Why So Many Celebrities Have Died In 2016 by Lydia

Why So Many Celebrities Have Died In 2016
by Lydia Morrish
11 hours ago
 857 SHARES
 share on facebook
Prince, David Bowie, George Michael, Carrie Fisher, Ronnie Corbett, Alan Rickman, Sir Terry Wogan, Mohammed Ali, Harper Lee, David Gest, Gene Wilder, Pete Burns… It certainly seems to be the case that 2016 has been a murderous blip in the calendar.

There have been so many celebrity deaths this year that it’s hard not to panic when your phone bleeps with a news alert. It’s not only the #StopNow2016 hashtaggers and drama queens playing into the funeral of a year. BBC News is planning to extend its obituary compilation for the end-of-year round-up show and a photoshopped image of all of the victims of 2016 has gone viral over the last couple of days, garnering over 50,000 likes from those ready for 2017.

It’s been easy to just yell “Screw you 2016, you really have it out for us!” every time something bad has happened this year. And yet there hasn’t been some demigod killing off the globe’s most talented stars with some sort of curse – not that anybody actually believes that, especially you, switched-on readers.


There’s are real reasons there have been so many deaths in such a short space of time. And it’s not because the ghost of 2016 is “killing people.”

Existing theories claim that there are more celebrities are dying because of a variety of reasons: the rise in social media mourning and the immediacy of the news furthers the attention paid to the deaths; the growth of celebrity culture since the 50s and the lowering of the bar for what constitutes a ‘celebrity’ has resulted in many more people that are considered “famous”; pop culture icons from the late 20th century are likely to die around now anyway; we are more likely to hear about current celebrities born in the baby boomer era becoming ill because there were more superstars born then than ever before. Other causes for early deaths may be the rise in pollution, the reduction of food quality and general standards of living declining.

Even Sigmund Freud chipped into the debate a century ago, writing that “in the unconscious, every one of us is convinced of his own immortality”. The Austrian neurologist claimed that it’s “impossible to imagine our own death”, and that’s also clearly the case for our heroes.

The appearance of celebrity death hysteria this year is probably a result of all of these factors. However, there’s another possible reason.

Although it went largely unnoticed, a study was released earlier this year which stated that the life expectancy in the US has decreased for the very first time since 1993, as pointed out by Medium writer Judy Anne.

She reckons that due to the unhealthy lifestyles of people who were young in the 60s, 70s and 80s – alcohol-drinking, smoking and substance abuse were a common part of life for musicians, actors and people in the spotlight – many of them are dying now.


(Photo: Trudy Barry/Konbini)
If we look at George Michael, Carrie Fisher, Prince and Bowie, all of them were known to be avid drug-users, in particular cocaine. George Michael and Prince both reportedly died of drug overdoses, Carrie Fisher’s cocaine use most likely contributed to her heart attack and David Bowie’s liver cancer was likely a result of alcohol.

While each death is as tragic as the other and our idols shouldn’t be immortalised only as drug-abusers, it’s note-worthy that the historic championing of decadent lifestyles might be why life expectancies have lowered.

Without being too depressing and fear-mongering, it looks as if generational alcoholism and drug addiction might be playing a part in the killing off the grown ups of today. Perhaps if the war on drugs wasn’t so rampant and, as a society, we were more able to discuss drug problems and addictions, our favourite celebrities and friends could have lived for longer.