Ahhhh, Carrie Fisher.  Too young.  Rest in peace….

You get the feeling that more celebs have died in 2016 than most years?

You would be….in the ballpark.  But not necessarily because of the reason or reasons you think.

I was wondering if it was a psychological phenomenon, so I started doing some Google searching.  What I found was this article from the BBC that gives us some clarity on the question:  have more famous people died in 2016?

Here’s what they found:

1. Yes, more celebrities passed away that usual in about the first quarter of year.  So that probably conditioned our brains to expect doom and gloom.
2. The numbers evened out over the rest of the year.  That made it comparable to other years in recent history.  That was a surprise to me.
3. Celebrities from the Baby Boomer generation are now getting to that age.  So, more of them are passing away.
4. We simply have more celebrities than we did in the past.  There are literally hundreds of outlets for people to become stars versus the old days.

I’ll leave you with this:  as you grow older, you’ve had more of an opportunity to form some sort of bond, however trivial, with those who have become famous.  So an 18 year old is not going to have as much perspective in this as say, a 38 year old.

It will be good to move on to 2017, but if you think we are going to escape this phenomenon, expect the Grim Reaper to keep on doing its thing. — [eric]