Goodbye 2016
December 31, 2016 4:33 PM   Subscribe

Having taken so many we admire. Will 2017 be better?

Unfortunately, likely not. Thoughts on pop culture, demographics and media and a hopeful spin.
posted by raider (84 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
No disrespect intended to any we've lost, or the impact they had on all of us.
posted by raider at 4:35 PM on December 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


The timing of Fisher's loss, with Rogue One opening so recently and her particular part in that--then her mother dying so soon after--statistics can't capture the psychological and emotional impact of that. That was a low blow. Good riddance.
posted by saulgoodman at 4:39 PM on December 31, 2016 [18 favorites]




I went in to see Rogue One on Sunday and when I got out of the theater twitter was blowing up about George Michael's death. I'd thought with Fisher's heart attack happening nearly as a bookend with Bowie's death, as many days in from each end of the year, and when she didn't die right away I thought we'd dodged that one. But then Michael, and Fisher, and Reynolds... It was a rough week.

2016 FEELS different to me. I don't know what the actual statistics are, all I know is that I've felt more impacted by sudden celebrity death this year than any previous. The only two famous people deaths that had ever really affected me before were Jim Henson and Fred Rogers. This year, though... ouch.

The last I saw, Turner Classic Movies had added Carrie Fisher to their In Memoriam reel for 2016, but hadn't added Debbie Reynolds. I hope they have fixed that by tonight.
posted by hippybear at 4:55 PM on December 31, 2016 [7 favorites]


To this moment, I still cannot listen to David Bowie's last album. I haven't heard him all year, which feels strange, as I've always listened to him. I think of putting his music on, and my chest gets so heavy with an aching sadness, I just haven't been able to go there yet.
posted by heyho at 4:55 PM on December 31, 2016 [14 favorites]


Personally, I'm counting on mass extinction 2017 superseding the human celebrity death toll of 2016.
posted by Nanukthedog at 4:57 PM on December 31, 2016 [15 favorites]


heyho: get the Lazarus cast album. New and old Bowie sung by people who aren't him. It's a great album, and I've been going back to it since it was released. ★ is pretty amazing, but I understand if you aren't ready to approach it yet.
posted by hippybear at 4:58 PM on December 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


Goodbye Father Mulcahy.
posted by maudlin at 5:01 PM on December 31, 2016 [12 favorites]


I guess 2016 isn't quite done yet.
posted by octothorpe at 5:04 PM on December 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


Remember to talk about what a beloved celebrity DT is in these last few hours just in case 2016 is still hungry.
posted by BrotherCaine at 5:05 PM on December 31, 2016 [23 favorites]


It's 2017 here. Come and join us.
I'll put the kettle on for you all.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 5:07 PM on December 31, 2016 [12 favorites]


A year from now 2016 will look like the good ole days, comparatively.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:08 PM on December 31, 2016 [15 favorites]


2016: a painful dose of mortality.
posted by double bubble at 5:13 PM on December 31, 2016


The game of life is hard to play
I'm gonna lose it anyway
The losing card I'll someday lay
So this is all I have to say.
posted by FallowKing at 5:14 PM on December 31, 2016 [5 favorites]


well, i can't wait for this year to be over so i can say i actually managed to survive it - i do not exaggerate when i say it wasn't clear that i would

if you smoke, i advise you to stop - that shit WILL catch up to you - congestive heart failure is no joke

i'm a bit worn out - but i've been back to work for 6 months and i'm alright
posted by pyramid termite at 5:14 PM on December 31, 2016 [50 favorites]


The Cubs won the World Series. As 2016 ends, I can type those words and they are actually true, not the crazy ramblings of a fandom pipe dream or alternate universe. The Cubs won the World Series.

Surely that puts a lot of weight on the positive side of the scale.
posted by grounded at 5:17 PM on December 31, 2016 [7 favorites]


dammit... I'd was hoping I could say this was the last Famous Death of 2016
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:20 PM on December 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


Hmm, how can I be graceful about this? In the last link, to The Inquirer, there is a sort of summation of the feeling the year provoked in many, where "the loss of yet another one of the best and most creative minds of our generation" is linked to the devastation in Aleppo as examples of how death affected "us" this last year. If that linkage seems reasonable to people, then I guess there is nothing to say other than I find that likening appalling and the excess attention to celebrity more an indirect reflection of all the everyday degradations of the weak, poor, or simply unknown that we allow with little notice, too busy mourning someone we don't know, who we may not have thought of for years, and who know nor care nothing about "us".

As a friend of mine has suggested, many of these celebrities have been some of the luckiest and most privileged people in the history of the planet, enjoying wealth, power, and fame few have known, and yet we become more angered at their deaths, often linked to abuses inflicted on themselves or natural causes of illness or age, than we are at the millions starving or suffering from other preventable causes simply due to fame.

Yes, I am aware that the nature of fame makes the knowledge of these famous people common, where anonymity by its nature hides identity, and that pleasure taken from something created by another can be reason to celebrate, but celebrating the work, the action, or the object, is a different thing tan conferring a greater importance on the creator of the same. There is, for me, the feeling of these deaths being used as social markers in a way, where, without necessarily intending, the death takes on a performative cultural value, something closer to the fictions we allow so much entry into our lives than the reality of the lives we actually lead. I don't question the sorrow people claim to feel, people's feelings are theirs alone. I do, however, question the society where facts, fiction, known and unknown have become so intertwined as to cause such large emotional displays.
posted by gusottertrout at 5:22 PM on December 31, 2016 [31 favorites]


Surely that puts a lot of weight on the positive side of the scale.

Chris Hayes' Faustian bargain
posted by hippybear at 5:23 PM on December 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


2016 is horrifying for what it has taken from us.

2017 will be our first year without the things we need that we once had before 2016.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 5:25 PM on December 31, 2016 [5 favorites]


2016: The Year of Mass Frequency Illusion
posted by glonous keming at 5:27 PM on December 31, 2016 [6 favorites]


Guess I should stock up on foodstuffs while I still can. Things Can Only Get Better Part 1 | Part 2

Tip: in August, Everything gets worse (which, given the narrative so far, IS SAYING SOMETHING)
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 5:27 PM on December 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


no one ever talks about who was born in 2016 ...
posted by pyramid termite at 5:27 PM on December 31, 2016 [11 favorites]


It does feel like the Cubs just used up all the positivity from the year... we couldn't have a Cubs Championship AND the First Woman President.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:28 PM on December 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


no one ever talks about who was born in 2016 ...
It's just that we don't know them yet, and not all of us will be around to witness their awesomeness.
posted by ArmandoAkimbo at 5:34 PM on December 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


I don't question the sorrow people claim to feel

kind of you just did though

but seriously do you think that shallow people would be more upset about any particular Syrian child's fate if their emotions weren't all busy with David Bowie? it's possible! but for all the nonsense about 'compassion fatigue' that people like to talk, it's also possible that the more you exercise compassion the better at it you get. the way you go from caring about your own feelings to imagining how other people might feel, so you might go from feeling terrible that someone you know died to feeling terrible that someone you don't know died.

"how dare you love this dead man too much, you will run out of love for these other dead men," though. I don't see it.

I will say my blood does run cold at the idea that once a person is old enough to pass the mattering threshold, there's no reason to be upset when they die. hey, we're all going to die if we get old enough, so who cares, right? no. Like for example, Elie Weisel suffered enough to matter enough to legitimize people being upset that he died this year, maybe? or because he is old, his death was unpreventable and therefore who cares?

(also how do you get indignant about people caring for those who died of what they did to themselves, while simultaneously saying that preventable deaths are sadder? What's more preventable than pointless self-abuse?)

I am still upset that Mozart and Tanith Lee died so I am well behind the times, I guess.

anyway and in summation, feeling bad that someone you knew died is at least half self-interest; you cry for your own loss as much as for what the deceased endured. grieving for an victim of violence in a foreign land or for the sudden heart attack of a famous stranger is genuine generosity of spirit and means a lot more. It's realer. The way I feel about war casualties and the way I feel about David Bowie have more in common with each other than the way either does with the way I feel about my dead parents. The extension of compassion through imagination is the only thing that will ever get your everyday yutz to care about atrocities outside their own neighborhoods. don't knock it.
posted by queenofbithynia at 5:43 PM on December 31, 2016 [41 favorites]


Heh. Like the MSN article points out, with each passing generation, there are more paths to "stardom". Over the last century, there was an increase on famous people including movie stars, recording artists, athletes, tv stars and so on. Globalization and the relative democratization of media brought in by file sharing and later digital distribution just increased that reach even further. Until the late 90s, if anyone wanted to listen a record or watch a movie, they needed someone who had the original or a dub. Now, almost everything (and most of what they did was archived and preserved, instead of live performances or disposable records) is a google search away.

But I disagree that 2016 won't look exceptional in that aspect. At worst, it will be the year people realize we're all getting older, and the mega-stars who were cranking hits in their 20s and 30s during the 70s and 80s are now reaching the shit happens age.
posted by lmfsilva at 5:45 PM on December 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


New Year's is January 20th this year.
posted by king walnut at 5:46 PM on December 31, 2016 [3 favorites]


This is from last year (2016) but it's a happy story so why not:
4-Year-Old Fan Gets 'Star Wars'-Themed Adoption Ceremony
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:47 PM on December 31, 2016


2017 is a sexy prime pair with 2011. Who knew? Sexy prime? I'll take it.
posted by ian1977 at 5:51 PM on December 31, 2016 [4 favorites]


I've been trying to reconcile the emotions of the year. The things that were genuinely good in my tiny little realm, with the cast shadows of loss in the larger world.

Grief is a sign you loved- no matter if that person was close or far to you. I still grieve my father in that I can't call him to ask how to almondine the asparagus. Would you question that truth of that emotion even though he's been gone 10 years?

But death is part of the contract- you get ex amount of years with whoever it is. People who inspire you, in some small way they belong to you, even if you have never met them. So the sense of loss is real- even if someone else doesn't understand or feel it.

But this next year- I plan on celebrating life as much as I can. I find the grief is less when I tell who or whatever it is I love it enough, in the ways I know how.
posted by LuckyMonkey21 at 5:57 PM on December 31, 2016 [8 favorites]


I'm just grateful that despite his announcement in May, Gord Downie has been a creative whirlwind
posted by peppermind at 6:18 PM on December 31, 2016 [6 favorites]


feeling bad that someone you knew died is at least half self-interest; you cry for your own loss as much as for what the deceased endured. grieving for an victim of violence in a foreign land or for the sudden heart attack of a famous stranger is genuine generosity of spirit and means a lot more

To whom? Do you think that the families and friends of famous people are somehow more deserving of your grief than ones we actually know and love? That mourning borne of genuine lifelong bilateral connection is somehow lesser because it actually intersects with your day to day life and is therefore selfish and problematic?

What a weird, inverted point of view it is that inducing grief through imagination is superior to the grief you actually feel involuntarily.
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:24 PM on December 31, 2016 [3 favorites]


I do, however, question the society where facts, fiction, known and unknown have become so intertwined as to cause such large emotional displays.

This is human society. This is how people are. The world's largest religion is based around venerating the death of a quasi-mythical figure, known to us almost entirely through largely fictitious sources. Or think of the throngs that attended Nelson's funeral, people who had only read of him. Or, if Nelson is not ephemeral enough for you, think of Dickens, a mere writer of serialised entertainments, whose passing was marked with three days of funeral processions. Is it just this society that you hold in disdain, or humanity more generally?

Human beings tell stories to make sense of the world, to explain or contain value, to teach moral lessons, to entertain, to console, to bond, to do all kinds of things. But, in a world where people still believe in the pernicious and idiotic myth of the nation state, a world where many people genuinely believe that our moral duties are greater to those who share our arbitrary citizenship, a world where we turn away refugees at our borders because of an idiotic lie, I think you're wringing your hands over the wrong sort of storytelling and the wrong stories.

The quality of mercy is not strained, and we do not need to dole our sorrow in meagre rations, fearing that we will run out of pity for those who suffer more. There are always more tears to be shed, I am afraid.
posted by howfar at 6:28 PM on December 31, 2016 [22 favorites]


The Cubs won the World Series. As 2016 ends, I can type those words and they are actually true, not the crazy ramblings of a fandom pipe dream or alternate universe. The Cubs won the World Series.

I'd trade the Cubs not having won the World Series, and in fact never winning the World Series ever in history, for a Clinton presidency. If you wanna believe in the Cubs' "curse," I don't think the curse was broken when they won; I think it was transferred from the Cubs to the country.
posted by tzikeh at 6:41 PM on December 31, 2016 [25 favorites]


Here's an article about grief policing from near the beginning of the year that it might behoove certain people (glaring upthread) to review. Yes, it is possible and even desirable to mourn both the senseless deaths of nameless multitudes and the death of an aging pop star or actress who may have done a bit too much LDS back in the sixties or whatever, for very different reasons, and have them both be equally legitimate. (And a good fucking deal that is, too, otherwise I'd have to put everyone at the end of a very long line because I was still working on the victims of the Cambodian killing fields.) There's also the matter that the creators of various bits of pop art may simply mean much more to us because of what they created, and "celebrating the work, the action, or the object, is a different thing tan conferring a greater importance on the creator of the same" is, I'm sorry, twaddle.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:43 PM on December 31, 2016 [20 favorites]


kind of you just did though

but seriously do you think that shallow people would be more upset about any particular Syrian child's fate if their emotions weren't all busy with David Bowie?


Yeah, I did, and meant more directly question, by which I mean I definitely doubt some of the claims of sorrow presented for celebrities I've never heard mentioned or anything they were associated with mentioned or even things vaguely connected to them mentioned by some who choose to make a statement on so many celebrity deaths. (I'm speaking about people I know well, but by extension assuming it more largely.) So while I won't press anyone on whatever claims of feelings they have, that doesn't prevent me from being skeptical about some of them or think those feelings are brought to the surface more out of the now common past time of sharing anecdotes at every celebrity passing. The history may be real, in that sense, but dredged up more out of searching for some memory rather than having more immediate emotions at hand. That last is part of what I am deeming as performative, where the interest in sharing one's own history is presented as greater concern over the death of another.

No, I don't think the upset is directly transferable from Bowie to Aleppo victim, but that the constant deluge of celebrity and its importance blocks concern for matters I would deem more significant. The cultural relationship to celebrity itself being the problem, not just who one mourns for.

That celebrity has exploded in volume along with mass media and the internet is, I think, a serious concern, again, not so much for any given celebrity as what all of this flood of media is doing to the culture. With the US having a celebrity elect as the next president, where would be pundits are multiplying exponentially, where children have youtube channels aimed to make them stars, or just visible, where we can't distinguish between true and false, real and fake, and where celebrity deaths, like celebrity nudity, and celebrity fights, and so on are used as a mainstay of internet clickbait and mainstay of our social existence, I'm suggesting there is a problem that could bear further scrutiny. The level of importance, of "love", people are placing on those they do not know, while attributing all sorts of fictional motivations and beliefs to these same is a little frightening. And I say that as a devoted student of art and culture, not someone who pooh-poohs the contributions of artists to the world.

anyway and in summation, feeling bad that someone you knew died is at least half self-interest; you cry for your own loss as much as for what the deceased endured.

This I agree with.

grieving for an victim of violence in a foreign land or for the sudden heart attack of a famous stranger is genuine generosity of spirit and means a lot more. It's realer.

This, though, I question, not for the validity of what is said for anyone, but for how imaginative can go too far into being accepted as realer because of how we are relating to the fictional, to narratives we invent rather than the actual, things that may not be as neat, but which may be more necessary to deal with nonetheless.

Oh, and the difference I was trying to point out was between self inflected and caused by others against one's will. It wasn't an attempt to otherwise downplay the harm or pain a self inflicted or assisted death may cause to that person or to those who care about them, it's just a different kind of causality.
posted by gusottertrout at 6:45 PM on December 31, 2016


I still cannot listen to David Bowie's last album.

It's very healing, when you're ready for it.
posted by Devils Rancher at 6:51 PM on December 31, 2016 [9 favorites]


Of everything that happened in 2016, the massacre of the 49 people at Pulse affected me more than any celebrity death, mostly because those people are like me and my friends. Several times since the, I have stayed out at gay bars, drinking until all hours of the morning, partying, and dancing, because I am alive to do so.

But Gene Wilder's death, I think, affected me the most, of those.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:54 PM on December 31, 2016 [9 favorites]


What a weird, inverted point of view it is that inducing grief through imagination is superior to the grief you actually feel involuntarily.

is it? but you just laid it out so elegantly: where's the virtue in an involuntary reflex? Sometimes you feel pity because you can't help it, but what if you can help it? What if you can protect yourself and choose not to care -- who is it good for if you do care? What if it's only good for you yourself to have generous emotions, for your own humanity, keeping your own empathy in good working order, and not concretely beneficial to anybody else? Should you still bother?

because the other connected question is, what if it tears you up inside to know that David Bowie's gone, and what if you feel nothing but a distant intellectual disquiet at the deaths of unnamed thousands abroad, but you vote and donate money as best you can to help them even though you don't, personally, grieve and suffer for them? Somebody upthread was very upset that compassionate feelings were not fairly apportioned among the world's miserable - but why? Is it important to feel for them, or only to help them? can you do one without the other? (yes. should you, though?)

you can follow your instincts and not worry about it. and mostly you (we) can't help it. but it isn't "weird" to consider the ethics and consequences of your own emotions or to consider whether there even are any.
posted by queenofbithynia at 6:56 PM on December 31, 2016 [5 favorites]


I certainly shed more tears over the Pulse massacre than I did over anything else this year, by orders of magnitude.
posted by hippybear at 6:57 PM on December 31, 2016 [6 favorites]


by which I mean I definitely doubt some of the claims of sorrow presented for celebrities I've never heard mentioned or anything they were associated with mentioned

God forbid you take people at their word about how they emotionally experience the world. They must be performing their grief, because you don't feel the same way, and your emotional experience of the world is the only right one!

Jesus Christ.
posted by tzikeh at 7:04 PM on December 31, 2016 [30 favorites]


where's the virtue in an involuntary reflex?

Must grief be virtuous? Is it a means to an end, applied judiciously or irresponsibly to affect a specific outcome? Is it, in effect, a commodity that must be carefully managed like any other resource? That, to me, is dehumanizing.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:13 PM on December 31, 2016 [5 favorites]


And I say that as a devoted student of art and culture, not someone who pooh-poohs the contributions of artists to the world.

Then maybe you can understand how I might lay awake at night in a state of panic & dread about the horrors of Aleppo or the incipient reign of D*nald Tr*ump, and how in those dark hours I might turn to the music of David Bowie of Jeff Buckley to calm myself, all the while also mourning their mortality & the finite gifts they gave through their art, & the transient nature of the whole enterprise, as I attempt to drift to sleep so that I might rise the next day to perhaps more than survive, to maybe do something about it all if I can gather my wits.

If you find me writing these words here to seem performative, then I would suggest you don't know me.
posted by Devils Rancher at 7:26 PM on December 31, 2016 [11 favorites]


I still say 1916 was way worse.

and yet it did give us Dada
posted by philip-random at 7:26 PM on December 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


Since it was, I think, aimed at me, I read the Atlantic piece and found some of it unobjectionable, such as their looking askance at telling people how to grieve in the moment, like Paglia with Bowie, but disagree with the end conclusion to the extent that just because this is what is done doesn't make it therefore something that shouldn't be questioned.

God forbid you take people at their word about how they emotionally experience the world. They must be performing their grief, because you don't feel the same way, and your emotional experience of the world is the only right one!


On preview: I was going to bow out so not to make this thread too much about my discomfort with some of this, but I wanted to maybe clarify this first.

No, I don't believe people are "lying" per se, I was trying to say that they are more creating emotions for the moment due to the growing commonality of how celebrity deaths are treated on the internet as much as a way to drive page views, hell, now its even articles on celebrity deaths as a thing, and express oneself as simply an collection of people grieving as such. I mean without being in another person's head, I can't ever know for sure the whole truth value of anything said, yet I know truth isn't just a one size fits all proposition. People do lie about many things, but what is more common is they exaggerate or shift emphasis to suit the moment, and when the internet seems to be controlling these moments, that causes me some concern.

None of that is to say that there aren't celebrity deaths that are deeply affecting to people, there of course are due to one's history of engagement with the world. So when people say, for example, Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia provided them with their first role model, that is not something I doubt nor the grief that accompanies that kind of deep long standing attachment to a creation. Same thing with Bowie or Ali or whoever, it isn't that one can't feel real grief for the loss of a celebrity as symbol for something in your own life or as creator, but that this process is seeming to become mechanized, rote, or at least growing so much that the expressions of loss becomes hard to believe on the face of it other than mourning celebrity itself.

The reason this matters to me has little to do with the celebrities, and more to do with what it suggests to me about the culture. As I don't believe in inserting my opinions into the threads or stories or whatever about specific celebrity deaths out of respect for those that care, it also makes talking about the legacy or history of these same people more difficult assuming that belief is followed as it largely is here on Metafilter. That isn't a huge burden or anything, but it does sometimes remind me of other circumstances where celebrity or artistic merit can overshadow more life level criticisms.

Sorry about going on at length about this, just trying to avoid sounding worse than I mean, even accepting there would be disagreements. I'll bow out now.
posted by gusottertrout at 7:28 PM on December 31, 2016 [7 favorites]


MetaFilter: just trying to avoid sounding worse than I mean
posted by hippybear at 7:30 PM on December 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


MetaFilter: Now 65% "MetaFilter: (comment quote) by volume."
posted by Grimgrin at 7:36 PM on December 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


A friend used to get annoyed when people grieved the death of a celebrity who was also a stranger. And then David Bowie died, and then she understood, because she experienced that kind of grief first-hand.

Perhaps there is a word or phrase in another language than English for a sense of loss involving a stranger--both gratitude for a gift and a sense of loss that the person is gone.

My mum once said something about "just when you think you couldn't cry any more," and I get that, especially this year.

No apologies for this . for the dead and a cyberhug for the living, here in blue evening.
posted by datawrangler at 7:44 PM on December 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


no one ever talks about who was born in 2016 ...

I do! I talk about my gorgeous muskrat (human baby) who is already sweet and playful and brings me so much joy even though she is only six months old and wakes up at like 5:10 almost every day and doesn't have a snooze button, and I talk about other babies born in 2016 to friends and family members (including some lovely MeFi babies -- a picture of one of them is on my fridge and she is delightful). I talk about how they give me hope and help me resolve to face the future because it really does matter. I don't know in what sphere they will make themselves known in the years to come but I believe all of these babies are destined for greatness, even if it's the unsung greatness of being a kind and loving person who makes the world a better place for the people who are part of their lives.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 7:45 PM on December 31, 2016 [8 favorites]


2016 perfectly summed up in a song lyric:

You turn on the telly and every other story is tellin' you somebody died - Prince, Sign O' The Times
posted by SisterHavana at 7:53 PM on December 31, 2016 [7 favorites]


This analysis of celebrity deaths came out in October:

The total number of major celebrity deaths so far in 2016 is 22. Again, that's substantially more than the full-year totals for all the previous years – they range from eight to 19. For the full year. No matter what happens in the fourth quarter, 2016 will be remembered as the year when so many more celebrities died than in a normal year – and so many of them were legends in their fields.
posted by MrVisible at 7:53 PM on December 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


That isn't a huge burden or anything, but it does sometimes remind me of other circumstances where celebrity or artistic merit can overshadow more life level criticisms.

I'm not snarking you when I say this: don't worry, once the later milestone anniversaries for their $superlative works start rolling around, we'll be up to our eyeballs in critical retrospectives, and at least 30% of them will aspire to Power Broker legacy-killer status.
posted by Snarl Furillo at 8:01 PM on December 31, 2016


I have The Mountain Goats Index to tell me how bad a year is.

It is just at what point in the year do I start singing to myself the refrain of This Year by The Mountain Goats.

In a normal year it's usually late November or early December, and a particularly bad year would be some time in September.

In 2016 it was February.
posted by ckape at 8:33 PM on December 31, 2016 [18 favorites]


2017 will be worse.
posted by sotonohito at 8:39 PM on December 31, 2016 [4 favorites]




2016 just finished off Mariah Carey's career
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 8:46 PM on December 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


no one ever talks about who was born in 2016 ...

Well, I will: a friend of mine became a first-time father today. The little squirt is adorable to judge from the photos and if I haven't talked about him, it is because at present his name is still only New Small Guy.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:47 PM on December 31, 2016 [3 favorites]


2016 just finished off Mariah Carey's career

I think it was the revelation that if all you got her for Christmas was you, she would throw a huge fit.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:49 PM on December 31, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'm pretty sure this cold is 2016's final attempt to finish me off.


Either that, or it's Captain Trips, and 2017 is going to make The Road look like a lovely picnic in Yoshino during cherry blossom season.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:22 PM on December 31, 2016


For myself, I've been free of alcohol for 7 months now, so whatever 2017 is like, I'm a hell of a lot better prepared to deal with it.
posted by SPrintF at 9:49 PM on December 31, 2016 [27 favorites]


Will 2017 be better?

Worst application of Betteridge's Law ever.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 9:49 PM on December 31, 2016 [11 favorites]


As the eternal optimist, I declare that 2017 will be filled with my friends from metafilter, and together we will discover new things, and read new writers, and argue amicably and I will continue to love you guys and the site we make together. Happy New year's everyone. Let's not fuck it up.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 10:28 PM on December 31, 2016 [6 favorites]


I am guessing something goddammed amazing Will happen by bedtime tomorrow. 2017 is going to be good. I can feel it in my bones.
posted by ian1977 at 10:53 PM on December 31, 2016


There. Midnight has passed and I'm still here. Who's laughing now 2016?
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 12:03 AM on January 1, 2017 [6 favorites]


2017 is here, and we are all still here, Cthulu willing, will be here again and again as the days go on. And we will comfort each other in loss, and have good times again. In a Tinkerbell way- clap your hands if you believe!
posted by LuckyMonkey21 at 12:12 AM on January 1, 2017


One of my two chickens died yesterday. I had taken her to the vet, pumped her full of antibiotics and baby parrot food, fed her mealworms, and none of it helped. That was 2016 adding its finishing touch for me.

I know this doesn't register at all, compared to all the wonderful human beings that were lost and the life-altering tragedies that took place. I probably shouldn't even mention the whole thing.

But the chicken was the sweet one of the two, the one who made melodious little-chick squeaks at me and followed me around the yard to see if I would find a bug for her. The one who once planted her whole face in a can of paint because she was so certain everything I brought with me was delicious.

So now it's the first pale morning of 2017 here, and the grouchy chicken is wandering all alone in the back yard, calling and calling to her sister like every morning, because she was always the first one to wake up and hates being alone. And I have a dead chicken to bury.

Not exactly a good start.
posted by sively at 1:34 AM on January 1, 2017 [31 favorites]


BBC News compared celebrity/significant deaths in 2016 to previous years by measuring only the number of pre-prepared obituaries that were used - an interesting metric, as a relatively unemotional way of determining celebrity/significance.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 2:22 AM on January 1, 2017 [5 favorites]


"It's getting better all the time"
~~ Paul McCartney

"Can't get no worse!"
~~ John Lennon

Both are correct.
posted by dancestoblue at 3:29 AM on January 1, 2017 [3 favorites]


Regarding gusottertrouts discussion of the performative element, I know how we should take people at their words etc, but for example on Facebook when Bowie passed away and friend after friend was posting heartfelt declamations, I did want to ask many of them, "he meant so much to you, hey, how many albums of his do you have? How many albums of his can you name? "

For more than one friend, the answer in one or both cases would have been none. I'm surely not the only one to see this?

Which raises the question, what are these people mourning then? Are they indeed mourning?

I think these are interesting questions that don't have to begin or end in a place of misanthropy. From a sociological perspective it's fulfilling a need. And unlike gus, I'm not entirely sure it's symptom of a broader disease or problem,so much as part of being human .
posted by smoke at 3:34 AM on January 1, 2017 [1 favorite]


Will 2017 be better?

Trump will be President for a while. Then Pence will be President.

Betteridge's Law applies.
posted by flabdablet at 6:38 AM on January 1, 2017 [1 favorite]


For myself, I've been free of alcohol for 7 months now

Congratulations, SPrintF! Good luck.
posted by saulgoodman at 7:12 AM on January 1, 2017




sively, I am so sorry about your girl. I lost my dog in July and just yesterday I put his bowl away. I cried over George Michael, Carrie Fisher, and my ex-uncle-inlaw who was a part of every family gathering since I was born, but I cried hardest over the little dog who knew me*.

It's hard, VERY HARD, and I'm glad you mentioned her. She is worth mentioning.

(I owned zero David Bowie albums and still mourned his passing. The fact that I didn't like his music doesn't make him any less of an artist or negated the impact he made on this world we shared.)
posted by kimberussell at 9:09 AM on January 1, 2017 [7 favorites]


Sively- I am sorry for your loss. Your chickens are your comic relief for sure, and perhaps today would be a good day to at least go look at the peeps at the farm store (if they are open).

This was the year that I had to put my dog down. Not because he wasn't healthy, or didn't mind me. He was a great companion-a rescue I put my heart and soul into. But he hated everyone else, and I was in denial because he was the one good thing in my life at that point. After he bit someone in front of me and drew blood- he had to go to the bunny picnic. I lay on the floor for a long long time after that.
posted by LuckyMonkey21 at 9:47 AM on January 1, 2017 [4 favorites]


I know how we should take people at their words etc, but for example on Facebook when Bowie passed away and friend after friend was posting heartfelt declamations, I did want to ask many of them, "he meant so much to you, hey, how many albums of his do you have? How many albums of his can you name? "

For more than one friend, the answer in one or both cases would have been none. I'm surely not the only one to see this?

Which raises the question, what are these people mourning then? Are they indeed mourning?


I don't see why you couldn't ask them. Bowie meant an awful lot of things to an awful lot of people, some of which I can totally relate to and some of which I totally can't. (See, for example, Todd Haynes' Velvet Goldmine, about which I've already opined.) Someone's life could have been changed by The Area. (Sort of joking, but not really.) Or because he wrote a song about making love with his eagle. (Joking now.) Or because there was that one song about "got your mother in a whirl/She's not sure if you're a boy or a girl" that you heard when that was what was going on in your life. (Really not joking.) It's all good, and really, sincerely isn't dependent on passing the trivia quiz.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:27 AM on January 1, 2017 [6 favorites]




What's really disturbing me about celebrating the end of 2016 is that it feels like a distraction to me. No shit, a lot of the celebrity deaths were a gut punch, and I don't begrudge those who are a little more performative about it than I'd be comfortable with myself, but celebrity deaths are playing a very outsized role in the narrative of what happened in 2016. It's OK to be upset about the death of celebrities you have a connection to, but they're not the worst or most notable things that happened last year.

And there is very little to celebrate about the arrival of 2017. This year is going to suck, and the only real chance to mitigate the damage that will be done this year requires that people not normalize or ignore the enormity of the problem. So the narrative of 2016 as some anthropomorphic serial celebrity killer is just a little jokey for my tastes. I'm already seeing too much conciliation and fear of confrontation, and it's only barely begun. People are focusing on distractions and looking for optimism, which is understandable to some degree, but too many people, including some I know, seem to be focusing almost solely on making themselves feel better and maintaining their own status quo.

Yes, a lot of interesting and creative people died last year, and more will die this year, probably including some surprises, and that is going to suck. But that's not my biggest concern.
posted by ernielundquist at 12:05 PM on January 1, 2017 [6 favorites]


So the narrative of 2016 as some anthropomorphic serial celebrity killer is just a little jokey for my tastes. I'm already seeing too much conciliation and fear of confrontation, and it's only barely begun.

I just don't understand why you see a connection between making a joke and failing to act. Are you saying that you think people need to remain grim, miserable and terrified constantly in order to take necessary action? Or is it just this particular joke you object to on that basis? And if so, why?

I personally felt that the "oh no 2016" response to every single death got a bit grating after a certain point, especially when very old and happy people died after successful lives, but that's just how I felt. As far as I can see there's no moral underpinning to it, it just happened to be how I felt. And I'm content to have that feeling without constructing an argument that it's morally correct or that other people are placing our society in jeopardy by making a joke or reference. Not everything I ever feel means that people who feel differently are wrong.
posted by howfar at 12:29 PM on January 1, 2017 [4 favorites]


@brianscully: BETTY WHITE, VICTOR OF THE 2016 HUNGER GAMES
Well, she's 'only' 94, while Kirk Douglas celebrated his hundredth birthday last month and versatile voice actor June Foray (Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Natasha Fatale, Tweety's Granny - which she started voicing when she was in her 30s, Witch Hazel, Jokey Smurf, every princess in Fractured Fairy Tales) is approaching her centennial in '17. Since the 2016 passing of Janet Waldo (Judy Jetson) and Alan Young (Scrooge McDuck), Foray has become the literal last of a generation of cartoon voicers. While there are talented people who can do the same voices (Mel Blanc's Bugs Bunny, Daws Butler's Yogi Bear, Paul Frees' Ludwig Von Drake) and probably always will be, the ones who originated them must never be forgotten, and if Mel Blanc was "the man of 1000 voices", June is the Ginger Rogers to his Fred Astaire "doing every step he did, but backwards and in high heels".
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:52 PM on January 1, 2017 [1 favorite]


The celebrity deaths part of all this seems very memetic in the anthropological sense to me (a la Dawkins, Girard, and so on), but to presume the awfulness of 2016 begins and ends with the deaths of well-loved cultural icons is a discount subscription to the Armchair Cynics Weekly, and ignores all of the other terrible no-good things that have happened or culminated in 2016: political upheavals, atrocities of war, acts of terrorism and mass murder, institutional whitewashing of police abuses, rapidly escalating effects of seemingly unstoppable anthropomorphic climate change, increasing global economic instability, the growing frequency of antibiotic resistant "super bugs", the rise in fake news, the displacement of families, etc...

Going back to the beginning, and invoking René Girard for my own analysis, maybe this memetic "performance" of publicly grieving the deaths of famous persons is a kind of mass propitiation, a public ritual that transcends ideologies. And maybe that really isn't so shallow...maybe it's the natural outcome of our ever-shrinking world. Tectonic culture shifts create new fractures, new faultlines, and all we can do to keep the balance is share our grief at the passing of that one actor/musician/public figure that everybody knew so well.

As I type this out I'm realizing it's a very American/Euro-centric worldview, and now I find myself wondering if people in China or The Philippines or Zimbabwe are having the same kind of reactions as this.
posted by Doleful Creature at 1:52 PM on January 1, 2017 [2 favorites]


Brian Eno weighs on via Facebook:

>>>

2016/2017

The consensus among most of my friends seems to be that 2016 was a terrible year, and the beginning of a long decline into something we don’t even want to imagine.

2016 was indeed a pretty rough year, but I wonder if it’s the end - not the beginning - of a long decline. Or at least the beginning of the end….for I think we’ve been in decline for about 40 years, enduring a slow process of de-civilisation, but not really quite noticing it until now. I’m reminded of that thing about the frog placed in a pan of slowly heating water…

This decline includes the transition from secure employment to precarious employment, the destruction of unions and the shrinkage of workers’ rights, zero hour contracts, the dismantling of local government, a health service falling apart, an underfunded education system ruled by meaningless exam results and league tables, the increasingly acceptable stigmatisation of immigrants, knee-jerk nationalism, and the concentration of prejudice enabled by social media and the internet.

This process of decivilisation grew out of an ideology which sneered at social generosity and championed a sort of righteous selfishness. (Thatcher: “Poverty is a personality defect”. Ayn Rand: “Altruism is evil”). The emphasis on unrestrained individualism has had two effects: the creation of a huge amount of wealth, and the funnelling of it into fewer and fewer hands. Right now the 62 richest people in the world are as wealthy as the bottom half of its population combined. The Thatcher/Reagan fantasy that all this wealth would ‘trickle down’ and enrich everybody else simply hasn’t transpired. In fact the reverse has happened: the real wages of most people have been in decline for at least two decades, while at the same time their prospects - and the prospects for their children - look dimmer and dimmer. No wonder people are angry, and turning away from business-as-usual government for solutions. When governments pay most attention to whoever has most money, the huge wealth inequalities we now see make a mockery of the idea of democracy. As George Monbiot said: “The pen may be mightier than the sword, but the purse is mightier than the pen”.

Last year people started waking up to this. A lot of them, in their anger, grabbed the nearest Trump-like object and hit the Establishment over the head with it. But those were just the most conspicuous, media-tasty awakenings. Meanwhile there’s been a quieter but equally powerful stirring: people are rethinking what democracy means, what society means and what we need to do to make them work again. People are thinking hard, and, most importantly, thinking out loud, together. I think we underwent a mass disillusionment in 2016, and finally realised it’s time to jump out of the saucepan.

This is the start of something big. It will involve engagement: not just tweets and likes and swipes, but thoughtful and creative social and political action too. It will involve realising that some things we’ve taken for granted - some semblance of truth in reporting, for example - can no longer be expected for free. If we want good reporting and good analysis, we’ll have to pay for it. That means MONEY: direct financial support for the publications and websites struggling to tell the non-corporate, non-establishment side of the story. In the same way if we want happy and creative children we need to take charge of education, not leave it to ideologues and bottom-liners. If we want social generosity, then we must pay our taxes and get rid of our tax havens. And if we want thoughtful politicians, we should stop supporting merely charismatic ones.

Inequality eats away at the heart of a society, breeding disdain, resentment, envy, suspicion, bullying, arrogance and callousness. If we want any decent kind of future we have to push away from that, and I think we’re starting to.

There’s so much to do, so many possibilities. 2017 should be a surprising year.

- Brian
posted by philip-random at 4:49 PM on January 1, 2017 [9 favorites]


2017: It’s time to jump out of the saucepan
posted by aniola at 10:58 PM on January 1, 2017 [1 favorite]


Or out of the frying pan.
posted by Grangousier at 1:36 AM on January 2, 2017


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