Who would have thought a herd could moonwalk?

01 July 2009

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The acclaimed web theorist, Mark Earls, says that the death of Michael Jackson unleashed the extremes of collective action: mass mourning and sick jokes

Second, the response has been huge and emotional. Many feel a personal loss at the demise of the moonwalking Jackson (but almost certainly had never met the man) — not you or I maybe, but many millions. And on a scale that is hard to believe: for example, for 25 minutes on the 25th, Google was overwhelmed; such was the scale and the frequency of people typing in ‘Michael Jackson’ to the search engine that the folks in Mountain View assumed they were under cyber-attack. During this period, screens displayed only a ‘We’re sorry’ page. Both the social media and good ol’ text and email have hummed with personal (and often incoherent) statements of grief, and continue to do so, days later. From heartfelt messages of lament to fan videos, from ‘homage’ performances by celebrities to special commemorative cakes (yes, really http://www.cakewrecks.com), this seems to be an event that affects all kinds of people to a disproportionate degree. Now, as after the death of Princess Diana, normal and apparently sensible individuals seem to find themselves caught up in something bigger than themselves. And it has to be said, they seem to be enjoying it.

Equally, there has been a sudden explosion of sick jokes and gags, spinning from person to person, round and round the web. Most are probably unprintable and many definitely defamatory. A number of scurrilous websites and blogs have sprung up to take advantage of this outbreak of hunger for mortuary humour (including the self-explanatory ‘Deadmichaeljacksonjokes.com). My personal favourite suggests that the Jackson family’s second autopsy revealed that neither the sunshine, moonlight nor the good times were responsible. Instead, doctors wanted to ‘blame it on the boogie’. I also smiled at the joker who impersonated the Foreign Secretary and managed to fool a host of professional news journalists working for the likes of the Times, the Guardian and Sky with this odd twitter message: ‘Never has one soared so high and yet dived so low. RIP Michael’.

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Moonshine

July 2nd, 2009 8:19am Report this comment

A sigh ......ohhoooerrugh gggggrrrooooannnnnn.......enuff orlreddy (sic)

ian skidmore

July 2nd, 2009 11:30am Report this comment

must you add to the acres of newsprint wasted on this poor sick man?
Max Wall and Wilson Kepple and Betty did a much better moonwalk before he was born.
Forgive me if you have mentioned this. I haven't read the article

Kathryn Parsons

July 2nd, 2009 11:35am Report this comment

Genius...

Mr Green

July 3rd, 2009 10:40am Report this comment

When you say "we", please exclude me.

MikePost

July 3rd, 2009 1:17pm Report this comment

Only in America can a poor black boy grow up to be a rich white woman.

Peter Colledge

July 3rd, 2009 3:24pm Report this comment

Many years ago, there was a film satire where a white racist becomes black overnight. In no arena whatsoever could the reverse happen, and I'm sure Jackson knew this from an early age. (cf OJ Simpson in a social context)