Posted on 05/16/2012 8:59:54 AM PDT by Brandonmark
Yvette Vickers, a former Playboy playmate and B-movie star, best known for her role in Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, would have been 83 last August, but nobody knows exactly how old she was when she died. According to the Los Angeles coroner’s report, she lay dead for the better part of a year before a neighbor and fellow actress, a woman named Susan Savage, noticed cobwebs and yellowing letters in her mailbox, reached through a broken window to unlock the door, and pushed her way through the piles of junk mail and mounds of clothing that barricaded the house. Upstairs, she found Vickers’s body, mummified, near a heater that was still running. Her computer was on too, its glow permeating the empty space.
The Los Angeles Times posted a story headlined “Mummified Body of Former Playboy Playmate Yvette Vickers Found in Her Benedict Canyon Home,” which quickly went viral. Within two weeks, by Technorati’s count, Vickers’s lonesome death was already the subject of 16,057 Facebook posts and 881 tweets. She had long been a horror-movie icon, a symbol of Hollywood’s capacity to exploit our most basic fears in the silliest ways; now she was an icon of a new and different kind of horror: our growing fear of loneliness. Certainly she received much more attention in death than she did in the final years of her life. With no children, no religious group, and no immediate social circle of any kind, she had begun, as an elderly woman, to look elsewhere for companionship. Savage later told Los Angeles magazine that she had searched Vickers’s phone bills for clues about the life that led to such an end. In the months before her grotesque death, Vickers had made calls not to friends or family but to distant fans who...
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
So uhhh.. who paid her utility bills for that year?
Seriously. I am 15 minutes late with a payment and they are threatening to turn it service off.
Probably set up automatic payments from her bank account.
Folks managed to be lonely for years without facebook. Life is what you make of it, facebook or no facebook.
Sheesh.
When they tell you you’ll be more “connected”, expect that you’ll be more disconnected.
When they tell you they want to “empower” you, expect them to accumulate more power over you.
Etc.
“Seriously. I am 15 minutes late with a payment and they are threatening to turn it service off.”
Ohhh you have my Electric Provider...
If I am not up at 6 am writing the check the day it’s due they are calling me to find out if I am okay...
Agree, but I do find it amazing that someone can have 1,,813 “friends”.
I don’t Facebook and I don’t tweet. Waste of time.
***I do find it amazing that someone can have 1,,813 “friends”.***
Embarrassing to get those chain emails that advise you to ‘send to six or more friends’ to ensure good luck and good health’. I struggle to find 2!!!
My kids and other family members have ordered me not to put them on any lists. LOL!!!
The best way to connect with other human beings (besides FR) is to enjoy small talk with store clerks and other people who share our space - even if it’s just for a moment. Surprisingly, young people seem to enjoy a laugh or a funny story -it’s ‘like’ a whole new experience for them.
Who misses smiling faces? We all do!!
Interesting how the Mass Media portray average Americans as ignorant, helpless and directionless.
I don’t know about ronery, but it’s making “us” phony, inexplicably cocky and self-absorbed.
No. Through FB I’ve met cousins I never knew existed and have made great real-life friends, made business contacts, and have gotten invitations to events I would never have otherwise heard of. Facebook has helped me network with coreligionists and fellow conservatives to work for common goals. It’s helped me stay in closer touch with my daughter, who now lives and works some distance away, and see what her friends and coworkers are really like. It’s also let me stay in touch with my own former colleagues after we were all laid off; we would definitely have lost touch after we left the company. So it’s been great and has certainly made our family less lonely or isolated.
Isolation is chosen. You always have the option to reach out to others.
I facebook. My wife and I have a joint account and use it primarily to post pics of the kids and grandkids for out-of-state relatives to see.
I agree with the article, however, and know a few people who are so lonely in their real lives, they spend all day on facebook just ‘fishing’ for comments so they’ll have someone bite and show interest in their miserable lives.
Status updates like, “Wow...that was interesting...”, or “Hmmm...I wonder what that means”, or some other hypothetical question which is only meant to elicit a response to engage a conversation - are incredibly obvious indicators of a lonely life.
I think our sense of community started falling apart long before Facebook.
I so agree. I was forced to move to GA, and without the internet, and eventually Facebook, I would have been so much more isolated. I am a member of a group of conservative ladies on FB who share my hobby, and we are incredibly close, even though most of us have never met in person. Last week I went out with a couple friends from high school which wouldn’t have happened without Facebook. I also keep track of my cousins, and know far more about their lives than I ever have.
So, if it wasn’t for Facebook, those people would have a thriving social life? I doubt it.
I use fcebook to see if the women I am interested in are involved before I waste my time.
It seems people post articles either into a black hole or AT one another. Responses are of course so constrained by the character limit, that the service's structure works against real engagement.
I understand their reasons for the design, but ultimately it doesn't foster either valuable interpersonal relationships or meaningful discussion. So what's the point? As a news medium it's good, but calling it social media is an exaggeration. I think it could be improved, however, but I'm unaware of serious changes that have ever been implemented there. So, Twitter largely blows, if you will.
I agree with you on this, sodpoodle.
I am “disabled” and sometimes when I'm waiting on doctor/dental appointments, I chat with others. You can tell right away if they are willing to chat or just want to be left alone.
Since I have down times, I spend time in bed with Internet and Free Republic.
Just going to doctor appointments is very draining physically which puts me back in bed again.
At least, I have Free Republic and a few other sites here and there.
I do feel lonely at times, but Free Republic almost always gives me the cure for loneliness!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.