OceanGate Titan and the limits of empathy

Social media had plenty of laughs at the expense of the five wealthy passengers on the OceanGate Titan. I haven’t heard this many sick jokes about a disaster since Challenger. I’ve also had a few things to say about it, like almost everyone on TikTok. But isn’t it wrong to make light of someone’s death? And I’m supposed to be someone who believes in empathy. Where is our humanity?

The best explanation for the reaction on social media was this comment on a TikTok video, “It’s no different from the people who try to pet buffalo. I cheer for the buffalo.”

That’s the difference between a tragedy and a Darwin award nominee. It’s when you meet your fate because of your own foolishness and hubris. And the OceanGate Titan, much like the Titanic it was going down to gawk at, was a monument to foolishness and hubris. The untested carbon fiber hull, the Logitech game controller, and most especially its now dead CEO Stockton Rush who claimed “safety just is pure waste” and fired an employee who warned about problems with the vessel.

And there’s the class issue. It’s not just that these very wealthy people spent $250,000 each to get imploded while refugees drowned when their ship capsized. (Let’s be honest. We wouldn’t have even known about that tragedy if we couldn’t use it to contrast with what happened to the Titan.) It’s that the…