In the UK over the weekend, the news came out that the presenter of one of these reality-TV programmes had taken her own life, aged just 40. It was not a show I had ever watched, although I had heard it talked about. The presenter was not somebody I had ever heard of.
Because the show was/is quite popular, there has been a lot of airtime since, not least the effect that social media had on this woman’s state of mind. The trouble is, social media is a double-edged sword. Just as it may have broken her (or been a contributing factor), so it was probably partially responsible for giving her the fame and riches that she earned as a TV presenter. During the good times, I am guessing that she used social media to her advantage, even if just to keep herself in the public eye when the programme was off-air.
My own daughter, back in 2015, clained that she was being abused, and convinced the authorities to take her into care, just so shee could get out of the house. The grass is always greener… 2020, she has her own bedsit, but when she comes here to visit, I have trouble getting her to go home again, because she says she feels safe here. Sorry, but that ship sailed long ago.
Just this weekend, the UK was battered by Storm Dennis. The weekend before, we had Storm Ciara. We have a river only maybe ¼ mile away from our house, but I always felt quite safe before, because my house is 10 yards above the river, vertically. But these last couple of weekends, we have had floods of water rise up to the level of the garden – when the place has never flooded before. The reason? Not the river, but the drains not working. Presumably to save money, the local council don’t maintain them any more, and again presumably, they get blocked. It is not surprising since the storms have brought down debris all over the place. Fortunately it has been dry today – so far. Same with grass verges – they don’t maintain them any more, either, so in the summer when you’re pulling out in your car, you can’t see oncoming traffic.
Lastly, on this same point, people – me and my neighbours (okay, not me!) – have elected these people time and again to run the show.
Why don’t people understand that there aree consequences to the choices they make?
Mister Bump 
Good morning. You were all over the place. It be like that sometimes! 🤷🏽♀️🤷🏽♀️😀😀
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The scary thing is that we will see these storms, in particular, again and again. People from these agencies crop up on TV and say “we’re spending £5 million here, £10 million there”, but nobody will spend £25k to have a guy drive a sweeper around all day.
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I believe there are consequences for each action. I do feel for people like Caroline; she fed social media her whole life on a plate; all the boyfriend breakups (men 10-15 years her junior), bleating how poorly they treated her. So if you choose to put it all out there, of course the media and public are going to have an opinion – positive and negative.
However, I also believe that some people (her followers, the media) can be awful, writing horrible things and trolling. I’m fortunate (not famous enough — yet, lol), I’ve never been trolled or received any negative comments, to date so I can’t appreciate how that feels.
I personally think that many of our tv celebs have mental health problems and that’s what lies behind their need for fame and recognition, and their need to put their lives on show just to maintain their celeb status. I’m not sure that her just receiving negativity via the press caused her to choose to die by suicide?
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Yes, it is a kind-of unreal state of living, I think. It doesn’t surprise me that some people, it gets to them eventually. It’s like everything is magnified 100x. I’d never heard of this woman before this weekend. Love Island is something I’ve never seen, but I know it is popular.
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I’ve never seen it, just clips or ads and all this ‘live tv’ stuff like The only way is essex etc is just not for me!
No wonder our youths and teenagers are missing real role models.
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..and eeven as a teen, my daughter would watch hours of Spongebob Squarepants at a time. What have we become?
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Lol x
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Because they can’t think in object oriented language.
People don’t think in actions and consequences,
(of course not all people) but in the climate change discussions you really see the ignorance.
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You might have something there! If this then that, it might cause people to focus!
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That is it!
They are distracting us with ‘fluff’ for real.
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I don’t know is the answer to the question you raised, or perhaps I might have an answer if I wasn’t so tired, The 60 hours a week of work is making my brain slow down.
On Caroline Flack’s situation, I do have empathy with regard to what social media can do, simply because I experienced it myself. Awful awful things were said about me. People would not stop making a joke of my existence. I have not watched any of her shows although I crossed paths with her on occasion. It saddens me that anyone comes to that point. I wish there was some way to raise the red flag and make it clear that the media need to back off because of the state of someone’s emotional health. But I don’t know how it would work.
I am sorry for the personal situation in your family. I wish there was an easy answer to resolve it. My own family is such a wonderful haven and I wish everyone had that.
I am still watching the news to see what has happened with Storm Dennis. It has not caused any damage here in my neck of the woods. But I can see there is a lot of severe flooding elsewhere.
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These were all just examples of how people don’t really see what could happen. Sometimes, it is pretty clear. People might elect councillors because they want to reduce council tax and cut services, but if they think through the consequences, they’ll just pay higher insurance premiums instead.
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