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Why Everyone Is Morbidly Obsessed With The Titan Submersible Implosion
How novelty attracts our attention — and empathy.
I recently saw a Facebook comment saying, “I don’t get all the buzz about this submarine story. People die doing stupid stuff all the time.”
And this is true, albeit a bit callous —but it’s rare that a singular accident magnetizes the eyes of the world. As someone who is fully hooked on the sauce, I’ll explain.
It all began on Monday morning
My partner got home and we chatted briefly. Then, she mentioned, “By the way, did you hear about that submarine?”
Quite quickly, I was checking websites every few minutes, listening to podcasts, and watching videos. My local news station had 50,000+ people watching a YouTube stream about the incident (that is a huge number for Tampa Bay).
If you somehow missed it, a luxury (extreme) underwater tourism service, OceanGate, offers a trip to see the Titanic ruins, all for the paltry sum of $250,000 a seat. Four explorers, and the company CEO, went missing on June 18th.
I had tertiary knowledge of what they might be experiencing. My dad served on a submarine. I’ve done…
