Hijacking a naming contest over a tragedy

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/family-hopes-april-giraffes-calf-named-son-171504989--abc-news-topstories.html

April the Giraffe had her baby a while back and a zoo decided on a naming contest for the little guy. Back in the day it was just usually a thing where a ton of kids would send in a name and one would be picked and it was all in good fun.

Now parents whose kid tragically died a while back of congenital heart failure say that the zoo should skip the contest and just name the giraffe after their kid so he can live on through the famous giraffe. So we should just skip over something kinda innocent and fun and go right to making it about them. If the request becomes popular enough the zoo will have to consider it or even do this or look like assholes.

What a terrible thing that the kid was afflicted with a heart ailment and perished as a result.


To leave a comment on society at large, however... in recent years I believe there has been a movement to publicly mourn and seek attention as much as possible. Connectivity and social media are largely to blame for this.

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that when people try to 'get something,' in this instance, publicity, from the death of someone, they don't really care? Idk. I just get the same impression from this as I do from people that immediately buy a new dog when theirs dies. "I loved Spot so much, and now he is gone! I'm going to go buy another one."

Lock him up or put him down.
Stolen from Shiny.

Quote
contemplativeintrovert
Is it just me, or does anyone else think that when people try to 'get something,' in this instance, publicity, from the death of someone, they don't really care? Idk. I just get the same impression from this as I do from people that immediately buy a new dog when theirs dies. "I loved Spot so much, and now he is gone! I'm going to go buy another one."

It's all virtue signaling. This is clearly a tragic circumstance for the kid and family. Making a public spectacle of the situation isn't helping anything. The kid--God rest his soul--will not "live on" through the giraffe.

People can mourn as they wish... I just wonder what the actual benefits are of making these tragedies so public.

These people on the comments were sending in their $$$ to vote for the giraffe to be named after the kid, Gio. The parents are pushing The Gio the Giraffe angle. It is just is a pain that parents will use their kid's death for their 15 minutes.
Back in the day when these little naming contests were held kids voted and who ever was chosen was chosen and everyone moved on no matter their own troubles

Maybe they will now have long necked grandkids when they breed this giraffe

They gave the giraffe another name and ignored the breeders. Yay

I heard that when I was watching the news at lunch. They named him Taj for short.

We'll see if these people can gracefully accept they didn't get to hijack the name or if the butt hurt will begin.

Accept gracefully, Ha! Not bloody likely!

I can imagine the faux outrage in social media, and how the zoo was ignoring the plight of dead defect babbies...blah blah blah. If anything, they will languish in manufactured hysteria / tragedy whoring, as they know that nothing gets more attention than the big bad world being mean to dead, sick babbies. I'd say that some local news outlet will pick the story up as part of their clickbait / manufactured outrage/ fluff articles. Achieving the much wanted attention whoring the parunts set out to get... until the public's 5 second attention span gets redirected to the next clickbait / manufactured outrage/ fluff article.

Glad they stopped this before it started or it would quickly escalate to which kid died the most tragically and how do the parents prove it?
People die all the time including kids. Another type of one-upmanship.

Late to the party but is it bad that I first wondered if the kid even particularly liked giraffes?