Another week, another dead celebrity and another great online beating of breasts and rending of garments. Twitter, Facebook and various other social networks last week echoed with the wails of Prince fans who had come together to publicly grieve the Purple One.In much the same fashion as the reaction to the death of comedian Victoria Wood barely 24 hours earlier, the sites were soon overrun with comments such as "Can't stop crying, feel so empty. RIP."Inevitably, we then had the immediate backlash, in which people pointed out that if you are, say, a 45-year-old facilities manager with two children who had never actually met Prince, mild sadness might be a more appropriate response than utter devastation.Then we had the backlash to the backlash, with the mourners attacking those who questioned their heartfelt grief. And so on, like ever-decreasing ripples bouncing off the sides of a pool into which a dead celebrity had been dropped.Two major celebrity deaths ago (David Bowie) Sunday Times journalist Camilla Long had the temerity to tweet, "So many people 'crying' or 'in bits' over Bowie. F*** YOU. You are not 10 - you are an adult. Man the f*** up and say something interesting."The reaction to her reaction was the kind of thing we've come to love social media for. And, although she did not name Long specifically, the next day the journalist Sali Hughes wrote a very cross piece in which she called those who impugned the sincerity of online mourners the "grief police" and the "grief ombudsmen".At first, this might seem reasonable enough. But the more I think about it, the more I think Long was right and those who ask "How dare she?" are actually the grief police themselves.If your opinion (and the opinions of those like you) have come to dominate the media and the public discourse, then, surely, others are allowed to find this overwrought and tiresome.Why can't we ask what happened to the stiff upper lip? And is it really so ridiculous, as adults blub over superannuated celebrities whom they have never, ever met, to suggest that perhaps we all need some emotional-incontinence pants.Many of today's grievers seem to misunderstand how social media works.If you were quietly sobbing over Bowie's death on a park bench, I would have no right to walk up to you and say "You are not 10. You are an adult."But you're not crying alone. You posted your feelings on Facebook or Twitter and made them public; as Megan Garber pointed out in The Atlantic, you turned your grief into content.You can't throw a self-righteous hissy fit when people say that they find your public declarations of grief a bit much.And this, fundamentally, is why so many of the social grievers are wrong.They want your attention - they often crave it - but only if your thoughts are of the approved sort.They place themselves in a position in which anyone who disagrees with them is the bad guy. Look at how many of the social media posts in the wake of a celebrity death are about the posters and their own feelings.It's difficult not to come to the conclusion that for many social grievers, it's more about them than the dead person.Many of these posts are nothing more than a mixture of narcissism and virtue-signalling, masquerading as grief.Look, too, at the timelines of many of today's virtual mourners. You'll find they're devastated on a remarkably regular basis.What they felt about Prince, they also felt about Wood, Bowie, David Guest, Alan Rickman and so on ... These poor people. Do they live in a permanent state of grief?Now, God only knows where it's going to end. We've got an awful lot of pensionable celebrities these days and they're all going to die at some point. ..