Do Billionaires Deserve Sympathy?
A look at the dark response from the internet to the sinking of the Titanic submersible and the billionaires who died.
The internet’s response to a missing submersible on its way to the Titanic wreckage site has been… dark.
“Only rich ppl can figure out a way to die on the Titanic 111 years later.”
“Imagine paying $250K to drown.”
“It’s such a funny way to go out.”
The jokes came fast, targetting the sketchy safety precautions, the apparent use of a Logitech gamepad to control the ship and, perhaps most forcefully, the astronomical net worth of the crew. The phenomenon has led to questions about the limits of bad taste in humour as well as what we as a society choose to focus on (the sinking of a boat full of migrants off the coast of Greece, possibly killing hundreds, received much less coverage).
How It Started
On Sunday June 18th, five people on board a submersible from OceanGate Expeditions started their deep-sea journey to visit the Titanic from off the east coast of Canada. It was meant to take two hours to reach the wreckage, but after an hour and 45 minutes, communication between the sub and the surface vessel was lost. A few hours after the sub’s fixed surface time, the Coast Guard was alerted that it was missing. A multinational search was launched as news of the submersible quickly spread around the world and caught the internet’s attention.
The Reaction Was Complicated
With a price tag of 250,000 USD — around 370,000 AUD — the group on board were clearly very wealthy. Two of them were billionaires, one was the 19-year-old son of one of the billionaires, and the other two were multimillionaires.
The ultra-rich rarely attract much sympathy in the best of times. Given the current economic climate and a rising anti-capitalist sentiment, it wasn’t a surprise that an ‘eat the rich’ sentiment quickly spread online. Countless memes were spawned, ranging from jokes about orcas being involved, fake reviews about the gaming controller used to pilot the sub — there was even a countdown to when the sub was going to run out of oxygen.
Then the pendulum started to swing the other way. Many people were uncomfortable with joking about the deaths of other human beings, whatever the circumstances. Others suggested the darkness in the humour implied a degradation in society.
A Lack Of Relatability
According to the people attempting to explain the mixed reaction, multiple things can be true at the same time. It’s a terrifying situation, no matter who you are or how much money you have. But it’s also hard to sympathise because “it isn’t a situation that could happen to anyone”. A sociologist on Twitter argued that the jokes weren’t “collective glee”, but rather a mix of feelings like “disgust, dismay, shock, and confusion”.
One explanation, offered by a bioethicist on TikTok who did their thesis on misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories, highlighted the difference between ethics and morals. While usage of both terms are often blurred, most definitions refer to morals as your own internal principles of right and wrong, whereas ethics speaks more to an external social system.
Expressing humour about the demise of billionaires online isn’t about the individual people themselves, which we would morally object to as individuals. It’s more about their perceived oppressor status due to their extreme wealth. This is consistent with the recent shift in the narrative around billionaires – a shift reflected in the popularity of shows like Succession and The White Lotus – from hard workers to worker-exploiting wealth hoarders with too much power in a capitalist system. But does that really mean billionaires shouldn’t be treated like people?