To think 2016 doesn't have satanic celebrity-slaying powers? And people need to stop talking as though it does?

[Manumission]

It's true that the obituary list for 2016 is grim and sobering reading and we've lost some great talents this year, many of them way too young.

However, the magical-thinking type comments ("2016 needs to hurry up and fuck off" etc) take that a step further and ascribe special significance to the year that isn't there.

It's not in great taste IMO.

Why do you care? Seems a lot of angst over something you could just tune out.

Some will be bandwagoning, others will feel it to their heart. It's not for you to judge , OP. The magical thinking you claim is over think on your part: it's a phrase, no big deal.

Not for me to judge whether something makes sense? Sorry but I do.

Of course people will hold a horrible association for a year, month or date when something horrible happened for them. No quibble there. That's awful.

But the year isn't the thing causing the deaths. It just isn't.

I'm slightly amused that there are people out there posting things like 'hurry up and end 2016' - not even ironically - like on the stroke of midnight 2017 is somehow going to change everything and it will all be ok again.

The whole 'curse of 2016' thing is weird - we are only noticing it more because we are all posting about it.
2017 is going to be the same, if not worse imo.

Not sure Bruce Forsyth will be with us much longer.

Why do you care? Seems a lot of angst over something you could just tune out.

What have I said that seems particularly angsty ginger?

I just feel bad for relatives and friends of George Michael or Rick Parfitt or various other people recently lost, who have to read the suggestion that the year somehow killed them. Over and over again.

2017, 2018, 2019 are not likely to be any different in terms of 'celebrity' deaths because the concept of famous people in the media began around 50/60 years ago. Therefore the first crop of people who lived their lives in the public eye are now entering old age, or have lived the rock n roll lifestyle to the full which has shortened their life expectancy.

Absolutely this. There have been some shocks re people in their 50's/60's and ofc Anton Yelchin was a huge shock but the vast majority have been mid 70's or older if you actually scan a full list. It is reflective of real life. Lots of older people, some a little younger who were ill and an odd freak accident. It's certainly a pattern that I've seen in my own family (apart from the freak accident thank god) it just seems insane because we've never had so many well known people start to hit old age before.

people out there posting things like 'hurry up and end 2016' - not even ironically - like on the stroke of midnight 2017 is somehow going to change everything and it will all be ok again.

Exactly that.

Exactly, it is the combination of shortened lives for hedonistic rock people and avergage age of dying for the many people of the postwar televisual age, 2017 will be no different. I guess Bowie was a biggie and there are only so many in that layer if rockocracy...McCartney, Jagger, Madonna etc etc, but grim reaper will keep a reaping,

Of course the year isn't the thing causing the deaths! Surely it's just an exaggerated way of saying '2016 was a bit shit wasn't it??'

I totally agree. It's of course very sad, especially when it's a celebrity that has been a bit of a cornerstone of your childhood or teenage years.

But all the "fuck off 2016" is just pure silliness with some people. I have someone on my FB who is photoshopping pictures of the celebrities who have passed away into a giant "2016, the year we all cried" montage thing. I feel like people are trying to turn it into the new "27 club".

very silly, it's just random chance, loads of people die every year. I'm finding all the 'curse of 2016' stuff ridiculous too.

You are spot on OP.

I hate the public over grieving for folk we've never met and didn't know, having experienced a hefty whack of personal grief in the past 3 years, but let it go.

What I hate is the sense that this is some how a sign of the end of times, as opposed to simply what happens 50 years after the rise of celebrity culture...

Radio four asked similar questions earlier this year www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b076prgl

I feel sorry in a way for celebs who died in 2015 etc, they didn't get all this fuss and hoo-haa about cursed years and legends

I think that they'll be ok about that, all things considered Drama.

Yes op, you are talking sense. But when your heroes start to die off it is a shock.

I remember my mum, who is now 80, being upset in the 1980s when all her heroes suddenly started dying.

Plus for many, 2016 had been a truly crud year politically.

It's optimism peeping through when we talk of next year being better.

Yup, people; singers, actors and us ordinary folk will still die whatever year.

Actors and Musicians can continue to be watched and listened to, they're always available, same with Writers, their words and ideas are immortal.

But the year isn't the thing causing the deaths. It just isn't.

Well no

But are people actually saying that?

Seriously?

I dont do facebook and whenever i read threads like this or the christmas presents one i think thank fuck! Awesome decision rufus

And it is the deaths of all those with whose music we are so familiar, whose music marked our growing up years.

In a sense it definitely is the end of times - those times we knew as our norm.

It's comforting to think 2016 and all the bad things that have happened during this year could be parcelled up and confined to 'a bad year' box.

Obviously people know that 2017 will bring its own strife. But people hope that it'll be a bit less strife.

Well! You could see it like this:

About 50 years ago there was a creative explosion, technology, communications and post war(s) optimism meant that lots of people made careers in music, theatre, television, arts that were consumed in ways that were not previously possible.

Many of those bemoaning 2016 are much of an age, my age-ish, and grew up with this new form of celebrity. It wasn't like it is now, social media, X Factor, TOWIE and newly minted celeb along every minute. Our 'heroes' were less accessible, we had to buy everything we knew about them, had to wait for new information, new songs, weekly pop charts were important, we bought annuals to catch up, celebrate the year gone by!

Most of our 'heroes' were only a few years older than us, many filled the age gap between us and our parents... and now they are starting to die!

2016 has seen the deaths of many household names that are my age or the age of my parents. There seem to be more of them because we 'know' them all, we have lived with them all our lives. They are close to our age, that of our parents... they make us see how fucking old we are, how soon our own lives will be over.

So yes, 2016 can fuck off! I do not want to be reminded that I have lived most of my life, that DH is a little older than I am. I don't want to know that from now on my childhood heroes will die and leave me with Justin Sodding Bieber and Joey Fucking Essex alikes in their place.

The music, theatre, television and art I have lived with for all of my life is ending. The art, creativity, relaxation, catharsis that moulded me is dying.

Take your judgement and shove it! I am perfectly entitled to grieve for the light and joy those people have brought into my life for as long as I have lived?

2016 has signalled the beginning of so many ends, exposed the mortality of so many celebrities who have, by dint of being about my age, always been there, seemingly immortal. Why shouldn't I 'hate the date'? Why shouldn't I mourn it?

I agree with you, OP. It's just a vapid phrase that's been coined by somebody, spammed on various boards and is now trotted out as if it's some kind of insightful, prophetic statement of fact. It's jarring for me and I think it makes people look silly.

I can be sad about the people I liked no longer being here to share their talent but I'm not 'grieving' for them. That's another vastly overused term and it's quite offensive. It's like people have to ramp up the terms to demonstrate that they loved-the-celebrity-better-than-anybody-else. Imagine how grieving friends/family must feel to see random people professing grief. Sadness is just as good a description, just not for the people who like to use 'amazing' as a descriptor for everything, I suppose.

These people have sadly gone but they've left a legacy of great music and/or acting, which is really some gift.

Perhaps some of it is a sign of how much our society has lost touch (in a meaningful way) with the very basic human reality of mortality.

Goddammit!

And now Richard Adams! I started re-re-re-reading Plague Dogs last night. That book opened my eyes to all sorts of ethical behaviours. It was the reason I spent time being a human volunteer for a make up company and a few weeks in a common cold experiment.

Like some of the other 'celebrity deaths' this year this one has made me stop and think about who I was/am... maybe even to change what I am currently doing. Though if I make it into my mid 90s, like Adams and the also now gone Liz Smith, I wouldn't feel too short changed.

I agree with you op.

It's very sad people have died, but people do die! I do wonder if for a lot of those posting this type of stuff whether they've actually been through losing someone they're close to in real life. Maybe I'm going to get flamed but after losing lots of people personally I am very aware of the pain of bereavement and have a very real sense of mortality. I wonder if some of those expressing such hatred of 2016 for celebrity deaths have? Who knows.

I have never been one for celebrities really though. When all my friends were standing up on seats, jumping and crying over take that or whatever or whoever else I found it all incredibly cringey.

Yes, I have. All of my grandparents, a few close friends, some in quite horrible circumstance and I found MIL after her suicide. I am 51 years old, of course I have experienced the death of close loved ones.

I have also explained, at some length, why I/some of us, feel the loss of some of these well known people. It isn't due to some stunted emotional development. It is because some of them have been part of my wider life forever and their deaths make me more aware of my own mortality, and that of all my older loved ones.

There really isn't any need to try infantilising the response. It is just how some people respond to the death of someone who had some connection with their own lives - and no, as I said earlier, I don't mean in a Z-list kind of way. I mean in a "they were part of my finding my own ways of thinking and being as I became more independent" kind of way!

I agree with you. Obviously it is not "2016" that is causing all these deaths and some of them aren't very surprising (95 year old dying, whilst sad, isn't exactly a shock).

However, I will be glad to see the back of this year. Time is split up in such a way that at the turn of a hand on a clock we are suddenly in a new year. That "change" gives me a (probably unrational) bit of hope when I have had what I class as a bad year. This year has been awful for me, personally. Private issues along with the seemingly non stop shit storm on the news with one death or another plus political shit, wars, terrorist attacks and the like. The last terrible year I had was 2010 and I can remember nearly every single month of that year. Yet I can't remember every month of last year. 2014 was a particularly good year so I remember that well.

It makes no sense, as come January 1st I will still have experienced said bad things a month before but because they will be "last year" it will help me look forward.

Waffled on a bit there!