And yeah, the Titan submersible situation has ended as badly as it looked like it would, with the announcement the other day that the point where they lost contact with it on Sunday was probably the point where the thing imploded. The only consolation from which is that it would’ve happened so fast—within a millisecond, apparently—that none of them would’ve been able to register anything was untoward.
This Graun piece kind of echoes what I said the other day about the ghoulishness of some of the commentary:
Beneath the ostensible fears for the wellbeing of the Titan’s passengers lurked another, uglier emotion: excitement. It was evident in the myriad gleeful tweets mocking the irony that a vessel seeking the Titanic might have succumbed to a similar fate. It was evident in the grotesque live countdowns of the assumed dwindling supply of oxygen in the sub. It was evident in the churn of ghoulish tabloid articles feverishly speculating about what might have happened to those aboard and the torment they would surely be going through. […]
It was evident, too, in the focus on the wealth of the men and the sums they must have stumped up for the expedition (about £200,000). Far from making their situation more pitiable, their riches seemed only to lessen the empathy and assuage the guilt of those gripped by the story: it confirmed a sense that these people were not like us.
Yes. And we now know that the young fellow, Suleman Dawood, the 19 year old student, he was afraid of going on this thing. He basically went cos his dad told him to. I can’t not have some sympathy for someone who didn’t get much chance to live.
And, equally, I’m finding myself having less and less sympathy for Stockton Rush. I hesitate to say anyone deserves to die as such, cos who am I really to make that call, but the more information that comes out, the more of an inevitable disaster the Titan looks like it had to be. Even though it actually did make a number of safe dives in the last couple of years, that evidently wasn’t going to last. The whole story is so hideous and unnecessary.
