IF YOU'RE reading this, well done - you made it through January.

The first month of 2016 has been a tough one, with outpourings of shock and grief all over the world as beloved rock stars, actors, directors, television and radio personalities passed away mostly unexpectedly. (I say mostly, because if half the stories about him are true, it's a genuine surprise Lemmy was with us as long as he was).

While I was among the millions crushed by the loss of David Bowie, his death saw the rise of an ugly new form of trolling which - following the death of Terry Wogan - seems to be a trendy new thing.

For want of a better term, I've called it Hipster Grieving, as it adopts the cynical, sarcastic tone of the worst kind of hipsters, along with their anti-mainstream affectations.

While millions took to social media to talk about how Bowie had affected their lives and how much they would miss him, some media commentators announced themselves as the Grief Police and berated the mourning masses for their thoughts. Their argument was that the people who should really be grieving are his family, everyone else is just overreacting.

Worse still, a national newspaper's front page this week tried to turn the celebrity deaths into some sort of macabre contest, by teasing the headline: "Why Wogan moved Britain in a way Bowie couldn't".

It's not Top Trumps, there's no winner here. Everyone who's ever heard their work or cared in the slightest about them has lost something. There's no need to turn it into The Great British Grief Off.

I'm sure it's been around longer than I've known, but I'd only noticed this kind of thing for the first time following the massacre in Paris at the end of last year.

As the brutality of the bombings and shootings across the Channel became clear, thousands of people expressed their thoughts on social media, with many using a hastily-created Facebook gadget to cover their profile picture with the French flag in a symbolic show of solidarity.

Everyone knew it didn't make a difference to the victims or their families, but it was a way to show support without giving the perpetrators the oxygen of publicity. Doubtless some did it so they didn't feel left out, but on the whole it seemed like a genuine attempt to unite people in the face of horror.

Regardless of the intent, countless self-righteous keyboard warriors saw it as a meaningless effort and went out of their way to say so. Others were quick to point out the hypocrisy of those who didn't change their profile picture to the Syrian flag to mark the hundreds of thousands who had suffered or died there prior to the Paris attacks.

This attitude of "of course, I cared about the cause before it was fashionable", and looking down on the Johnny-come-lately types is very prevalent across the media and social media now, and I suspect we'll see a great deal more of it as 2016 continues, but just because you've only just become aware of or started to care about a thing, that doesn't mean your opinion isn't valid.

I wasn't around to experience Hunky Dory or Ziggy Stardust the first time round, but started listening to Bowie LPs in my early teens. I know what he meant to my parents, and I know what he meant to me - does that mean I can't have an opinion on his passing, or due to my age, can I only have an opinion on his post-Labyrinth output?

Similarly, I've got a vague understanding of the daily horrors taking place in Syria and around the Middle East, and while I think that's terrible, it's somehow more personally horrifying when an attack happens out of the blue in a city I've actually visited and is less than 500 miles away.

Grief is grief, and it affects everyone differently. As such, surely it deserves respect, and not some sarcastic 600-word feature or blog post on why you don't have the right to be upset?

Of course, I understand that freedom of speech by its very definition means we have the right to say whatever we want, and not 'you have the right not to be offended'.

I also understand that in a world where millions of people are vying for attention, it's easier to get a click with a mean-spirited headline about a popular figure than with a straight-up tribute.

I guess as long as that's the case, it's up to us to try and tune them out.