While David Letterman no longer has a late-night show (unless you choose to watch his sporadic Netflix series at precisely 11:35 p.m.), the Letterman YouTube channel has been quite busy posting vintage clips.
As we’ve mentioned before, a number of these uploads have been timed to coincide with current events, such as the recent U.S. election. But it’s also become standard operating procedure for the Letterman channel to respond to notable celebrity deaths by sharing old clips of the departed appearing on either Late Night or The Late Show or both.
Don’t Miss
Already this year we’ve gotten multiple examples of this. In January, Letterman posted interviews with Bob Uecker and David Lynch when they both died on the same day. And a performance of “The Weight” went up following the news that The Band’s last surviving member, Garth Hudson, was no longer with us.
In the past 10 days, there have been videos featuring Roberta Flack, The New York Dolls’ David Johansen and screen legend Gene Hackman, all of whom just passed away.
It should be noted that none of these videos contain any mention of their subjects’ deaths; there’s no preamble or title that in any way references the loss, they’re literally just archival clips timed to coincide with the sad news, which would explain why folks have gotten a little confused.
When the account released a “Best of David Chappelle” video this week, some fans worried that it was because the comedian had died. “At this point, when this channel uploads someone, I go make sure if the person I still alive lol,” one user commented. “I panicked,” another added.
Some trolls actively stoked that misconception by posting comments like “Rest in peace Chappelle, you were the best” and “Dave’s dead.”
The same thing happened with “The Best of Julia Louis-Dreyfus” video. “RIP Julia. She’ll always be Elaine to me,” one person wrote. “We lost her too soon,” another chimed in. Similarly, a highlight reel of appearances from Bruce Willis, who suffers from aphasia, led to a flurry of comments containing everything from confusion to genuine concern to false rumors.
Nobody should be going to a talk show host’s YouTube page for news about current events, but it still seems as though the channel could do something to differentiate the videos that are connected to a recent death and the ones that are uploaded just for fun. Like, they could just put their birth and death dates in the description, or preface the title with “In memory of…”
Otherwise, these videos are going to continue to freak people out and be overrun with morbid lies. Which probably isn’t the vibe they were going for.
Content shared from www.cracked.com.