2016 - Brutal for celebrities
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After hearing that George Michael died, it is hard to not see 2016 as really, really bad year for celebrities (that were important to me--Prince's death still affects me).
Does anyone actually have some numbers? Is this year that much worse? Or am I just getting older and have a connection from my youth to more celebrities than previous years?
Maybe they all were planning to testify against Clinton.
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@Karla said in 2016 - Brutal for celebrities:
Is this year that much worse?
Maybe? But we should expect some years to be worse than others out of sheer randomness.
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Celebrity Deaths 2016
Celebrity Deaths 2016 - people who died in 2016 who we knew of and will dearly miss.
It does seem like a lot.
Shit, I forgot Mohamed Ali had died too. In a normal year, that'd be enough on its own.
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Using the Wikipedia definition of notability as a mark of “celebrity-ness” (which has been largely consistent over the past few years), there's been 339 celebrity deaths so far this year, whereas in 2015 there were 309 in the whole year (and 298 in the period up to this day last year). And in 2014 there were just 218. So yes, celeb death rates do indeed seem to be picking up over the past two years.
I wonder if it is a demographic bulge hitting the actuarial wall…
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One of the main things it once more highlighted for me is that many of these overviews of the year, that you get on TV and radio around times like these, are broadcast too early. Sunday morning, my clock radio turns on to a programme playing nothing but songs of popular entertainers who died in 2016 (not Lemmy, as “he died in 2015,” the presenter even said when someone texted to ask about him …). Just after midnight, as I’m about to turn off the TV and go to bed, I see that George Michael has died.
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@dkf said in 2016 - Brutal for celebrities:
So yes, celeb death rates do indeed seem to be picking up over the past two years.
Or the number of 'celebs' has increased. Or celeb deaths follow the normal death pattern or demographic flow e.g. as baby boomers get older they have a higher statistical death rate combined with that the simple fact that the generation itself is more populous results in more dead people.
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@Luhmann said in 2016 - Brutal for celebrities:
Or the number of 'celebs' has increased.
Possible, and if I was looking at statistics over a few decades then that's what I'd expect to be a confounding factor. But come on… it's just 2014–2016.
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There's a UK TV show called The Last Leg, and for their live Christmas Special, they asked the British public to vote for the Biggest Dick of 2016. One of the nominations was 2016 itself, due to the number of celebrity deaths this year.
2016 won.
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@dkf
I wouldn't be surprised if 'celebs' followed an exponential curve ... maybe in a few years we might see a celeb implosion.
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@Luhmann said in 2016 - Brutal for celebrities:
I wouldn't be surprised if 'celebs' followed an exponential curve ...
A celeb death singularity? I find your idea intriguing…
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It seems the first half of the year was abnormally high, and the second half returned to normal, leaving the year as a whole higher than the trend
Have more famous people died in 2016?
The year 2016 been held up as a particularly gloomy year for celebrity deaths. But has the grim reaper really been working overtime?
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@RaceProUK said in 2016 - Brutal for celebrities:
2016 won.
??
I really don't get all of this hate for 2016.
I think it's more that people are just more aware of bad things, than the year actually sucking.
For me, personally, it was one of my best years.
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@dkf said in 2016 - Brutal for celebrities:
A celeb death singularity?
A celeb extinction event if you may ...
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@dkf said in 2016 - Brutal for celebrities:
Using the Wikipedia definition of notability as a mark of “celebrity-ness”
If Wikipedia had been around in 1890, they would have deleted the entry for Vincent Van Gogh due to "lack of notability".
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@Luhmann said in 2016 - Brutal for celebrities:
@dkf said in 2016 - Brutal for celebrities:
A celeb death singularity?
A celeb extinction event if you may ...
This did make me laugh a little.
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@Luhmann said in 2016 - Brutal for celebrities:
@Karla said in 2016 - Brutal for celebrities:
a little.
a little ?
I admit nothing.
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@RaceProUK said in 2016 - Brutal for celebrities:
There's a UK TV show called The Last Leg, and for their live Christmas Special, they asked the British public to vote for the Biggest Dick of 2016. One of the nominations was 2016 itself, due to the number of celebrity deaths this year.
2016 won.The same people who voted for Boaty McBoat Face and Brexit. Wouldn't put much stock in that.
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@Luhmann said in 2016 - Brutal for celebrities:
Or the number of 'celebs' has increased. Or celeb deaths follow the normal death pattern or demographic flow e.g. as baby boomers get older they have a higher statistical death rate combined with that the simple fact that the generation itself is more populous results in more dead people.
Due to fracturing of popular culture, we probably do have more celebrities, but they are smaller in scale.
Eg. if you are a gamer, your "celebrities" might be Total Biscuit, AVGN etc., but people who are into different things have probably never heard of them.
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@Luhmann said in 2016 - Brutal for celebrities:
A celeb extinction event
Oddly, I'm failing to feel a great sense of tragedy at that prospect.
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@cartman82 said in 2016 - Brutal for celebrities:
Due to fracturing of popular culture
It's not only fracturing. Media has exploded over the past decades. Take only TV as an example. Where there used to be a few channels there now are dozens and they all program 24/7. That means more programs. That means there are more 'celebrities' hosting stuff, more actors inside TV movies, sitcoms without puns and so on.
Then add all new media formats then sprung up like games, social media & youtube.
And then globalization, meaning that more celebrities reach beyond national and cultural borders then before.
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Rick Parfitt also died, I think he was one of my DBAs while I was at Capita. Rock God and DBA for Southampton County Council.
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@lucas1
That celebrity implosion really needs to happen
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@Luhmann It was really bizarre working with someone that looked like a clone of a rockstar.
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2016 claims another victim:
Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher dies aged 60, days after suffering a cardiac arrest on a flight.
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@RaceProUK JJ Abrams is going to have scripting problems.
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@RaceProUK Seriously though she stopped breathing for 10 minutes on that plane. At best that is brain damage.
RIP Princess Leia
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@RaceProUK said in 2016 - Brutal for celebrities:
2016 claims another victim:
Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher dies aged 60, days after suffering a cardiac arrest on a flight.
Ah man. I used to try to do my hair like her when I was a kid.
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In related stories:
Watership Down author Richard Adams dies aged 96
The author of Watership Down, Richard Adams, has died aged 96, his daughter says.
2016 is like "quick, there's still time!"
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@Maciejasjmj Watership Down is required viewing, it is the most brutal kids cartoon.
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In other news: non-celebrities died too.
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@loopback0 My Grandfather died this year at 90 (a week before my birthday, my birthday present was his
funeralcremation btw, RIP Victor) and I was upset about that. But I also don't like the fact that David Bowie died.People look up to people like celebrities and try to emulate them to better themselves ...
EDIT: or like their art ... the point is that certain people are inspirations for others.
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@lucas1 said in 2016 - Brutal for celebrities:
People look up to people like celebrities and try to emulate them to better themselves
I'd probably be more upset about celebrities dying if so many of them weren't the shittiest of role models. We, as a society, choose some really terrible people to celebrate.
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@lucas1 said in 2016 - Brutal for celebrities:
My Grandfather died this year at 90 (a week before my birthday, my birthday present was his funeral btw, RIP Victor)
Shit, man. Sorry.
@lucas1 said in 2016 - Brutal for celebrities:
But I also don't like the fact that David Bowie died.
People look up to people like celebrities and try to emulate them to better themselves ...
EDIT: or like their art ... the point is that certain people are inspirations for others.Yeah I kinda get that. It's just a lot of people (not necessarily here) are focusing on the "few" celebrities that died and seemingly forgetting everyone else.
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@HardwareGeek I don't think David Bowie or George Micheal were shitty people.
But yes some are. I am sure. I think Lemmy died just before 2016 and nobody can hate the guy.
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@loopback0 yeh I get that what you are saying, but I all I am saying is that some of these people were really good at what they did and were an inspiration for some.
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@loopback0 said in 2016 - Brutal for celebrities:
Shit, man. Sorry.
No worries mate. Thanks btw.
I feel bad for my Nan, she had been married to him for I believe it was over 60 years and she genuinely was in love with him until the day he died.
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@loopback0 said in 2016 - Brutal for celebrities:
In other news: non-celebrities died too.
Last year was tough on me for the personal deaths. Two were close to my age and 1 in their 60s.
This year all personal deaths in my family I was not close to (and only met a few times) and they were all in their 80s and 90s.
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@Karla It still fucking sucks though, even if they are old.
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@lucas1 said in 2016 - Brutal for celebrities:
my Nan, she had been married to him for I believe it was over 60 years
No. Don't do it. Just don't. Don't say it.
So...
Don't you dare! Don't you dare!
...she's available?
Horrible. Just horrible.
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@Bort You would have to ask her. I wouldn't ask her about her sex life at
8788.BTW when I saw that comment I was pissing myself laughing.
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Bruce Forsyth mush be shitting his pants at this stage.
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@lucas1 said in 2016 - Brutal for celebrities:
It still fucking sucks though, even if they are old.
Sometimes it is perhaps better than the alternative. It's possible to keep people alive but in a lot of pain, or alive but not knowing who is who at all, and I'm not convinced that either is a good moral choice. In the case of my grandmother, a long series of TIAs gradually took away the person that we loved and left a shell that hardly knew any of her family from total strangers despite her continuing to claim that her family were of great importance and why didn't we ever visit. Heart-wrenching and drawn out over years. When an infection (I think, or maybe another TIA) eventually killed her, it was a relief; my father's cousin was in tears over it, but my father and I weren't. I'd have rather had the person she was before the decline back, with her great cooking and deadpan double entendres, but wishing for impossible things does no good. Death is natural. Memento mori.
Sucks to lose so many people this year though.
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@dkf I agree, I think My Grandfathers quality of life if he survived would have been terrible.
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Also I think My Grandfather knew it was near the end because he told my step dad "I had a good life". Which is haunting considering the state I saw him in.
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Alan Rickman
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@dse TBH It is better he didn't see die hard six, or 6.0 or whatever the fuck they number them now.
