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It's very common for recreational divers to visit ships with bodies still in them. Maybe it's morbid, but it's common and generally you don't need to be "0.1%

It's very common for recreational divers to visit ships with bodies still in them. Maybe it's morbid, but it's common and generally you don't need to be "0.1%" to do it. If this story were about some working class people who died while scuba diving around a wreck in shallow water, would you still be trying to vilify them for it?

bell-cot 3y ago
True about recreational divers. I'm trying to explain the sentiments which user paganel originally voiced - which I suspect are kinda common. My sense is that the strong negative feeling are tied to how much of a "just too many emotional points against it" corner case this is. A famous & famously tragic shipwreck, the dangers inherent in their extreme tourism, how very few people can imagine "it coulda been someone like me in that little sub", the "mass grave" scale of death, the kinda-mythical "forbidden underworld" aura to the site, etc., etc.
- noirbot 3y ago
  I think some of the pushback that I feel to that is that it seems like a socially acceptable guise for just wanting to hate rich people. I'm fine if your opinion is "screw rich people who spend this much on weird things", or even "Rich people who died doing something this frivolous deserved it." But just own that. If this had been the original diving expedition to the Titanic to find the wreck for the first time, or even the followups, and people had potentially died then, I doubt we would have had this many people out in the comments about how its distasteful and they're hoping it would dissuade anyone from doing it again. At least "I hate rich people" is a consistent view whether you agree or not. Trying to make that view more socially acceptable by adding new and inconsistent layers on top about how visiting a place people died is inherently something that makes them unsympathetic just feels weird.
  - bell-cot 3y ago
    > I think some...socially acceptable guise for just wanting to hate rich people. Yes, some. But my feel is that if a similar number of even-richer people had (say) died in the crash of a luxury helicopter ferrying them to Everest Base Camp, then the negative reaction would have been far less notable.
  - paganel 3y ago
    Yes, it’s a combination of hating the rich people (which is a very valid sentiment, btw) and of invading a sacred “burial” space. If they had somehow gotten there on their own dime, like those divers you mentioned, then, yeah, it’s a little too morbid for me but whatever suits them. But to sell tickets (worth a staggering 250k) in order to visit the burial place of a couple thousand people is just not ok, it destroys the place’s sacred aura. Just imagine if they had left the ruins of the Twin Towers in place, including the dead and decomposing people under those ruins, and if they had started selling tickets in order to visit said place. Totally not ok.

bell-cot 3y ago

True about recreational divers. I'm trying to explain the sentiments which user paganel originally voiced - which I suspect are kinda common. My sense is that the strong negative feeling are tied to how much of a "just too many emotional points against it" corner case this is. A famous & famously tragic shipwreck, the dangers inherent in their extreme tourism, how very few people can imagine "it coulda been someone like me in that little sub", the "mass grave" scale of death, the kinda-mythical "forbidden underworld" aura to the site, etc., etc.

noirbot 3y ago
I think some of the pushback that I feel to that is that it seems like a socially acceptable guise for just wanting to hate rich people. I'm fine if your opinion is "screw rich people who spend this much on weird things", or even "Rich people who died doing something this frivolous deserved it." But just own that. If this had been the original diving expedition to the Titanic to find the wreck for the first time, or even the followups, and people had potentially died then, I doubt we would have had this many people out in the comments about how its distasteful and they're hoping it would dissuade anyone from doing it again. At least "I hate rich people" is a consistent view whether you agree or not. Trying to make that view more socially acceptable by adding new and inconsistent layers on top about how visiting a place people died is inherently something that makes them unsympathetic just feels weird.
- bell-cot 3y ago
  > I think some...socially acceptable guise for just wanting to hate rich people. Yes, some. But my feel is that if a similar number of even-richer people had (say) died in the crash of a luxury helicopter ferrying them to Everest Base Camp, then the negative reaction would have been far less notable.
- paganel 3y ago
  Yes, it’s a combination of hating the rich people (which is a very valid sentiment, btw) and of invading a sacred “burial” space. If they had somehow gotten there on their own dime, like those divers you mentioned, then, yeah, it’s a little too morbid for me but whatever suits them. But to sell tickets (worth a staggering 250k) in order to visit the burial place of a couple thousand people is just not ok, it destroys the place’s sacred aura. Just imagine if they had left the ruins of the Twin Towers in place, including the dead and decomposing people under those ruins, and if they had started selling tickets in order to visit said place. Totally not ok.