depression, is shameful and not to be discussed in public with strangers.  I don't feel that way.  As a matter of fact, I think that attitude is dead wrong.  We need to talk about mental health.  We can't help each other if we don't.  We need to recognize that mental illness is common.

I've been composing another blog about my feelings about Josh leaving twitter.  I thought that was going to be my next blog -- but this intervened.

I used to have endless discussions with Lizzie (late great tweep) about this business of geniuses necessarily being crazy -- and we don't want to fix them.  We need them to be crazy if we want them to keep creating works of genius.   She was a psychologist.  She wanted all mental illness fixed. I don't think that's desirable, myself.  I want Josh to be able to keep performing and composing.  If he gets to be perfectly well balanced, I doubt that he'll be able to continue to do that.

****

But the sad thing here is that he did used to sometimes jump in and discuss with us -- and now he won't. Alas.