When David Bowie died in January 2016, the level of communal online mourning was so massive (and so prolonged) that I wondered if we’d reached the apex of social media as a means for memorializing the passing of celebrities. “We can’t do this for everybody,” I thought to myself. “We will run out of poignant hyperboles.” But then Prince died in April, and the escalation advanced. Dying used to be an occupational risk to living like a rock star, but it’s now the primary thing rock stars do.
