The faith wonders why the news about the incurably sick Freek Rikkerink (32) from Suzan & Freek evokes so much compassion, while that would not apply to the children in Gaza.
Suzan & Freek do not know what happens to them: the extremely successful musical love couple has stopped abruptly because metastatic lung cancer has been found at Freek Rikkerink, who is only 32 years old and looks very fit. The whole country is working on it and therefore asks Fidelity Now get rid of: “How is it possible that the news evokes so massive compassion?”
‘Massahysteria’
According to mourning expert Manu Keirse of KU Leuven, the mass compassion is easy to explain. He points to the social media use of young people. “They spend hours with celebrities only in their room, they are very close. (…) They end up in their lives for a long time, sometimes more than uncles and aunts and cousins.”
Suzan & Freek share a lot with their 800,000 followers. According to Manu, the fact that it is one -way traffic makes it no less. He therefore does not find current emotions abnormal. “You don’t have to dismiss this as a mass hysteria. It’s just genuine connection. What kind of society would we still be without?”
Children in Gaza
The faithfulness finds it all very striking. “What makes messages from Gaza and Ukraine, where misery is the order of the day, did not yet release such a massive compassion?”, The journalist of service wonders.
Manu on that: “We don’t know those images, but we don’t know the children in Gaza. While, a singer or singer: he was on the TV screen in the living room! And we know something about it. That makes it very different.”
And so it is of course: this is a very ordinary, human response to proximity and recognisability. Can this inappropriate comparison theater of Trouw now close again? Thank you.