Killing to Create a Legend

I've only just been able to gather my thoughts. I feel like I played a hand in this. I talked shit just like everyone else.

Linkin Park and Chester - were always the butt of the joke, it was cool to hate on them. And if I didn't throw hate, I sure laughed along and didn't stop it.

It was clear that the negativity affected him, as evidenced by him lashing out to his fans(1). He only recently shifted perspective after being called out by Cory Taylor(2). I would think that when all of those toxic emotions couldn't be directed outward, they were then directed inward.

I'm imagining feeling like, all my fans hate me.

My fans. Who matter. Hate me.

I'm imagining feeling like, I'm about to leave on tour and perform in front of 10,000 people who are going to hate me and make sure I know they hate me.

For the next 150+ nights.

People are posting "if you're in trouble, reach out," but why would I reach out to people if I feel like they hate me? Why would I give them something else to talk shit about? And people are showing that that would've been true by still posting hateful shit.

Cause that's what we do, we find someone to vilify and hate and make a spectacle out of tearing them apart.

And when they're gone, we heap the praise upon them that wasn't acceptable when they were alive.

People are about to blame mental health and substance abuse, but those factors only make someone susceptible to this darkness. Blaming the weakness that's caused by being beaten down takes responsibility away from collective clubs and stones in life that batter the soul to begin with. And hate from his fans, from me, from us, had to have been one of those stones.

He's not the first fatality of this cycle, and he won't be the last, but this isn't going to stop if we don't start realizing what we're doing and taking responsibility for our hand in it. It's not enough to say "reach out if you need help", just don't throw that hateful stone to begin with. The dead can't hear praise, everything good that we feel and say about the departed needs to be said before they've gone.

When it actually would've mattered