Quote Originally Posted by Vahlnir View Post
Don't really care who someone is or how popular they are. I can still genuinely sympathize with their loss and be sincere about it. I think the sad part of this thread (aside from the aforementioned loss) is that being an empathetic human being needs to be justified somehow to some. To that I say...go pound sand. I mean that sincerely as well.
It's not being empathetic. It's being insensitive.

Okay story time!

Several years back when I still made AMVs. I had an online friend who also made AMVs, their parent died. So to try to 'help' I made an AMV dedicated to them/their parent as a gift, like so many do.
A mutual friend called it insensitive, the friend said nothing. At the time I did not know why, they did not explain.

Several years later, I realized it and took the video down. When stepping back and actually analyzing the situation. I did not know this persons parent who died, I knew the friend, not the parent. Who was I to make a dedication to someone I didn't know? How did a dedication help any? It didn't, it was more for show, to SHOW the friend that I cared, and our mutuals that I cared that the friend was sad. But it was the wrong way to go about doing it. It was more for me to feel that I showed that I cared, and everyone knew it, and the rest of us to show we cared in union, than for the person who passed, as we did not know them.

That video meant nothing to that friend, than giving that friend a shoulder to cry on, to talk to, or giving your condolences would have. It was a show of sympathy rather than ACTUAL empathy.

You want to be sincere? Message the man yourself, and talk to him about all the good times and memories, and give him a shoulder to cry on.

Don't virtue signal on a forum and make memorials that do nothing but show how 'group sad' you are.