{"id":20052,"date":"2013-04-30T09:45:33","date_gmt":"2013-04-30T14:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=20052"},"modified":"2013-04-30T09:45:33","modified_gmt":"2013-04-30T14:45:33","slug":"another-incident-of-hypersentimentality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/04\/30\/another-incident-of-hypersentimentality\/","title":{"rendered":"Another incident of hypersentimentality"},"content":{"rendered":"

In sp!ked<\/em>, Brendan O’Neill<\/a> discusses the latest opportunity for people to ostentatiously display their sentimentality:<\/p>\n

I wish Scottish author Iain Banks had kept his cancer to himself. For in making it public, through a statement about being \u2018Very Poorly\u2019, he has unwittingly mobilised one of the ugliest mobs of modern times: the death-watchers, the ostentatious grievers, those who like nothing more than to read about another\u2019s physical demise and advertise how moved they are by it.<\/p>\n

Almost as soon as Banks announced earlier this month, through the publisher of his entertaining novels, that he was suffering from terminal gall bladder cancer, these professional proxy weepers were doing their thing. Premature mourning was rife. Twitter became a vast virtual pre-death condolences book, as everyone stopped what they were doing for 45 seconds to tweet about how torn apart they were by the news of Banks\u2019 sickness. People seemed keen to out-lament each other. One said Banks\u2019 cancer revelation hit her like \u2018a chill blast of sorrow and grief\u2019, which makes you wonder how she\u2019ll cope when he dies.<\/p>\n

Friends and fans of Banks set up a website where lovers of his novels can get updates on his condition and sign a \u2018guest book\u2019 that is really just another offensively early condolences book. Thousands of messages have been posted. It\u2019s remarkable how many of the message writers admit they \u2018don\u2019t know what to say\u2019 yet proceed to say it anyway, at length, clearly feeling weirdly compelled to sign up to the speedily constructed community of online mourners.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve also had pre-death obituaries, articles assessing Banks\u2019 life and work before either has come to an end: his next novel, The Quarry<\/em>, will be published shortly. Even those who know nothing about Banks felt an urge to write about him, or rather about how they personally felt upon hearing he was sick. Simon Kelner at the Independent<\/em> admitted \u2018I haven\u2019t read any of his books\u2019, before producing a whole column on Banks\u2019 cancer news. The macabre sense of anticipatory mourning is summed up in the way Banks\u2019 wife is referred to on the tribute website: as his \u2018chief widow-in-waiting\u2019.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In sp!ked, Brendan O’Neill discusses the latest opportunity for people to ostentatiously display their sentimentality: I wish Scottish author Iain Banks had kept his cancer to himself. For in making it public, through a statement about being \u2018Very Poorly\u2019, he has unwittingly mobilised one of the ugliest mobs of modern times: the death-watchers, the ostentatious […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,4,28],"tags":[262,139,338,593,310],"class_list":["post-20052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-britain","category-media","tag-culture","tag-psychology","tag-scotland","tag-socialmedia","tag-twitter"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5dq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20052"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20053,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20052\/revisions\/20053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}