Third Time's The Charm - Happy 3 Years and #OceanGate

Duane Rollins -

Framed Perspective turned 3 today.

We're at that fun toddler stage where our personality is in full bloom yet our development is still happening. In short, we're tiny humans in this community but not fully developed.

To celebrate, I pondered what I would write about. I could talk about what I learned over these last 3 years of writing, how it's changed me, future plans, or some other super deep topic.

But no, I do not want to talk about that today.

There's something too important going on right now that has completely preoccupied my household.

#OceanGate #TitanRescue

Here's the best summary vid of what's happening from the tweet of @DumbDelights (yeah..) via the TikTok of August Lapine (the internet brings us all together I suppose).

The short version of it is that 5 passengers took a trip on an experimental submersible designed by Ocean Gate to visit the wreckage of the Titanic buried 4000m (13,000ft) beneath the Atlantic Ocean. They got lost and have less than 20 or so hours of oxygen left at this time of this writing. Lots of resources are being deployed to find them.

So why has this story captured the hearts of minds of so many?

  1. Two of the passengers are uber-rich, with one being a billionaire.
  2. The company leading this expedition OceanGate took some liberties with its submersible design that threw caution to the wind.
  3. The trip costs $250k per passenger.
  4. They decided to take this risk in an experimental vehicle to see the Titanic, one of the most famous shipwrecks in the world.

To see this story play out in real-time on the internet has been... interesting.

First, there are real people who may have lost their lives in this expedition. From NBC News:

The CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, Stockton Rush, was on board and piloting the missing submersible that vanished during a mission to explore the wreckage of the Titanic, the company said Tuesday.

[...]

British billionaire Hamish Harding, owner of Action Aviation, was also among the five people on the vessel, along with French dive expert Paul Henry Nargeolet and prominent Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman.

Then there's just a mountain of "hate" for the billionaires/rich people who use their resources to take these types of trips at such high costs when people are struggling in their day-to-day lives. Also, similar tragedies have involving more people but they went unnoticed by the broader media since the lives loss were those who are far from rich.

Exhibit A:

Then, there are just the people online who can find humor in any situation.

Lastly, there's some rage over how the company Ocean Gate disregarded safety and good engineering principles to produce something so... janky to make the dive.

How you feel about this situation is how you feel. You can be horrified at the potential loss of life, you can jump into your Eat the Rich bag, or you can legitimately not care but find the memes funny.

Here's how I feel about it:

  • I applaud OceanGate for trying to innovate. It takes courage to do something others believe cannot be done. There are only 5 other vehicles in the world that could go that deep in the ocean. They also should've taken more safety precautions before inviting others along.
  • I think it's cool the passengers wanted a once-in-a-lifetime experience by trying to see the Titanic wreck up close. More people have been to space than those who have traveled to that depth in the ocean. I love adventure and I think that's what makes us human.
  • I hate how people feel like the 5 people onboard "deserve" to die or that the world is better off if they die because two of them are rich. Having wealth doesn't make you evil, it's what you do with it. Also, there are people with far less wealth that are far worse, but that's a discussion for another day.
  • I, personally, would never have signed up for this trip or wanted anyone I know to do it. Once I saw that it was essentially controlled by a PlayStation controller, I would've opted out. All adventure ain't good adventure. Though taking a trip to space though might be in my future.
  • Income inequality is one of the most important things we need to address around the world. The rich have been getting richer for a long time. There has to be a peaceful transfer of a portion of wealth from the top to the lower classes soon or we'll be looking at another revolution globally in the next decade or so.
  • The internet was built for this exact moment. Some of the jokes are just objectively funny and I, for one, use laughter to cope with terrible circumstances. You can hold both thoughts at the same time – you don't want to see people lose their life and there are people that are insanely creative in creating humor from anything.

Anyway, this is the most I've written about something in a while so I'll stop here.

Happy 3 years to this community - it's brought so much joy and clarity to my life to write freely via this newsletter and learn from you all.

I can't wait for our future adventures (but not in a submersible). 🧮