Quote:
Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch
First, please accept my thanks for moderating this every year. It brings a weird thrill into an otherwise drab life.
Second, I apologize for treating your question as rhetorical. I feel especially guilty because it drives me CRAZY when I ask similar questions ("Hey guys, which approach is more consistent with what we're trying to accomplish here, A or B?") and I get no responses, or responses only from the people who want to change what the organization is trying to accomplish.
That said, to the extent it helps with this issue going forward next year, I have no objection to the use of celebrities whose famousness originated from crime. The purpose served by the no-death-row rule isn't to redefine "celebrity"; it's to avoid the hazard to the game of allowing picks whose death is a scheduled event, period. There is no "reward" to bad people for making them famous enough for a death pool, as I see it.
My policy preference is to expand the definition of celebrity as broadly as possible so the DP lists don't become permutations of the same 25 people. I'm guilty of adopting the best people from last year's lists, and anyone who takes a gamble by adding in new blood is making this more fun, not less (IMHO). It would be a shame if everybody's list were the nine oldest people on aretheydeadyet.com plus one person who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year. The truly memorable hits here were Mindy McCready and Amy Winehouse — indisputably celebrities, yes, but we admire the spirit of gambling in spending a precious spot of 10 on something that risky.
I guess what I'm saying is that I respect your desire to make the right decision about eligibility, but as a player I'm not terribly disturbed by other people's idea of who's a celebrity. If you decided to get out of the gate keeping business, I wouldn't feel like the game had gone to shit.
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I think it's also important to add that the level of somebody's "celebrity" varies greatly depending on who the audience is. I couldn't name 10 professional soccer players bc I don't care about the sport, but I'm sure there are "famous" soccer players that nobody else here would question are celebrities even though I'd have to google to figure out who they are. However, I'm fascinated by serial killers, and have been since middle school when I first read Helter Skelter. So yeah, I know about the Moors Murderers because I've read about them in many books about serial killers and they seem, to me, to be more famous than people who starred in a couple of movies in the 1940s that nobody has watched in 50 years, but have their own Wikipedia pages.
