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Comment by gbog | Hacker News Reader

Do we all have to share this culture of mourning and condoleances? I have listened to some music made by David Bowie, but I kind of feel not that much about his death. Am I heartless? Or just honest? I mean, listening to some guy's music do not make it a close relative, is it? (If so, then well we all have too many "close relatives" for this mean anything anymore). Or should I just shut up and let the people weep until we go to some other topic?

Also, I fail to see what this is doing on HN, sorry.

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No, of course you don't have to share it. If you don't care about him, it's fine. About 150,000 other people will die today, none of them inherently less worthy than this one.

However, if you don't care about this particular death, don't barge into a comment thread and humblebrag about it. Ignore it and move on. It's not heartless if you don't care, but it's pretty rude to come in and post a comment like this.

I think people find it a little too easy to forget that people in startups, and consequently on HN, are human beings with actual feelings. If a slightly off topic thread can remind us of that occasionally then that's not such a bad thing. HN can be about more than just startups without losing what makes it useful and interesting.

Plus...

I fail to see what this is doing on HN

Bowie was a serial entrepreneur in the music industry (and others). He was masterful at looking forward at what was coming next and innovating and iterating his musical art to stay relevant. I'm absolutely certain there's a great deal that startups could learn from how Bowie lived and worked.

> Also, I fail to see what this is doing on HN, sorry.

It's currently #1 on HN. Think about that. Just because you don't care about Bowies death doesn't mean it's not important to a lot of people on here. There's a ton of articles (especially sociology and science focused) that I wouldn't think belong here but they're interesting and I'm glad people post them.

Not just #1. Right now, it has 863 upvotes; that's a ton for a story that broke in the middle of the night on a Sunday. The next highest has 347, and has been around for a day-plus. This pretty clearly hits home for a lot of people, and I really, really hate the faux-above-it-all "I don't see what this is doing on HN" mini-modding. It's here because people believe it should be here.

(edit: 899 points, 18 minutes later. wheeeee)

I am just hearing about him now that he has died. I don't see why it is SO relevant to HN community. I don't see any similarities here whatsoever. Nor do I see a hacker theme.

Would appreciate if someone would enlighten me on this.

The fact that you did not know about his existence does not change his impact on music and culture or undermines his significance. There are a lot of people that you do not know that had huge impact on different aspects of culture.

>>Nor do I see a hacker theme.

I am not sure who defines what is "hacker theme" and what is not. Number of up-votes shows that people on HN want to see this topic here. If person of huge cultural significance dies, that impacts all subcultures, including "hackers".

> hacker theme

Bowie Bonds, BowieNet, his foresight regarding the music industry with regards to data sharing, the future copyright battles, his use of electronic instruments, self-production, etc.[0]

[0]: http://qz.com/590957/david-bowie-wasnt-just-an-incredible-ar...

I like to think of such "strange" highly voted posts as revealing a hidden correlation. Yes, there may not be any obvious prior reason to expect that people who frequent HN find David Bowie or his death significant. And yet they do. There doesn't have to be a cause-and-effect or "logical" explanation. It is what it is.

People who frequent HN are likely to be part of the set of people who have been influenced by popular culture, which is a superset of David Bowie fans.

This would imply that all/most posts about popular culture figures are highly upvoted in HN but I doubt this is the case (no data, just subjective impression).

I think it just implies that HN users are informed by popular culture. Not every cultural figure is likely to be as important to HN users as every other, but some[0] clearly are, and posts about deaths are of a different sort.

[0]https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dies&sort=byPopularity&prefix=...

There are many stories on HN that I don't care about. In those cases I usually find it best to say nothing...

> Am I heartless?

Other people may remember him as a soundtrack to important bits of their lives. And he was a major music hacker. You are not supposed to care or weep or anything ; in fact it's an excuse to celebrate his music today (thanks David). Does it bother you that some other people care?

Yes that was a heartless comment.

> Am I heartless? Or just honest?

No, Yes. You just don't happen to feel a close connection to this particular person who has died. That doesn't mean that other people here aren't being similarly honest and do feel a connection.

Then you are probably just a bit "young" for his music,but for me easily the best music came from the 70's

Or should I just shut up and let the people weep until we go to some other topic?

This.

> Do we all have to share this culture of mourning and condoleances?

Don't, if you don't want to. Nobody's making you care, nobody's going to judge you if it didn't matter to you. But you could do a lot worse than to take that urge to tell everyone how much you don't care and shove it down somewhere deep and dark. And, as it happens, you did.

God, you're more Asperger than me. When it's like that, I often download the last album, and I appreciate what the person gave to the world, whatever the way I feel, or don't feel. Some are more involved than others, but this is like an appreciation, and a global thanking to people who had notably a global impact. I just listened to the album and personally I'm actually in a 'good' mood, when I think he couldn't have ended it on a better note. Probably it's the artist in me speaking. It's like he died like a music

Dont download the last one. Listen to Ziggy.

Not sure what Asperger is. I am very sensitive: I cry at almost all movies I'm watching even the silliest ones, when the guy kiss the girl, or the father finds his son back. Maybe I'm weird, or just too influenced by Eastern philosophy, but when someone old dies I feel it is ok, it is supposed to be like that, it is the normal course of nature.

My preferred living writer died some time ago. It was ok too, even if I read all his books more than once and often refer to what I think he would say about a topic. He was old enough to pass away (and was apparently too old to write more interesting pieces), so it was ok. I think the same about David Bowie. No need to display an excess of [edit: affliction], he had his good time, let him let some room to younger musicians. No?

>"[...]it is supposed to be like that, it is the normal course of nature."

Just because it is the normal course of nature doesn't mean it's okay. Nor does it mean that we should not be upset about it, or mourn it.

A person accumulates a life-time's worth of knowledge and experience and insight. And in an instant, it's taken away from the world. It's a loss in every sense of the word.

> it's taken away from the world.

Well, it the case of Bowie this is especially untrue: he let a lot for us to read and listen. It is acutally much sadder when someone unknown dies young, before having the time to leave a deep enough footprint behind.

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