Oceangate's Titan. The Bayesian yacht. Why do the deaths of rich people matter more than poor people?

[xenon]

Actually I don't think it's about rich people mattering more than poor necesarily. More a question of scale, for want of a better term, compassion fatigue and not least, the novel.

TBH I was far more compelled by the Titan story because of the other elements, details about the CEO, the design, you could still see their promotional material on Youtube. Ghoolish, yes probably.

Why do a few dozen migrants drowning in the Medetaranion warrent more compassion than the thousands starving in South Sudan, Yemen etc. Not a gotya. It's because it's in our back yard globally speaking and many are trying to get here. Locality, familiarity, novelty matter news wise.

 

[QueenOfGoths]

The Titanic sub I can understand more. The whole thing was just strange, a homemade sub, people paying to use it, the whole idea of tourism that is so very outside the scope of everyday people, see also space tourism.

The Mike Lynch yacht sinking has, I felt, had too much media attention. I am sorry for the loss of life but with the loss of life happening in Gaza, migrant boats, the tragedy in Southport, the fire in Bradford it seems odd and unwarranted to focus so much on a yacht sinking.

Report it of course, but not over report it.

 

[xenon]

Oh, all billionaires are definitely trodding. Trodding away like buggery, the lot of them.

Indeed. The downtrodden aren't going to just trod themselves are they.

 

[Lotte]

Stockton Rush caused his own death by constantly cutting corners and dismissing health and safety as woke bullshit for pussies. It's just a shame he had to take four others with him.

 

[WouldBe]

Similarly mystified and now, even more so, that the rich people's lawyers are pressing for manslaughter.

I thought it was the Italians who were pressing for manslaughter.

 

[Sue]

As for Mike Lynch there is a difference between being interested and caring. I rather doubt anyone is going to bed and lying there thinking 'Oh God this is terrible'. Some may even be even thinking 'Serves the fucker right' but clearly people are interested in the story.

Are they? The media latching onto a story and reporting it to hell does not necessarily mean people are interested in it. It means the media are interested in it which isn't the same thing.

 

[krtek a houby]

Yes he was rich. He wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth his parents were a fireman & a nurse from council estates in Ireland. Mike Lynch was a very clever men who did very well for himself without any outside help. He donated a lot of money to local causes in the towns in Ireland his parents came from. He did not come from money everything he made was made by him alone! The ignorance & bitterness on this site is something else

4 posts over 15 years.

Fuck the mega rich and their enablers.

 

[Elpenor]

Yes he was rich. He wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth his parents were a fireman & a nurse from council estates in Ireland. Mike Lynch was a very clever men who did very well for himself without any outside help. He donated a lot of money to local causes in the towns in Ireland his parents came from. He did not come from money everything he made was made by him alone! The ignorance & bitterness on this site is something else

If only one of them was a toolmaker

 

[teqniq]

I feel the reason may be fairly simple. The MSM who are largely the gatekeepers of what many people read are pushing this (and here I have to be honest, I haven't actually read anything so I am going largely on what is being talked about here), feel there is a need to push this story as a bit of applied psychology. 'Look what has happened to your betters, express sympathy and remorse'. It's a bit like their endless obsession with the royal family.

 

[SpookyFrank]

I think most people in this country find it easier to identify to identify with the people (and thus sympathise with) drowning on the yacht that those drowning on a migrant boat.

Were you born this full of shit or did you have to save up?

 

[MickiQ]

Were you born this full of shit or did you have to save up?

Thanks Frank it always makes me confident I'm right when you disagree with me.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Thanks Frank it always makes me confident I'm right when you disagree with me.

I'm absolutely 100% sure that you identify more with some billionaire on a giant private yacht than with someone forced to leave their home and take their life in their hands to find a new one.

Where you go wrong, as usual, is in assuming that everyone else is like you. I'm never likely to meet a billionaire, but I have met lots of people who were trying desperately to get to the UK but had no legal means to do so. Some of them are dead now. At any one time there are possibly more people camped out in Calais alone waiting to take their chances on the boats than there are billionaires on the entire planet.

There's a reason migrants' stories don't get told in the papers. And it's not because people don't care. Quite the opposite. If more people understood exactly how brutal life can be a for a large chunk of the human population, they might be more likely to start asking why has this one cunt over here got a giant boat that could be used to rescue hundreds of people, and all he's doing with it is getting a fucking suntan? A man who seems to have only worked a few years of his life, then sold out. We get the billionaires' stories because we're supposed to think, maybe I could be like that one day. We're not supposed to think, maybe I'm not so far removed from this poor soul washed up dead on this strange foreign beach for whom that was still, somehow, the better option.

And every time some I'm-alright-Jack piece of shit like you pipes up with, 'of course we care more about the rich than the poor' they're doing unpaid work for the sort of cunts who spend their lives, and vast resources, manipulating narratives to make sure these kinds of grotesque injustices carry on forever.

 

[Flavour]

I am glad they are all dead and eagerly await the next amusing tragedy to befall the rich.

 

[brogdale]

I'm absolutely 100% sure that you identify more with some billionaire on a giant private yacht than with someone forced to leave their home and take their life in their hands to find a new one.

Where you go wrong, as usual, is in assuming that everyone else is like you. I'm never likely to meet a billionaire, but I have met lots of people who were trying desperately to get to the UK but had no legal means to do so. Some of them are dead now. At any one time there are possibly more people camped out in Calais alone waiting to take their chances on the boats than there are billionaires on the entire planet.

There's a reason migrants' stories don't get told in the papers. And it's not because people don't care. Quite the opposite. If more people understood exactly how brutal life can be a for a large chunk of the human population, they might be more likely to start asking why has this one cunt over here got a giant boat that could be used to rescue hundreds of people, and all he's doing with it is getting a fucking suntan? A man who seems to have only worked a few years of his life, then sold out. We get the billionaires' stories because we're supposed to think, maybe I could be like that one day. We're not supposed to think, maybe I'm not so far removed from this poor soul washed up dead on this strange foreign beach and that was still somehow, the better option.

And every time some I'm-alright-Jack piece of shit like you pipes up with, 'of course we care more about the rich than the poor' they're doing unpaid work for the sort of cunts who spend their lives, and vast resources, manipulating narratives to make sure these kinds of grotesque injustices carry on forever.

Yep, manufacturing empathy for the billionaires and negative solidarity with refugees.

 

[DotCommunist]

we need the orca to come in off the top ropes and take out another yacht

 

[Yossarian]

I feel the reason may be fairly simple. The MSM who are largely the gatekeepers of what many people read are pushing this (and here I have to be honest, I haven't actually read anything so I am going largely on what is being talked about here), feel there is a need to push this story as a bit of applied psychology. 'Look what has happened to your betters, express sympathy and remorse'. It's a bit like their endless obsession with the royal family.

I think it's more just click-driven journalism in a slow news month - this story is generating more interest than others, so let's give it saturation coverage, let's tell the life stories of the victims, let's provide some graphics of the inside of the boat and let's portray this ship going down in a storm as the biggest fucking maritime mystery since the Marie Celeste.

But yeah, there's a thumb on the scales here, in the much worse maritime disasters that happen in the same sea very often, the headlines are always along the lines of '125 migrants die in sinking off Lampedusa,' not '125 people die in sinking off Lampedusa,' or the equally accurate '125 people drown in preventable disaster.'

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

Because the media that reports it is owed by, and run for, the rich.

 

[Wkdloz]

Interesting thread - human nature at its worst.

 

[mojo pixy]

Because the media that reports it is owed by, and run for, the rich.

/thread

 

[Chilli.s]

The part of this I want to know about is what kind of compensation payout will be made to the families of the staff who died at work. It seems that safety procedures were not followed and the yacht sank very quickly after a knock down as the hatches were all open.

 

[Yossarian]

Interesting thread - human nature at its worst.

Yeah, I think we have bottomed out here, has there ever been human behaviour worse than displaying a possible lack of empathy for drowned billionaires

 

[tim]

If only one of them was a toolmaker

Or a swimming instructor.

 

[tim]

I know wish I'd screenshot the Guardian piece the other day, obviously written by Oxbridge?Eng.Lit. interns that said something like "How worried should we be about waterspouts".

I saw a waterspout in Sicily once. We were collecting drinking water from a spring on a cliff overlooking the sea. The Sicilians we were with were rather spooked, because, as we all now know, they are fucking dangerous.

I already had some understanding of this as I had been brought up with accounts of the tornado that had destroyed Gunnersbury Station although I was unaware of the carnage it had caused at the Britvik factory.

‘Just Like The Blitz’ – The First West London Tornado | Brentford & Chiswick Local History Society

 

[MickiQ]

I'm absolutely 100% sure that you identify more with some billionaire on a giant private yacht than with someone forced to leave their home and take their life in their hands to find a new one.

Where you go wrong, as usual, is in assuming that everyone else is like you. I'm never likely to meet a billionaire, but I have met lots of people who were trying desperately to get to the UK but had no legal means to do so. Some of them are dead now. At any one time there are possibly more people camped out in Calais alone waiting to take their chances on the boats than there are billionaires on the entire planet.

There's a reason migrants' stories don't get told in the papers. And it's not because people don't care. Quite the opposite. If more people understood exactly how brutal life can be a for a large chunk of the human population, they might be more likely to start asking why has this one cunt over here got a giant boat that could be used to rescue hundreds of people, and all he's doing with it is getting a fucking suntan? A man who seems to have only worked a few years of his life, then sold out. We get the billionaires' stories because we're supposed to think, maybe I could be like that one day. We're not supposed to think, maybe I'm not so far removed from this poor soul washed up dead on this strange foreign beach for whom that was still, somehow, the better option.

And every time some I'm-alright-Jack piece of shit like you pipes up with, 'of course we care more about the rich than the poor' they're doing unpaid work for the sort of cunts who spend their lives, and vast resources, manipulating narratives to make sure these kinds of grotesque injustices carry on forever.

Fine rant there Frank back on form I see but quick question though if most people are willing to care about migrants why are so many protesting when they get housed near them?
And if most people hate rich people why do so many people play the lottery (I don't by the way)? Not many winners giving their winnings away and denouncing it has an evil capitalist plot?

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

I am glad they are all dead and eagerly await the next amusing tragedy to befall the rich.

The inevitable spaceship one is going to be great.

 

[Yossarian]

And if most people hate rich people why do so many people play the lottery (I don't by the way)? Not many winners giving their winnings away and denouncing it has an evil capitalist plot?

No offense, MickiQ, but what the fuck are you smoking?

 

[MickiQ]

No offense, MickiQ, but what the fuck are you smoking?

Perhaps that didn't come across as clearly as I hoped. I don't think most people look at rich people and think 'Wow that is so wrong their wealth should be taken from them and equitably distributed'
They look and think 'I want to be rich too'. This is a fantasy of course virtually none of them will but it's a nice comforting daydream. Lottery tickets and the 'if you work hard you will make it someday' shtick all play into that fantasy.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Fine rant there Frank back on form I see but quick question though if most people are willing to care about migrants why are so many protesting when they get housed near them?

Because they're cunts.

And I take it you missed the much larger gatherings opposing racist violence? Wouldn't be surprising, as you seem to go entirely off what you see in the Telegraph.

And if most people hate rich people why do so many people play the lottery (I don't by the way)? Not many winners giving their winnings away and denouncing it has an evil capitalist plot?

Because for many people winning the lottery is more or less the only chance they'll ever have of a life free from the fear of deprivation?

 

[tim]

I think most people in this country find it easier to identify to identify with the people (and thus sympathise with) drowning on the yacht that those drowning on a migrant boat. It's easier to imagine themselves on the yacht than it is on the migrant boat.
If they thought about it then they would realise of course that finding themselves aboard a billionaire's yacht isn't any more likely than finding themselves aboard an overcrowded dinghy. But people like to imagine nice things happening to themselves rather than bad.
There's also the novelty factor here, it's not every day a billionaire drowns, the last large scale drowning of very rich people probably was the actual Titanic sinking. Migrants have drowned in large numbers in the Med and will continue to do so for the forseeable future. Everyone knows it happens it just isn't news. (perhaps it should be but it isn't)

Do they? I've never been on a yacht, although I have been on a cross channel ferry. I have gone to sea in a small fishing boat, which I didn't enjoy. I also know quite a few people who go fishing in small boats, albeit middleclass Italian hobby fishers usually from families who in the past had to fish for a living.

 

[dessiato]

There’d have been relatively poor people onboard too. Let’s not forget the crew, which media seems to have done.