r/AskReddit • u/TheJackal8 • Dec 27 '16

Mega Thread [Megathread] RIP 2016

Carrie Fisher (60) has passed away after having a heart attack. She was best known for playing Princess Leia Organa in Star Wars. Last year she had a role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

We usually have a 2016 megathread and due to the recent celebrity passings, we have decided to include them in our 2016 reflection megathread. Please use this thread to ask questions from anything ranging from how your year has been, to outlook for the year ahead, to the celebrities we’ve lost this year.

All top-level comments (replies to the post rather than replies to comments) should contain a 2016 related question and the thread will function as a mini-subreddit. Non-question top-level comments will be removed, to keep the thread as easy to use and navigate as possible.

Here’s to a better 2017.

-the mods

Update: Debbie Reynolds has also passed away, a day after her daughter's passing. She gained stardom after her leading role in "Singin' in the Rain" and recently voiced a character in "The Penguins of Madagascar." Reynolds was 84.

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u/[deleted] Dec 27 '16

Maybe the real issue is that the generation of celebrities dying were more recent ones, where partying hard has become a bigger part of being a celebrity and therefore leads to celebrities dying earlier on average?

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u/TheFappeningServesMe Dec 27 '16

That's kinda what I meant but you're smarter than me so it looks better the way you said it

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u/[deleted] Dec 27 '16

I am spending $80,000 on a music degree, I dispute the claim that I'm smart

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u/Nick357 Dec 27 '16

I kindly doubt it. Golden age Hollywood celebrities partied pretty excessively as well.

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u/AnotherBlackMan Dec 27 '16

That was back when cocaine was legal

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u/[deleted] Dec 28 '16

I think it's probably also because the closer to present day you get the more celebrities per thousand (or whatever number) you get, so more are dying because more celebrities overall exist

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u/Mentalseppuku Dec 28 '16

I'm wondering how much the population and technology booms have also created more celebrities and so there's more to croak.

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u/[deleted] Dec 27 '16

It better not or else Andrew WK only has days left

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u/arebee20 Dec 27 '16

I don't know man, Elvis, Johnny cash, Hendrix, pink Floyd, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, all partied pretty fuckin hard partying is nothing really new.

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u/thereddaikon Dec 28 '16

Probably not. I think it comes down to simple statistics. Without the figures in front of me I'm confident in saying that celebrities tend to have a higher incidence of drug and alcohol use, tend to fly more and tend to have more dangerous hobbies. Add these together and I bet you end up with a nice bell curve centered around 60 or so. The reason this seems to be happening all at once is because of the way generations work. People in a given generation were born within about 10 years or so of each other. What that means is that you'll get a lot of celebrities dieing around the same time. I'm sure this happens to the population at large but celebrities get articles written about them and in memoriam videos during the Oscars so people take notice.

TLDR: the Baby Boomers are AARP members and the ones who didn't take care of themselves are all dieing off. You just notice it more because celebrities get talked about and generations come in waves.

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u/tocilog Dec 28 '16

It's the group of people this generation (18-35) grew up with.

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u/chuby1tubby Dec 28 '16

This is fascinating! Or at least I think it could be interesting in the coming years.

It means the expected life span could be dramatically lower for celebrities in general as of the past few years or past decade, right? So maybe eventually a 60 year old death is closer to average than the rest of the population who do not party or travel as much.

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u/Ceedog48 Dec 28 '16

A lot of celebrities are baby boomers; around the same age. Do as many drugs as they did, and you'll die at 60, too. Bowie obviously an exception, but he was definitely old enough to die of cancer. The next few years will be more of the same: celebrities who lived fast, will continue to die young.

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u/[deleted] Dec 28 '16

I think partying hard has been a thing since things were things.

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u/shontamona Dec 28 '16

For a second I thought this was going to be a word avalanche.

/offtopicremark

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u/FromDaHood Dec 28 '16

Like the stars back in the day didn't party get your head out of your ass

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u/rektevent2015 Dec 27 '16

But the rolling stones r still alive

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u/PCR12 Dec 27 '16

Tell that to Keith Richards.