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.
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!
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.
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.