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Rihanna posted a moving picture from the tragic bombing that took place Monday afternoon during the Boston Marathon. 

She simply wrote, “Heartbreaking #PrayforBoston.”

Over 11,000 comments later, and Rihanna sparked a debate: Was it wrong for her to post the graphic picture? 

Some people assumed she posted a picture of a dead body, but that is not the case. While there is blood on the ground, the girl in the photo was not dead. The description reads, ‘A man comforts an injured woman on the sidewalk at the scene of the first explosion on Boylston Street near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.’ The picture was taken by John Tlumacki for The Boston Globe.

The commenters went off and voiced their opinions, telling Rihanna to take the pic down because it’s disrespectful, while another said it’s not a tasteful picture to post. 

The picture even sparked a conversation between my friend and I; she explained to me she immediately thought it was a man over the dead body of a woman. Understandably so: there’s blood all over the place and this was a tragic event. She said, “There’s people’s blood everywhere. That’s part of someone, their blood represents them and it’s just wrong.”

I’ll admit it was a little distasteful coming from Rihanna, but she has the right to post the picture. Especially considering that some of our friends are posting much worse. Bones exposed, limbs torn off, blood spewing from people. 

The whole idea of these images opens a very interesting debate. Should these pictures even be posted at all?

Rihanna’s comments also sparked another debate by her foreign followers. That Americans are babies. We get all bent out of shape over a few bloody pictures, when people in other countries see stuff like this every day. 

When it comes to graphic pictures from sick acts of violence, those images are needed to help people understand exactly what happened and exactly why this is a major issue, but that’s the job of media outlets.

While our friends, that are nice people, that we know, love and broke bread with, might post most extreme images, do celebrities have more of a responsibility of what they should post? 

Aside from Rihanna’s picture, our friend Evelyn Lozada posted a picture of a little girl running, with the caption “RIP to the 8 year old girl who died.” While it was a sweet gesture, it was actually an 8-year-old little boy who lost his life. I thought this was worse than Rihanna’s posting and Evelyn must have thought so as well, because she later deleted the picture. 

We all make mistakes and we need to remember that just because a person has a million followers and millions of dollars, doesn’t mean they are any different from you and I. 
They are regular people with regular emotions and they do regular things in between the extraordinary things they do to entertain us. So let me point out a bit of rationality from one of BadGalRiRi’s followers:

Everyone listen I dont agree with them posting this picture but this morning they showed the same picture on ESPN and no one is yelling at them if u want to yell at someone yell at ESPN so for everyone who is being Nasty to this @badgalriri be Nasty to ESPN”

Do you think celebs should post pictures of graphic images, or leave it to the news organizations? 

Blog Xilla Follow Me On Twitter

Xilla is the Sr. Entertainment Editor for GlobalGrind.com as well as CEO of the number 1 relationship blog BlogXilla.com/M2TB.com. He has been featured in XXL, The Source, Essence, LA Times and is considered one of the premiere bloggers in the industry. Follow him on twitter @BlogXilla