RIP Liam Payne (One Direction)

[Glitter]

Petcha there’s lots of questions about what happened and there’s been lots of concerns about his behaviour and actions in recent times and that will be talked about and picked over endlessly.

There’s also a huge amount of rumour and speculation that might not actually be true.

For now, can you stop being a cunt about it and accept there’s a young man who has clearly experienced real struggles and incredible pain and there’s now a family including a little kid who doesn’t have their dad.

Much like Caroline Flack, we have someone here who has been under massive scrutiny very recently and it might be that he’s deliberately ended his life in part as a result of this backlash.

This.

I’m genuinely sad about this. I remember Liam’s X-factor audition (think it was the second one) and it was the best one I’ve ever seen.

He’s had some awful publicity lately, none of which is behaviour that can be condoned, although I think there’s a much wider conversation there on societal attitudes and the effects of giving young men too much
money and nobody saying no to them. (See also, footballers).

However, the man who was seemingly a lovely young man when he walked into that world, is dead at 31, in a tragic and senseless way, clearly not in a good state for whatever reason. His seven year old son no longer has his father and his parents and sisters no longer have their son and brother. You can’t paint that as anything other than a tragedy.

 

[cesare]

Petcha It's not a great look to contribute to everlasting posts that his kid will Google one day.

 

[AverageJoe]

Why was he alone? I don't know much about how famouses move, but surely he would have had a PA to look after him, and read his emails and soften them up, someone to tell him where to be and at what time. Someone to soften the blow to bad news. Someone who knows his history and behaviour.

 

[freshapple]

I think it was probably more the case he was having a mental health episode brought on or enhanced by drink and/or drugs and exacerbated by bad personal and work news. another young person used and abused by the music and celebrity industry, then discarded without a care when he stopped being profitable enough.

Is that your expert opinion?

 

[pbsmooth]

Is that your expert opinion?

I wouldn’t have said probably if it was.

 

[Sweet FA]

Why was he alone? I don't know much about how famouses move, but surely he would have had a PA to look after him, and read his emails and soften them up, someone to tell him where to be and at what time. Someone to soften the blow to bad news. Someone who knows his history and behaviour.

he's just been dropped by universal; management co. too? his gf just flew back to the us. the fandom are all over it.

 

[AverageJoe]

he's just been dropped by universal; management co. too? his gf just flew back to the us. the fandom are all over it.

Jesus. There's still a duty of care, surely.

 

[OneStrike]

Why was he alone? I don't know much about how famouses move, but surely he would have had a PA to look after him, and read his emails and soften them up, someone to tell him where to be and at what time. Someone to soften the blow to bad news. Someone who knows his history and b

Jesus. There's still a duty of care, surely.

.

You'd like to think so, eh. Cowell has stepped down from x-factor for the foreseeable, potentially unrelated but does appear odd timing.
His recent ex has penned a book about him and their relationship, I presume that didn't help matters either.

 

[VivaE]

So a massive tantrum about losing his fame gone wrong. The pics on the mail of his hotel room look like he was maybe on smack or crack?

I always wonder what drives people like you? Where blame and judgement and condemnation is your first instinct upon hearing that someone has died a tragic death. That you put your need to pile in on dead person before everything else.

As if that dead person represents nothing more to you than an opportunity for you to rid yourself of some anger you have that has nothing necessarily to do with the dead person but everything to do with some begrudgery you hold that random (and it seems, in this instance, rich) dead people bring out in you.

It's an awful look.

 

[Ax^]

Petcha is trolling so best ignored

 

[PR1Berske]

The psychology of watching your ex-band mates do better than you after you've been mega-famous together can't be great if you haven't got a safety net or duty of care.

 

[krtek a houby]

The psychology of watching your ex-band mates do better than you after you've been mega-famous together can't be great if you haven't got a safety net or duty of care.

Plus still being under a spotlight and in the age of relentless social media chatter

 

[editor]

he's just been dropped by universal; management co. too? his gf just flew back to the us. the fandom are all over it.

Being dropped by a record label/management company/band can be a devastating blow.

Add in the fact that all the people around you are continuing to have success and you've got plenty of reasons for a shattering loss of confidence.

Throw in some loneliness and enough cash to buy all the booze and drugs you want, coupled with a lack of people around you who actually care, and you've got the perfect storm for really serious mental health problems.

 

[story]

Not even checking out at midday, as most of us (if we're lucky( instead sitting with your feet up shouting at your laptop in reception with the audio on so people could hear while the guests who had booked your room are waiting for the room to be cleaned. At 4.30pm. Then destroying said room, oh and in an even classier move trying to pull said guests on your way up in the lift telling them who he is, who apparently couldn't give his a toss which must have further pissed him off... I guess he did check out in the end.

He does sound like a classy bloke.

I don't think he sounds like he was mentally ill. Just a bit of a dick.

[….snip…]

Fame is very weird. It does very weird things to a person. Even low grade fame by objective standards can have enormous effects on the person involved, usually detrimental at least some of the time.

There’s no way anyone can prepare in advance. No amount of learning or thinking that can protect a person from what fame is really like. Even those with common sense and who brace for it find it shocking and alarming when it happens. It’s bewildering, it undermines everything you think you know about yourself and the people around you. It changes you and your view of the world existentially. Once fame hits, you can never again use the same old familiar matrices for studying and understating the world you live in. And if you fall out of fame, you then have to go through another process of unraveling what has happened to you and relearning how to live in yet another new way. All of this without guidance, books, courses or any other guidance. Some, if they’re lucky, will have a genuinely trustworthy mentor, but that’s rare.

If you’ve been very famous, and people still recognise you even though your celebrity status has waned, that can demolish your personhood.

Judging someone who has had fame thrust upon them by mercenary exploitation as “a bit of a dick” isn’t only failure of compassion, it’s ignorant.




NB
I’ll edit out the personal bit at the top of this when the conversation has moved on a bit so please don’t quote. Or edit out that bit. Thanks.

 

[kalidarkone]

Well, quite. I'm a case in point there in some ways, definitely the dick part, the jury's out on the mentally ill bit. Although I'm not fond of choking girls in elevators because I've just been sacked.

I think he probably could qualify for a Darwin award really, looking at the distance he actually fell. He must have really launched himself to die from there and not just break a few limbs.

Not necessarily. I've looked after people that have broken their necks/ acquired a brain injury just from tripping in the garden.

 

[story]

Both can be true, of course.

That’s true, and fame will often be the catalyst that allows the dick to operate with impunity. However, some people aren’t 100% dick but the permission fame gives them to explore the outer limits of their dickhood will invariably do more damage to the individual; especially if they’re essentially decent.

Waking up one day and realising you’ve been acting like a dick, and especially if that goes against your true nature, is very painful. And it takes a long long time to repair the damage caused, both internally and externally. The repair work may never be completed.

If you haven’t got the wherewithal, (courage, insight, curiosity, healthy compassion, strength of character etc. social and emotional support from others etc) you may start and fail, or start and lose courage.

Throw drugs into the mix and you’ve always got an immediate escape door.

Beating a drug dependency while also trying to recalibrate your entire life - internal, external, material, emotional - and in under scrutiny from people who have solid preconceptions about you is hard.

 

[story]

Why was he alone? I don't know much about how famouses move, but surely he would have had a PA to look after him, and read his emails and soften them up, someone to tell him where to be and at what time. Someone to soften the blow to bad news. Someone who knows his history and behaviour.

Not necessarily.
The idea that celebrities have a constant team around them to buffer them from normal life is part of the myth. Even extremely famous people die alone (Whitney, Michael Jackson, Elvis, Prince…)

Some abscond from the buffering system. Some end up with bad actors around them. Some are either dicks or going through yet another dick stage and people have thrown their hands up. Some are being given the tough love treatment.

 

[story]

Jesus. There's still a duty of care, surely.

They’re adults.

 

[PR1Berske]

They’re adults.

Liam was 14 when the reality TV monster picked him up and sewed string through his wrists and shoulders and got him to dance for however long 1D lasted. That's not the greatest circumstances in which to become an adult.

 

[story]

Liam was 14 when the reality TV monster picked him up and sewed string through his wrists and shoulders and got him to dance for however long 1D lasted. That's not the greatest circumstances in which to become an adult.

True.
But you can’t extend duty of care into adulthood because he was a child when it started.
Even if it was warranted, how would that be done, how would it work

 

[kebabking]

Minimum age for a recording contract?

18? 21? 25?

 

[story]

By 25 you’re deemed too old to be a pop star in the traditional sense. That’s not least because the younger they are, the more malleable they are.

By law, you can’t sign til you’re of legal age, which is 18. Younger than that and it’s pretty easy for exploitative adults around you (which may be parents or guardians) to sign on your behalf or with your “agreement”; rare is the teenager who would say No to a record contract.

Some contracts can be voided when the youngster reaches 18 and sees sense. But some of those will have been coerced into never being able to say No. Some contracts will have clauses and stipulations that take this possibility into account.



These days youngsters can put their own music out with no contract, so there’s no real legal protection of their music, or the platform has the rights.


Sometimes there will be over and under 18 year olds in the band, which further complicates things.



Indie bands are different to manufactured pop bands.

Sometimes even if they’re over 18 they’re not able to understand the ins and outs of a contract properly.

Sometimes the “manager” will trick the artist into not signing a contract with them because they have a relationship of trust (“you and me, I’ll do right by you, you can trust me”), forge a deal with a label, and then rip off the artist once there’s an advance lump sum, and the artist has no recourse because there’s no contract.

 

[AverageJoe]

Thanks for the insight story .

Im guessing you used to be a musician too?

 

[Petcha]

Feel a bit sorry for the young Argentinian lad who spent a couple of 'intimate' nights with Payne getting fucked up on coke and whisky and is now being charged with supplying drugs according to argentina media today