Reddit is debating a dark, sad theory about Amy Winehouse's death.
A new Reddit thread is discussing whether the late "Rehab" singer's death had anything to do with hateful internet comments. According to Winehouse's security guard, she had spent the night watching YouTube clips of herself prior to her death.
Winehouse died in 2011 in her London apartment at the age of 27. She reportedly died of alcohol poisoning, after drinking excessively following a period of abstinence. Winehouse suffered from addiction issues prior to her death, and some commenters on Reddit suggest it was negative comments that led her to drink heavily.
Dandw12786 writes:
"[A]rtists used to go into a deep depression if Rolling Stone gave them a bad review. Now, anybody with a fucking smartphone can say the most awful things directly to a musician via Twitter (which they're expected to have, personally use, and constantly interact on, lest their fans see them as ungrateful assholes), and they're just supposed to "grow up and learn to take some criticism".People argue that it 'comes with the territory'. But 10 years ago it sure as hell didn't."
User Alternoxis asks whether YouTube should even include comments at all, given the potential for hostility:
"The thing is ... many videos don't, simply don't need a comment. From anyone, really. Of course, such a thing has never stopped anyone from commenting, hence the cesspit of crappy, idiotic, useless, or inane comments some videos get. It's the best thing that the collective mind can muster. And of course, once the toxic community is created, it spills over to videos where actually sane comments would be welcome. Maybe it's a testament to the fact that maybe Youtube would be better off scrapping comments altogether. I can count on my fingers the amount of time when I actually would have had a reason to read the comments."
No matter what the reason for Winehouse's excessive drinking prior to her death, it's a tragedy that we have to debate hateful comments at all. User Is_totally_a_dick suggests that maybe her reading YouTube comments had to do more with loneliness than anything else:
"That's kind of super sad... I mean, i knew she was struggling with drug addiction but this little tid bit of information just shows how alone and lonely she was before checking out."
The lesson we can learn here is, no matter what the cause of Winehouse's death, cruelty displayed anonymously online hurts.