Some years ago, a group of people I knew – note the past tense – held an annual competition they called the death list. The idea was quite simple. Each of the participants selected three famous people who they expected to die in the coming year. There was an entry fee which would be paid out to the winner, the person who correctly guessed the most number of deaths, on the last day of the year. I didn’t participate – I don’t remember why – but it wasn’t because I was somehow whiter-than-white. I have received and forwarded numerous sick jokes over the years and I am in no position to lecture others on what could be considered to be good and bad taste. I regret sharing sick and potentially hurtful jokes and I am glad I did not participate in the death list competition. Sorry to say that the Death List website is still going strong.
I visited the site, which I am not going to link, so you don’t have to and this is how it works. The Deathlist committee (I know, I know) selects 50 names and puts them in order as to who will die first. Many of them are household names and of the initial list, eight people have died. If betting is involved, would it be inaccurate to say that some people will be actively celebrating when they hear someone has died. “Hooray! Someone’s husband, someone’s wife, someone’s dad, someone’s mum, someone’s son, someone’s daughter has died. Celebrate good times, come on.” I’m not quite sure I’d see it like that.
Certainly not after the litany of deaths that have accompanied the year of our Lord 2025. Well, maybe the year of your Lord, but I hope you get the drift. None of the people in my life who died this year were ever likely to appear on a death list because they were not famous enough, but if they had been famous and died, I’d probably have felt quite bad and maybe very angry to see people smirking about their passing. What kind of sick fool does that?
Some of the names in this year ‘s list are among my favourite famous people ever, including those who have died. I certainly didn’t have a laugh when Brian Wilson died – he was 46th on the list – certainly after his terrible struggles throughout life with crippling mental health conditions. While Wilson’s death was made less sad by the dementia from which he suffered in later life – it was to me – there was nothing to cheer when the man who wrote God Only Knows shuffled off his mortal coil. But here’s another thing: what if you were on the list and saw your name on it or a family member or close members was on it? How would you feel? Not amused, I would wager.
Yet not everyone feels the way I do about it, inevitably I fear, There is an online ‘forum’ on the Deathlist site where members discuss and predict possible deaths, some in graphic and gory detail. To date, some 700,000 posts have been made. And there is a merchandise page, too. People are making money off the back of misery and tragedy. As Joe Walsh once put it, you can’t argue with a sick mind.
Naturally, the people who run the site are anonymous, nameless and gutless, every single one. No accountability there then, just smirking, sniggering schoolboys, mainly their grown-up equivalents, laughing at death but not the deaths that are in their own lives. Laughing at the death of others.
Some of the names on the list are terribly ill, which is why the ‘jokers’ have included their names in the first place. The thinking will be simple: that cancer will get them in the end, so why not in 2025? Oh what fun we had.
The people who run the site are probably not heartless but they are surely brainless. And when their own loved-ones suffer and die, perhaps they will grieve, relieved perhaps that someone wasn’t betting on their family and friends dying. But maybe they won’t and maybe they have hearts of stone.
Other people’s misery is not funny, it is not an excuse for a sick joke and, I confess, I was that twat once upon a time. Losing family and friends shook me out of my sickness. If that doesn’t change minds, nothing will.
