The Power of Social Networking (R.I.P. Whitney Houston)

"Social media has really affected people's level of respect, sensitivity, and tact. It's crazy..." - @NotChrisJacobs

Yesterday Whitney Houston died at the age of 48. I had recently seen pictures of her, and she didn't look well, but near death? No. When I saw the R.I.P. Whitney Houston trending topic, I thought that maybe somebody started the TT as a sick joke. I checked Wikipedia, saw nothing, refreshed the page, and there it was, she was dead. It was sad because I had recently watched Waiting to Exhale, and a couple of songs were stuck in my head.

There was an out pour of condolences and sadness on Twitter as everyone pulled out their favorite Whitney CDs and began to pay their respects. Everyone however wasn't so kind. They referred to her as a crackhead, said they didn't care she was dead because she didn't pay their bills, and other trashy, classless things. Or they got mad because people simply tweeted R.I.P. Whitney Houston.

Why is it that people can not show the dead respect? Yes, she lived how she lived, but she was human, humans make mistakes. I don't think people understand that addiction is a lifelong battle. Once you become addicted to crack, cocaine, meth, heroin or alcohol, you have to fight that for the rest of your life. The fact that she struggled with addiction does not take away from the fact that she was a beautiful woman with an amazing voice, or the fact that a life was lost.

I lost my father in April of last year, and I can honestly say that if I had heard someone say, "F*** her father's death, he didn't pay my bills." I would have lost it. I can only imagine what Bobbi Kristina is going through. She was turned away from the hotel room where her mother was found, unable to see her, and then she has to hear people say her mother deserved to die because she was on drugs.

What happened to not saying anything if you have nothing nice to say? Just because we have freedom of speech doesn't mean we have to misuse it. Before you tweet about how you don't care about someone's death, think, how would I feel if someone said this about MY mother? Because the very people you tweet about are someone's mother/father, daughter/son, or brother/sister.

R.I.P WHITNEY HOUSTON

MAY YOU FINALLY BE AT PEACE WITH YOURSELF!