The Untold Story of a Music Royalty's Tragic End(jjpryor.substack.com) |
The Untold Story of a Music Royalty's Tragic End(jjpryor.substack.com) |
The issue is not really the pressure, even if the pressure itself can be extremely toxic over a long duration.
The problem is the lack of satisfaction from personal growth.
We're all built with an internal feedback loop, inherited from our complex evolutionary path, this feedback loop is mostly sensitive to change.
It is impossible to live a happy life without positive feedback into this loop.
It does not matter how rich, powerful or famous you are, all of that is quickly integrated to be "normal", we need constant improvement or at least fluctuations with some positive slope.
Hell is being born with everything and slowly losing status, friends, money and hope.
It's also a strange situation in which racial minorities that succumb to drug abuse are seen as criminals, while white people that have the same affliction are seen as "tragic cases of innocent societal victimization".
This world is deeply screwed up, and the music industry is even more so, but it's hard to see a story like this, as someone who wasn't "born with everything" yet still struggling after many years to create a foothold in music out of nothing, while people who have the opportunity of wealth and even ease of relation to celebrities keep failing and burning out... It's not jealousy, it's bewilderment.
The ideal that some sort of superior talent and creativity comes out of genetics, and that nefarious behavior should be forgiven based on genetics is rooted in racial superiority... It's a sham ideology we should all abandon in my opinion, especially when it keeps getting proven to be false. That being said, tragic loss of life should never be ignored and should be a lesson to us all about how to live our lives better.
spoiler, since that's how this article is written Do they think I'd go "oh, who cares about Elvis' grandson?" More likely people wouldn't know anything about his grandson and back out after the first line.
As to whether or not this is appropriate for HN, I'm also not so sure... but I enjoyed reading it.
>The grandson of a legendary musician, Ben grew up in wealth and luxury.
If they're trying to avoid the "poor little rich boy story," they did a poor job.
I said nothing about it being unsuited for HN. I take issues with the story telling, not it being posted here.
I’m no particular fan of Elvis (have gone to Memphis several times and never even considered visiting Graceland), but I guessed it was Elvis’ grandson and spent 20% of my attention trying to confirm or deny that.
IMO, it’s not a particularly useful artifice.
I think you're taking my example a little too literally there... it's an example. The point is to save the reveal (spoilers?) till the end so that you can relate to the story more.
And personally, adding the "who is it" mystery made the story less relatable. Instead of reading it and empathizing, I was trying to figure out who they were talking about. Then there's the morose reveal of "Aha! It was Ben Keough that committed suicide."