With all the MJ stuff...
You know a star is big when his death cripples the internet. These figures from valleywag are pretty amazing:
And while all the pedophile/bubbles/giraffe/neverland jokes orbit this sad occasion, I find solace in a lovely read by deepak chopra, who knew him personally, and gave me some insight into his world, and who he may have truly been:
"Considering the monstrously exaggerated value our society places on celebrity, which was showered on Michael without stint, the public was callous to his very real personal pain. It became another tawdry piece of the tabloid Jacko, pictured as a weird changeling and as something far more sinister."
I don't have the words to describe MJ's contributions to dance music, except to say that it wouldn't be the same without him. His music continues to be sampled and remixed over and over by producers and artists worldwide. I don't think that you can say that about many other artists. I won't go into a long anecdote about getting the 'Thriller' album, or watching the jackson 5 on TV.
I will say that I bought a 45 single of 'Off the Wall' as a kid, and that I loved 'Serious'. I will also say that he helped show me the way to my current love of dancing and dance music, and for that I'm truly grateful.
Thanks Michael.
- Leading news websites saw traffic surge to 4.2 million visitors per minute from around 2.75 million visitors per minute, according to Akamai.
- CNN's traffic grew fivefold in one hour and the site clocked 20 million pageviews.
- Twitter had its biggest spike in traffic, to 5,000 tweets per second, since Barack Obama's election as president, according to co-founder Biz Stone.
- Facebook status updates tripled.
- AOL Instant Messenger went down for 40 minutes.
- TMZ, which broke the news of Jackson's death, crashed several times amid a surge of traffic.
- The LA Times, which got early confirmation of the death, went down, as well.
- For about half an hour, Michael Jackson queries weren't working on Google News.
- Wikipedia froze amid an edit war on Jackson's page.
And while all the pedophile/bubbles/giraffe/neverland jokes orbit this sad occasion, I find solace in a lovely read by deepak chopra, who knew him personally, and gave me some insight into his world, and who he may have truly been:
"Considering the monstrously exaggerated value our society places on celebrity, which was showered on Michael without stint, the public was callous to his very real personal pain. It became another tawdry piece of the tabloid Jacko, pictured as a weird changeling and as something far more sinister."
I don't have the words to describe MJ's contributions to dance music, except to say that it wouldn't be the same without him. His music continues to be sampled and remixed over and over by producers and artists worldwide. I don't think that you can say that about many other artists. I won't go into a long anecdote about getting the 'Thriller' album, or watching the jackson 5 on TV.
I will say that I bought a 45 single of 'Off the Wall' as a kid, and that I loved 'Serious'. I will also say that he helped show me the way to my current love of dancing and dance music, and for that I'm truly grateful.
Thanks Michael.