
Was 2016 especially dangerous for celebrities? An empirical analysis - brw12
https://medium.com/@jasoncrease/was-2016-especially-dangerous-for-celebrities-79d79b9fae02#.lp6qhlawk
======
monodeldiablo
This analysis seems to assume that the concentration of celebrities among the
population is roughly fixed, which is weird. It clearly isn't.

The whole concept of mass market celebrity is largely the product of American
post-WWII prosperity and the explosion of a consumer class. It was rare prior
to 1950 and arguably peaked around the early 2000s, when mass media went into
steep decline.

Most "celebrities" alive today would have been active (or the topic of public
discussion) during that period. So should we really be all that surprised
that, as the Boomer generation rapidly approaches peak mortality, celebs are
also dying in greater numbers?

The article concludes that this year was a "once in a century" outlier. On the
contrary, I predict an even more grim 2017. Regardless, this analysis is
incomplete without at least a cursory discussion of the distribution of
celebrity birth years. Line that up with an actuarial table and _then_ tell me
how anomalous 2016 was.

~~~
etblg
I think it's only going to get weirder in the future too as more and more is
pumped in to the celebrity machine.

I was in a bookstore the other day and saw Anna Kendrick's memoir. I don't
have anything against her at all, but she's a 31 year old actress who hasn't
had a big role that produces her legacy, maybe in another decade or two, but
now?

Every person of at least minor celebrity status comes out with a biography
these days, and then goes on a big publicity tour on all the talk shows, and
now there's more and more talk shows on more and more network, cable, and
internet networks. There seems to be a whole industry centered around people
in media reinforcing themselves to an absurd degree now.

Then again maybe we just forgot if this happened in the 70s and before and
this has always happened, who knows!

~~~
monodeldiablo
The difference is that, as media has fragmented and people find increasingly
diverse sources of news and entertainment, there are more niche celebrities
and fewer mega celebrities.

Manufacturing a mega celebrity takes a certain degree of monopolization of
attention. But the days of three-network-television and two-station radio
markets are gone. We don't, as a society, watch and listen to the same stuff
anymore. It started with cable in the 90s, but it's accelerated with the
internet.

I don't know who Anna Kendrick is, but if she's anything like the rest of the
"celebrities" I'm supposed to know, she's a Q-list reality show extra with a
hyperactive agent. The internet has globalized and democratized the market for
attention, which means greater competition, more niches, shorter shelf lives,
and fewer monopolies.

~~~
moomin
Actually, she's quite different from that. For one thing, she can actually
sing, and a fair few of her roles involve it.

My 5yo regards her as the definitive Cinderella, for instance.

Edit: Oh yes, and was the star of a movie that took $290m worldwide, from a
budget of $29m.

------
michaelchisari
It's not just the number of celebrities, it's the number of _beloved_
celebrities. Prince, George Michael, Alan Rickman, David Bowie, Muhammad Ali,
Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher in one year? That kind of clustering of
groundbreaking, generation defining celebrity is what made 2016 seem
especially rough.

~~~
omarchowdhury
Aren't celebrities, by definition, beloved?

~~~
masterzora
No. Celebrities are, by definition, well known. To pull an example from the
article, Ted Bundy certainly qualifies as a celebrity who would generally not
be considered beloved.

------
dharmon
I've been wondering if it isn't just that more celebrities have died (which I
thought was unlikely), but that the celebrities dying are surprisingly young.

Like when Kirk Douglas eventually dies, the likely reaction will be, "Wait, he
was still alive?!" But it seems we've had lots of celebrities in their 50's
and 60's dying, which is young for rich people.

So maybe it's not death, just unexpected death. I think it hits home more for
people when a young person dies, even if "young" in some cases is in their
50's.

~~~
sandworm101
Celebs are not the most healthy people. Having money can give you too much
access to docs and prescription drugs (see prince). Many also have pasts
involving non-prescription drugs. A decade of the wild life sticks with you
forever.

~~~
agumonkey
George Michael and Carrie Fisher carried their burden too it seems. Fame
mostly financed some drugs, but not everything was pink at the core.

------
lucisferre
One thing this doesn't necessarily account for is factors like population
growth (particularly the the baby-boom) and the explosion of popular culture
and celebrity notoriety through mass media. Are there simply considerably more
people considered "celebrities" since say the 1950's than before?

~~~
Scaevolus
I'd expect celebrity to be more "concentrated" for people born from 1920-1980,
since the nature of mass media distribution naturally limited how many famous
people there were. With the internet, attention has been fractured onto many
smaller celebrities, though pop music still creates some very recognizable and
controversial stars (Bieber, Kardashians).

~~~
monodeldiablo
Thanks for putting so succinctly what I rambled on about in my comment. This
analysis is missing a distribution of celebrity ages.

------
rjtobin
I'd think that after a celebrity does, there would be an increase in the
number of edits / length of an article. Wouldn't this skew the numbers,
increasing the "celebrity" statistic for everyone that has died that year (and
hence making the year seem more extraordinary than it is)?

It would be interesting to do the same analysis for 2015 and previous years,
using wikipedia snapshots at the end of each year, and see if those years also
appear extreme.

~~~
eridius
Why would that necessarily be true? After a celebrity dies, a short amount of
text is expected to be added about the death, but beyond that, why would you
expect the length to increase?

~~~
rocqua
Generally increased media attention?

Heck, even the simple increase of eyes on article seems like it'd increase the
edits. Then there is the potential for reporting on something to cause people
to add / amend the relevant articles.

~~~
eridius
You can make the case for increasing the number of edits (although I doubt
there's really that much of an effect; anyone who has to visit the Wikipedia
page to find out about the person just died isn't likely to be someone who
already has a vested interest in putting some information on that page), but
my comment was arguing against the idea that the article length would increase
(beyond the small amount of text regarding the celebrity's death).

------
jcoffland
This analysis assumes that if I take measurements using Wikipedia regarding
celebrities who died in 2005 now the results would be the same as if I had
taken those same measurements in 2005. This is obviously not true. I would
argue that the most recent year will always appear to have more deaths than
normal using this analysis because more attention is paid to celebrities
immediately following their death.

The simple fact that this analysis results in such extremely wild numbers for
the chance of 2016's celebrity deaths occurring, shows that is probably
flawed.

------
jazzido
Here's another take on the same question from a group at MIT Media Lab:
[http://macro.media.mit.edu/2017/](http://macro.media.mit.edu/2017/)

------
beefman
The last two plots could be correlated with GDP. E.g. dips circa 2002, 2008,
and 2011. If the author is reading this: Can you make your data available?
Thanks!

------
oDot
I wonder if "a year" can be divided other than from Jan to Dec, in a way to
that would cause even worse results.

------
hkmurakami
Totally thought this was going to be about security breaches. (Also dangerous
for celebrities I imagine -- though I guess it can be a career making breach
for some)

------
reality_czech
Say goodbye to the boomer celebrities, and hello to the Trump years.

------
sogen
Honestly it all boils down to social media: These days you can easily be
_bombarded_ if some guy from a long-forgotten one-hit wonder band member died.

