This morning I came across the news that a Titanic tourist submersible, operated by OceanGate has gone missing in the mid-Atlantic, along with its five passengers, all of which are multi-millionaires and a billionaire. The trip 3,800 metres down to the Titanic wreck inside OceanGate’s Titan submersible, was included in an eight-day trip, at the cost of $250,000 US dollars per person.
My immediate thoughts were not even what I was expecting.
The Australian news article that I read, had a little clock ticking down hours, minutes, and seconds… what for?… it was monitoring the amount of time until the five passengers’ oxygen will run out, should they still even be alive, and the Titan sub has not already imploded, sometime around when they lost contact, one hour and 45 minutes into the dive to the Titanic wreck.
My thoughts were not immediately about where the sub is, what the passengers were/are thinking, or how big the fallout of loosing five mega wealthy people will be.
My thoughts were…isn’t it kind of ironic, that a group of people who were playing voyeur, to essentially what is an ocean grave site, are now themselves on the other side of the glass, as the ones being watched, right down to the ticking of their last breath.
The media has always been notoriously depraved, but with the 24-hour news cycle, and the constant overwhelm of a technological age, that is designed to always keep people “on”, it seems that the level of desensitization is growing, and at a rapid rate.
Nothing seems to invoke a human response in the way it used to, and the suffering of others is entertainment rather than concern, or empathy… are we heading the same way with “tragedy porn” in the way we have headed with porn, in the sexual context? Where the over exposure to saturated media platforms, that pop up constantly on the device we are chained to mean that we have lost touch.
Where it seems like we need an app for everything, and it is becoming almost impossible to take part in society without having a phone and being online, it is very hard to push away this constant shoving of information down our throats… it is creating some seriously detached people.
Now, let’s address the title of this story “Stupid games, win stupid prizes” I chose this title, to not only draw attention to how negative and angry or disgusted responses pull more attention, given the way it appeals to the addictive side of social media, media in general and this wave of “tragedy porn” people love so much, but also because this was actually a comment made, during a news piece, regarding this event.
“Stupid games, win stupid prizes”.
Have you ever scrolled down the void that is reels, and seen how popular accident videos are, there is one in particular that gained huge popularity and was shared thousands of times, where a man accidently punches his very young son, at full force in the face, while playing one of those showground games, where you hit the boxing bag… behind the five seconds of laughter the viewers received from this accident, was likely a very injured child who lost all his teeth… I do not find this entertaining.
But given the constant flashing of videos, advertisements, and addictive design of these apps, combined with the over worked and hectic pace in which we have been told our lives must move at, I don’t think people even give it a second thought, the mind now so muddied with minute long attention spans… if that.
Do I have thoughts about the mega-wealthy frittering away such an obscene amount of money on their own “tragedy porn” (let’s face it, the argument that the Titanic is an archaeological site to be explored is weak, for one, these people are tourists, not archaeologists) Yes, of course I do.
Money that could have been spent on making a change to the lives of those who need the basics in life such as food, housing and medicine, I mean… no-one needs to be a billionaire, and I don’t care if they have black tie fundraisers, where they all make speeches and pretend to care, because we all know that’s an ego trip… lets call it what it is.
I want to start banging on about the ridiculous nature of even needing charity, and how chump change is being thrown at those less fortunate in general, maybe we could just change the system that puts people in that position all together… maybe we can do away with the mega wealthy… there is a thought.
Whether it be through generational wealth and nepotism or meritocracy… no one… and I mean no one, “deserves” that level of gluttony… I will never understand why people defend these systems, that is some conditioning if I ever saw it.
I have worked enough of these events as a performer, hearing what the wealthy really think about those “beneath them” and it is a damn eye opener. I also continue to be baffled that all this money is being thrown at such things as this, as well as space tourism… do we not have issues here on earth, right outside our doorstep that require a more immediate attention?
Billionaire Hamish Harding said on social media that he was “proud to finally announce” that he would be aboard the mission to the wreck of the Titanic … mission for what?
Could it be… an ego trip?
Something else I found interesting, that was brought up during another televised news story regarding the OceanGate CEO, Stockton Rush, was that “he is a blueblood, he is a direct descendant of two signers of the declaration of independence” … which was not exactly in context to the story but was somehow a focus point.
That ticking clock on a news site, may have been the line for me, even as someone with some very strong views and distain for extreme wealth… I am not sure how much actual sympathy I feel though… If I am being very honest… my emotional bandwidth is usually overflowing with concerns about children who are not eating today, or suffering in extreme poverty or violence, or of the growing number of elderly homeless women I see walking through Fremantle these days, pushing a trolly in the freezing cold with a few of those woven red and blue bags we all remember as children.
A person’s lineage, birthright, and wealth, mean nothing…
Which going back to the start of this story regarding what they were/are thinking…
I am sure that might have become blaringly obvious… while at the mercy of the sea.
