The Titanic submarine has shamefully become a meme.

[TheVanillaGorilla]

I've noticed so many people are making memes and fun of the wealthy people aboard the Titanic submarine. I'm not entirely sure but I think this is a reflection of today's society and demonstrates the amount of people incapable of putting themselves in other people's shoes. Sure they took a big risk, but just because they did, does that give people the green light to ridicule and make fun of them? I imagine a lot of people are envious of the top 1% but I bet if more people were born into Great wealth more people would be tempted to take these trips as it is a natural part of human nature to want to explore and push boundaries. So what are your thoughts?

[Yoda]

Yeah, pretty poor taste if you ask me.

I don't find the "arguments" (they're rich, it was a stupid idea, et cetera) for the mocking at all persuasive or even basically coherent, but even if I did, they're people and they are (or, sadly, were) in mortal danger.

[Citizen Rules]

I've noticed so many people are making memes and fun of the wealthy people aboard the Titanic submarine. I'm not entirely sure but I think this is a reflection of today's society and demonstrates the amount of people incapable of putting themselves in other people's shoes. Sure they took a big risk, but just because they did, does that give people the green light to ridicule and make fun of them? I imagine a lot of people are envious of the top 1% but I bet if more people were born into Great wealth more people would be tempted to take these trips as it is a natural part of human nature to want to explore and push boundaries. So what are your thoughts?Thanks for posting that, I've been dismayed at people online having fun with the probably death of five people in the 'Titanic' sub. Even here at the Shoutbox there were snide/humorous comments about it. I guess some people lack proper empathy or just need to use the tragedy to draw attention to themselves...or maybe as you suggest 'demonstrates the amount of people incapable of putting themselves in other people's shoes'. I see nothing funny about the sub.

[TheVanillaGorilla]

Thanks for posting that, I've been dismayed at people online having fun with the probably death of five people in the 'Titanic' sub. Even here at the Shoutbox there were snide/humorous comments about it. I guess some people lack proper empathy or just need to use the tragedy to draw attention to themselves...or maybe as you suggest 'demonstrates the amount of people incapable of putting themselves in other people's shoes'. I see nothing funny about the sub.


Yeah I agree and a very sad way to seek attention. The fact one of them is only 19 as well is really devastating. I would have took that trip at 19 I had the opportunity and that would have destroyed my family. In these people's minds that would have made me fair game to make fun of 🤦 crazy world we live in.

[AgrippinaX]

Thanks for posting that, I've been dismayed at people online having fun with the probably death of five people in the 'Titanic' sub. Even here at the Shoutbox there were snide/humorous comments about it. I guess some people lack proper empathy or just need to use the tragedy to draw attention to themselves...or maybe as you suggest 'demonstrates the amount of people incapable of putting themselves in other people's shoes'. I see nothing funny about the sub.

Exactly — I was horrified by the Shoutbox jokes, but that’s nothing compared to what you see online outside of here. Regardless of one’s feelings about wealth, the exercise itself and the individuals involved, to me joking about any sort of tragedy is incomprehensible and incredibly annoying/offputting. I also do not understand the circular argument about similar efforts not being deployed to rescue migrants because migrants are not British/French citizens, hence these governments are understandably focusing on those who are.

[John W Constantine]

Some times...I dunno...it's like people don't care for "rich people ".

[TheVanillaGorilla]

Some times...I dunno...it's like people don't care for "rich people ".


So how come you picked a rich person like Keanu reeves for your profile pic 🤔lol

[John W Constantine]

So how come you picked a rich person like Keanu reeves for your profile pic 🤔lol
.....whoa....

[Captain Steel]

Re-posted from the Miscellaneous thread...

Wasn't sure where to place this, but it's about movie synchronicity - you watch a movie, then something in real-life comes up that is eerily similar to something in the movie.

6 days ago I reviewed Around the World Under the Sea (1966) - about an experimental submarine with a 6-person crew that ultimately ends up becoming trapped underwater.

Now there's this news story that's been ongoing for a couple days about an experimental sub with a 5-person compliment that has disappeared while touring the Titanic. (Hope is quickly running out as estimated oxygen supply is dwindling.)

This seems to happen a lot (the movie synchronicity that is) although it's probably explained away as just a matter of attention - the majority of movies watched that don't line up with anything in real life are just not paid any mind.

Anyway, to make this all the more coincidental: a few days ago, before the news about the Titanic sub came out, a neighbor was telling me about how they have these submersible tours now where people can go see the Titanic underwater!

[Captain Steel]

Same topic...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1bTtwOUYCs

[John McClane]

I ain't defending the "lack of humor" rampant on the internet. But it's fairly apparent that it is more than likely a result of the tone-deafness of wealth in the world; $250k is life changing money for a great many and here we have individuals with a near endless supply of wealth touring a wreck that was the single greatest loss of life at sea that was primarily people of underclass.

But, I suspect, the reason that the internet has taken to it so vehemently is because it chipped away at one of the greatest myths of today's socioeconomic landscape; that billionaires are rich because they take measured risks and are smart people. Climbing into, what was plainly a deathtrap waiting to happen, is neither a measured risk nor a smart decision.

RIP

[TheVanillaGorilla]

Same topic...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1bTtwOUYCs


Matt Walsh is a good dude. I follow his channel 💯

[AgrippinaX]

I ain't defending the "lack of humor" rampant on the internet. But it's fairly apparent that it is more than likely a result of the tone-deafness of wealth in the world; $250k is life changing money for a great many and here we have individuals with a near endless supply of wealth touring a wreck that was the single greatest loss of life at sea that was primarily people of underclass.

But, I suspect, the reason that the internet has taken to it so vehemently is because it chipped away at one of the greatest myths of today's socioeconomic landscape; that billionaires are rich because they take measured risks and are smart people. Climbing into, what was plainly a deathtrap waiting to happen, is neither a measured risk nor a smart decision.

RIP

But people are free to do as they wish with their wealth. Thrill-seekers of all kinds have all sorts of reasons for doing what they do; not to go the armchair psychology route, but I don’t entirely see how it’s ‘tone-deaf’ to spend the money they have on whatever they wish, be that this dive or a golden toilet; people are born into/arrive at different circumstances and it seems strange for adults to allocate other people’s money…. I mean, yes, there’s the whole thing that billionaires could (theoretically) ‘solve the world’s hunger’, right, but they’re under no obligation to do so, are they?

[John McClane]

I’m all for people doing what they want with their money. I am not at all for someone having more money than they can spend in 25 lifetimes. And that’s if we are only talking about $1 billion. So a multi-billionaire has got more money than they can spend in 100+ lifetimes. And that, my friend, is the definition of immorality.

Billionaires should NOT exist.

[John Dumbear]

Sad ending that will (I pray) end this tasteless trend.

One can hope...

[Captain Steel]

At this point we can only hope that those aboard had the kind of instantaneous death where there was little warning and they never knew what hit them (which, next to dying peacefully in your sleep, is probably the best kind of death). It seems an implosion at great depth would be a virtually instantaneous demise - no time for panic or pain.

Prayers for their families.

[cricket]

It's a tragedy, I couldn't care less how much money they had or anyone else has. There are probably a million worse things in the world than billionaires, jealous people being one. Still praying for a miracle.

[Mesmerized]

I've noticed so many people are making memes and fun of the wealthy people aboard the Titanic submarine.

These people making fun of this live on another planet.

[AgrippinaX]

It's a tragedy, I couldn't care less how much money they had or anyone else has. There are probably a million worse things in the world than billionaires, jealous people being one. Still praying for a miracle.

The only reasonable take imo.

[John McClane]

So when we locking this thread?

[John Dumbear]

Why? It's a current topic.

[Captain Steel]

Why? It's a current topic.

And it's not political.

[John McClane]

It was more of a “you know this is eventually going to devolve, right?”

[TheVanillaGorilla]

I’m all for people doing what they want with their money. I am not at all for someone having more money than they can spend in 25 lifetimes. And that’s if we are only talking about $1 billion. So a multi-billionaire has got more money than they can spend in 100+ lifetimes. And that, my friend, is the definition of immorality.

Billionaires should NOT exist.


Yet they do exist. Somebody's got to be in the top 1%. Besides I think it's irrelevant how much money they have at the end of the day they're just people.

[Citizen Rules]

Hating on one group of people and demonizing them because they are different than us is a form of bigotry.

When I was a teen back in the late 1970s there was a lot of phobic/racist/bigotry thrown at all sorts of people who weren't part of the mainstream. I thought that in the 21st century we were moving beyond labeling people, but it seems we've just moved the goal post and it's still popular to demonize certain groups, like the rich.

[AKA23]

This is really sad, and no one should be making jokes about this, but in my opinion, these people were idiots. I think they knew the risks, the waiver they signed demonstrated that, and they still decided to do it, but it was an incredibly dumb thing to do, and many people with knowledge of these things had warned about this being unsafe and felt that this was exactly what would happen, if they persisted in doing this. It's unfortunate that they were right.

[WHITBISSELL!]

I made a joke in the Shoutbox. More of a "making light of it" than a direct reference to the people trapped. I guess that's just as bad. I tell you what though. If I had a crap-ton of money at my disposal there's no way in hell I would seal myself in a home made sub (yeah, that's basically what it was) and descend 12,500 feet below sea level. That has to be one of the single worst ways to go and I can empathize. But you can't ignore the voice in your head telling you that it's one of the dumbest ways to go too. It's akin to reading about all the frozen bodies scattered along the face of Mt. Everest. It's possible to feel sorry for them but also feel that "they f*cked around and found out."

[crumbsroom]

It's obviously in poor taste to be publically making fun of those who died in a tragedy, the same day families realize they aren't coming back.


But something being a tragedy doesn't make it off limits for comedy. At least not forever. And , most importantly, comedy does not mean there is a lack of empathy. Sometimes it is, sure. But comedy can also be about a way of grieving or coming to terms with our emotions or criticizing the institutions that led to the tragedy in the first place. It depends on what the joke is. What the context of it being told is. Who is in the audience? What is the target?


And sorry, making fun of billionaires is about as fair game as anything gets. Not because a couple of them have just blown up under the ocean, that is obviously horrible. But, in general, they certainly make fair targets of themselves since the vast majority have accumulated such disgusting levels of wealth on the backs of all the people they've exploited and institutions they've bent towards their own gluttonous whims.


They are not an oppressed class, no matter how many tasteless memes are made of them. They are the opposite of oppressed. And, yes, the systems that allow people to accumulate such absurd amounts of money are just about one of the worst things on the planet. Billionaires are a huge problem. The things they do to get this kind of wealth causes suffering. People are rightfully angry at them. They have every reason to make fun of them.


Maybe just not the ones who just recently blew up.

[Citizen Rules]

This is really sad, and no one should be making jokes about this, but in my opinion, these people were idiots. I think they knew the risks, the waiver they signed demonstrated that, and they still decided to do it, but it was an incredibly dumb thing to do, and many people with knowledge of these things had warned about this being unsafe and felt that this was exactly what would happen, if they persisted in doing this. It's unfortunate that they were right.I whole heartily agree that the CEO who died on the sub was a greedy idiot. Everything I've read about him and his sub sounds like he was cutting safety to save money.

But the passengers had not been told that a carbon fiber hull was not flexible under extreme pressures and had not been told that the viewport was only rated to 1300 meters when the dive was to 4000 meters. The passengers knew it was risky, but didn't know the sub was an accident wanting to happen. Lots of activities have all sorts of waivers and warning that one can be injured or killed, that's standard legal fare.

Once in the Caribbean off of Aruba, I went down 150 feet to the ocean floor in a Nautilus submarine. I don't remember what I had to sign but I'm sure there was something that said the company isn't responsible.

[Corax]

There is a strange attraction that humans have to risk. We must, it seems, tempt death to prove we're alive. "What is a life lived without risk?" Of course, some risks are bigger than others. Moreover, going full-tilt "Leroy Jenkins" and shouting YOLO at every opportunity life presents us to kill ourselves is silly. As Aristotle taught, the question is one of balance. The balance in this case appears to have been miscalibrated, resulting in vice rather than virtue. And nature has her own way of punishing vice. She is a stern teacher when it comes to virtues like prudence.



Rich people, it seems are drawn towards certain death-defying activities like flying experimental private planes and climbing Mt. Everest. They also need to prove they're alive, even though they're living better than 99% of the planet. Seeing as how the rich have access to the best health care, this seems like a fair filter (e.g., Everest weeds out a few foolish millionaires for us, while the world's poor die in pollution and neglect). Even so, it is an odd thing to witness people shell out massive amounts of money so that they can be remembered as "Green Boots" or "Sleeping Beauty" when they fail.



It is hard to resist mocking the fool in his folly. The mockery is part of a cultural warning signal. It is harder to resist mocking a rich fool in his folly, as he is driven to it by boredom rather than necessity. And to be clear, the reports we're getting about this incident is that it was a rich man's folly. The owner-operator showed contempt and blatant disregard for good sense and people died with him. If I am spending $250K to ride a sub and the person who owns the sub is going with me, I am (rightly or wrongly) going to take that as a sign of safety as the owner is betting his own life with me. That is, I am likely to be misled by his hubris which I mistake for confidence. A little cultural mockery is a risk reminder (caveat emptor!) when we meet a billionaire with a brash idea. The mockery is a warning signal to others drawn to the bug-light filter of base-jumping, free-climbing, etc. It's a form of shaming. "Enough already!"



It's a counter-point to the eulogizing of folly (which makes the result seem like that of fate rather than merely stupidity) and a corrective to the attention this takes away from other tragedies, such as that migrant ship that just sank.



https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2023/06/22/titan-sub-greece-migrant-boat-responses-disproportionate/70345837007/



I think that we can simultaneously mourn the loss of life (thank God it was an implosion and not a slow death), while also having a laugh at the folly of man, and especially of rich men. There is sometimes a utility in and even necessity for Gallows Humor.

[Citizen Rules]

I made a joke in the Shoutbox. More of a "making light of it" than a direct reference to the people trapped. I guess that's just as bad. I tell you what though. If I had a crap-ton of money at my disposal there's no way in hell I would seal myself in a home made sub (yeah, that's basically what it was) and descend 12,500 feet below sea level. That has to be one of the single worst ways to go and I can empathize. But you can't ignore the voice in your head telling you that it's one of the dumbest ways to go too. It's akin to reading about all the frozen bodies scattered along the face of Mt. Everest. It's possible to feel sorry for them but also feel that "they f*cked around and found out."I'm going to rep you for posting that here. It takes some guts to post that in this thread. BTW I think what you said is more heart felt and reflective...and something I might have thought to myself. It's not mean or mocking, I have no problems with it.

[John McClane]

Space > ocean

Said it once but I’ll say it again. RIP

[Captain Steel]

It was either this morning or yesterday, the news was talking about potential miracles that could happen... and one person referenced several successful rescue missions that defied the odds and among them was Apollo 13.

I had thought of that myself before it was even mentioned, as this incident has some similarities (chief among them that the world was tuning in for information).

Sadly, this case didn't have the same outcome as Apollo 13 (which is also one of my favorite movies - because it's a true story about something miraculous told without any car chases, guns, nudity, sex or violence)!

[John McClane]

Yeah, one environment is the absence of pressure and the other is an abundance of pressure.

1.322 × 10-11 Pa
or another way
0.00000000910108 Pa
or another way
0.00000000000132000005413388546 psi

vs

4.053e+7 Pa
or another way
40530000 Pa
or another way
5878.3795103 psi

EDIT: based on my understanding of the current information available the debris was found at the base of the water column (i.e. the area of water that the sub started it’s descent) and that they knew to look in that area based on Navy readings of “an acoustic anomaly consistent with an implosion” at the moment the sub lost contact. And this information was relayed to the Coast Guard at the start of their search. Unfortunately, they knew from the very start but, optics being what they are, held that information back.

:(

[honeykid]

I ain't defending the "lack of humor" rampant on the internet. But it's fairly apparent that it is more than likely a result of the tone-deafness of wealth in the world; $250k is life changing money for a great many and here we have individuals with a near endless supply of wealth touring a wreck that was the single greatest loss of life at sea that was primarily people of underclass.

But, I suspect, the reason that the internet has taken to it so vehemently is because it chipped away at one of the greatest myths of today's socioeconomic landscape; that billionaires are rich because they take measured risks and are smart people. Climbing into, what was plainly a deathtrap waiting to happen, is neither a measured risk nor a smart decision.

RIP

Wait. Do people really think that? Is that a/the common perception?

[Stirchley]

Yeah, pretty poor taste if you ask me.

I don't find the "arguments" (they're rich, it was a stupid idea, et cetera) for the mocking at all persuasive or even basically coherent, but even if I did, they're people and they are (or, sadly, were) in mortal danger.

Good post.

Lives were lost. Money irrelevant. People should be quiet & respect the dead. R.I.P. 🙏✝️

[TheVanillaGorilla]

So when we locking this thread?


I don't think it's classed as suckling on the teat of hate as you once put it 😂. That did make me laugh. On a serious note it's a relevant and non-political topic 👍

[Citizen Rules]

What do we think of lawsuits against OceanGate and the estate of it's CEO? There seems to be two schools of thought...

Was OceanGate negligent? Why a successful lawsuit against the submersible company is unlikely (https://news.northeastern.edu/2023/06/22/oceangate-submarine-lawsuit/)

Families of Titan passengers may be able to sue despite possible waivers: Experts (https://abc13.com/titanic-sub-updates-victims-submersible-killed-oceangate-lawsuit-what-happened-implosion/13419497/)

[Yoda]

I'm deleting a number of posts, from a number of people who clearly knew those posts went well beyond the No Politics rule.

Frankly, I feel like people use the excuse of someone else veering off topic to go hog wild themselves. If you see someone doing that, tell a mod. If you don't, I don't think it's going to matter, going forward, if they "started it," or what have you. And the downside, to be clear, is not just threads getting closed.

[Yoda]

For the record, I've seen some downright innumerate things up and down this thread. Stuff that makes me shake my head and roll my eyes. Economic fallacies that have died and been resurrected every few generations, over and over. And yet somehow I managed to hold my tongue.

If I can do it, you can, too.