As anyone is aware, the big news of the past week was the disappearance of a submarine on an expedition to the wreck of the Titanic. On Sunday, June 18th, about an hour and a half after its dive to the wreck began, communication was lost, and the vehicle never surfaced. Eventually, on Thursday the 22nd wreckage would be found, leading to the conclusion that the vehicle had a structural failure and imploded, killing the 5 people on board.
Needless to say, the internet has had quite the field day with this one; right after the sub went missing, it seemed, people began making memes mocking the disappearance of the vessel, its design, its crew, and, most oddly specifically, the fact it happened to be controlled using a Logitech brand video game controller. The memes regarding such would actually be the first thing I would see; I stay so detached from the normal news cycle I wouldn’t learn of the event until Tuesday the 20th.
At that point people were still holding out hope that the vehicle was intact and the crew was alive, just stuck maybe on the ocean surface. That, however, I already knew was very unlikely, given not only the nature of the environment at that depth, but also simply based on how suddenly the vehicle just went missing during the dive, and how nothing properly came up. Everything just screamed total structural failure, which on Thursday, the day the crew would have likely run out of oxygen anyway had the vehicle been intact, we would get verification of debris.
The memes and, honestly, terrible attitude, didn’t stop. A big part of this came from the fact that most of the people on the sub were basically tourists — billionaires who had the money to pony up to pay the cost of the trip. Naturally people targeted this aspect of the victims and basically gave a “they deserve it” kind of reaction, which I, and many others, honestly found sickening.
Understand that I absolutely hate the wealthy in any capacity. However, in this case I can actually empathize, as if I had the money I would waste no time in booking such a trip myself in one way or another. Some of these people, too, were of a similar interest, I feel. Hell, one of them was an actual Titanic researcher. If anyone has business taking a trip down there, it’s him, and not because he had the money to pay the company to do it — because he wanted to visit the ship again.
I can’t go, however, without making a point that the owner of OceanGate and the Titan sub, Stockton Rush, was on this trip and, of course, died in the implosion. This is truly ironic, as he had a public record of having, to put it simply, said “fuck it” to safety. This attitude would, of course, result in his own death, and I personally do say to hell with him, but, I feel it is a tragedy, even if they were quite wealthy, that Shazada Dawood and his son Suleman, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet would die because Rush wanted to do things his own way with a vehicle going into an environment more dangerous than the surface of the Moon.
Seriously, fuck Rush. The rest, however, were kindred spirits in one way or another. Titanic enthusiasts who happened to have the chance to do something incredible… only for one mans lack of care to doom them all.
The reaction honestly sickens me. This isn’t something that should have happened. They didn’t “deserve” this because they were doing something expensive — many have gone down to the Titanic wreck before and all have survived. They died because someone fucked up. Had things been done correctly in the design of the vehicle, there would have been no issues. Stop with the goddamned victim blaming.
…and lastly, regarding the Logitech controller used to pilot the thing: grow the fuck up. Yeah, it’s a game controller. One many gamers would find shitty but you know, it obviously worked. The controller certainly wasn’t the cause of structural failure and the vessel had made trips to the Titanic before without issue. As long as it’s a control method that the pilot knows, then its fine. Yeah, it’s a weird as fuck design choice, but obviously it worked fine, so shut the hell up about it.
Seriously, the entire attitude that people have had for this event is disgusting. I know I’m not alone in sharing this outrage, but I’m still absolutely shocked to see the disrespect to the degree I do…
Fucking be better people… put at least some thought into the context surrounding this event and try to have some goddamned empathy. If I can do it, then so can you.
Except for Stockton Rush. Fuck him.
