The whole reason this is even an issue comes right down to celebrity gossip bloggers.  Why? Well, we’re a scrappy bunch.

With the death of Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, and John Hughes (yesterday), we discovered that dead people generate a lot of web traffic.  And nothing drives web traffic better than a juicy rumor.  Combine the two and you’ve got gossip gold.

So all it takes is a few people to start the rumor up and people will start flooding to Google and searching for things like “Steven Tyler Dead.”

Instantly, that search term will skyrocket in search engine ranking.  Then the landrush of gossip bloggers begins.  Everyone will make a post about him being maybe-sort-of-not-really-but-kinda-alive-dead.

Boom, instant traffic bomb.

Now for the actual story.  Steven Tyler is not dead.  However, he did fall of the stage Wednesday night in South Dakota.

Dude is 61 years old and maybe shouldn’t be dancing so hard.  I’m just sayin.

He hurt is back, neck, and head.

Of course, that’s a little gossip nugget in itself that people will be searching for.  Therefore all the more reason to make him dead.