[flkiwi]

Same age bracket here, but ... it's just not affecting me that much. Admittedly I didn't really watch Friends, though I was squarely in the age demographic and was aware of him. And, to be clear, I am deeply, deeply sorry for his friends and family, especially after having seen him go through so much in life.

But this one isn't filling me with existential dread and I don't know why. I keep ping-ponging between "We got started early with the gut punch of Christa McAuliffe, Ron McNair and the rest of the Challenger crew, then Kurt Cobain then River Phoenix then..." and "I guess I'm old now and this is just normal." There's even an argument that, my goodness, how on earth did he make it so far? And I am not being flippant: Perry lived an absolutely hellish life in too many ways.

I have no idea what his cause of death was, but ... I just hope people get help when they need it.

[browningstreet]

Did none of the deaths of the last decade or two have an impact? Honest Q.

I found that the deaths of Hunter S Thompson, David Bowie, and Sinead O'Conner put me a bit on my heels. Some of the others had some kind of impact. And many of the others.. nothing. But at least those three, and maybe a couple of others, definitely threw me a bit.

So that's the Q. Anything..? Nothing? If nothing, I'd personally find that possibly worth investigating. And I'm not big on para-social celebrity/artist relationships. But a few landed for me.

[checkyoursudo]

I have had teenage classmates, beloved pets, sibling, parent, all my grandparents, and close friends die. These have been varying degrees of devastating for me, for a while at least. Some for a long time (my sibling dying young was so, so hard).

Celebrities/artists/all-around-famous-people dying rarely affects me. Prince, maybe? But that was possibly because I like his music so much and probably grieved the loss of more music than the person whom I never met.

Knowing about kids dying in war and from gun violence and domestic abuse and such probably hits me harder than hearing about any random celebrity dying.

[flkiwi]

Oh MANY deaths were hard. Justice Ginsburg absolutely obliterated me (and, respectfully, others may have a different reaction and I understand that). But I haven't really experienced the "I'm old now and watching my heroes die" reaction. Does that make sense?

Limited just to entertainment industry celebrities, I will admit I don't have a strong emotional reaction to ... most of them (other than the general empathetic sadness on behalf of a vibrant human's friends and family) ... but I don't think it's indicative of anything worrying.

[jcul]

I agree, I find it hard to get too emotional about celebrities, even though I may have had great respect and admiration for them. For example, David Bowie, I was a little sad and disappointed to lose a great figure, but we all have to die.

For some reason Sinead O'Connor was an exception to this, and I did feel quite emotional at her passing.

[sshine]

It sounds like the phenomenon of getting affected by the death of some particular celebrity is very subjective.

For me there was a small “but he was young…” with Matthew Perry, but also an “oh well…”.

I frequently talk with my 84-year old neighbours. One lost her husband a year ago, the other one’s wife has dementia. They themselves are sharp as ever, but their whole world is a museum of memories. They have grand children, but everyone they knew is dead. They like company, but one said there’s something special about same-aged people, they share things with.

I don’t know when the death of a celebrity will hit me, but it’s probably when someone younger than me dies of non-accidental causes.

[flkiwi]

One more thing: I lost a parent and a very close friend when I was young, so death has been part of life for me for perhaps an unusually long time.

[hinkley]

I still can’t look at the fact that Fred Rogers is dead.

[flkiwi]

Same here. But not really because he was a celebrity as much as that he was an incomprehensibly kind person.