Picture your funeral. Likely, you want your closest friends and family there to support one another. Except you’re not just a regular college student, you’re the child, sibling or close friend of a famous actor or celebrity, and your entire newsfeed is filled with nasty rumors and conspiracies about your loved one who is no longer there to defend their name.
Celebrities are real people too. They spend so much of their lives performing for us, but even after death, fans feel entitled to more information. We need to let celebrities rest in peace and respect them and their families’ privacy.
It seems that every time a celebrity passes away, fans want to know the morbid and private details surrounding it, even making up their own rumors about their death.
Just last month, Michelle Trachtenberg, known for her roles in Gossip Girl and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, passed away suddenly at only 39. Immediately following her death, the liver transplant she received before her death made headlines, sparking rumors about her being an alcoholic.
While a common reason for a liver transplant is alcohol-associated liver disease, in what way is it appropriate to claim she, or anyone for that matter, was an alcoholic?
Trachtenberg had been outspoken against substance and alcohol use for decades before her death. During Bill Clinton’s presidency, she helped him launch the Coalition for a Drug Free America.
In a similar vein, when Gene Hackman and his wife were found dead in their home, many people automatically assumed it was carbon monoxide poisoning. And then, just a few days later, news broke that “scattered pills” were found near his wife’s body. This information led to even more speculation about their deaths.
While people created their own messed up theories to entertain themselves, the real reason behind the couple’s deaths ended up being medical issues, including heart disease and hantavirus.
Families of celebrities are often given minimal or even no time to grieve before the entire world is in their business, demanding more information.
Vanessa Bryant, Kobe Bryant’s wife, found out about the passing of her husband and daughter, Gianna, from social media in 2020. After learning about the helicopter crash that ultimately took her family’s lives, she was told there were five survivors. She found out that they passed after receiving an overwhelming amount of ‘RIP Kobe’ messages on social media.
In a lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Vanessa named different officers who shared photos of her husband’s dead body. An internal investigation of the department found that she was right.
In a similarly tactless and disgusting manner, people posted photos of One Direction star Liam Payne’s scene of death. TMZ received major backlash after it shared aerial photos of Payne’s tattooed arms the day he passed away in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The photos have since been removed from TMZ’s website, but as a One Direction fan, seeing these photos was incredibly disturbing. No matter where I went on TikTok or Instagram, the photos had already been reposted dozens of times for millions of people to see.
No one, famous or not, deserves to have pictures like that shared.
People grow up seeing celebrities on their screens, and the more you see them, the more likely you are to develop a parasocial relationship. Parasocial relationships are a one-sided connection that a person feels, often to a celebrity, who doesn’t know them. Some people genuinely believe they know celebrities, and that feeling can make you even more curious about the details surrounding their death. But, it’s important to remember that even if you think you know them, celebrities aren’t our friends.
Parasocial relationships oftentimes blur the lines between admiration and outright disrespect. In 2019, YouTubers Ethan and Grayson Dolan, known as the Dolan Twins, shared the news of their father’s passing with their followers online. Instead of being met with sympathy, some fans went to the extreme of planning to show up to their father’s funeral. In a time when the twins should have been focusing on grieving, they had to issue a statement on Twitter urging fans to not show up to the funeral.
Liam Payne’s funeral similarly drew mass attention since ex-One Direction stars were in attendance. Multiple news outlets followed them, and a group of fans even waited outside of the church where the funeral took place.
This trend of “funeral crashing” outlines a clear lack of respect for boundaries. Funerals are not meet-and-greet opportunities and should never be treated as such.
Losing someone you love is hard, and having millions of people on the internet pry into their death makes it a lot harder. Curiosity should never override respect for privacy. You do not have a right to someone else’s information even if you see them on your screens and stages. Instead of seeking out the details of celebrities’ tragic deaths, let them rest in peace.