this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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Late Stage Capitalism
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What I don’t get it why are people obsessed with the Titanic, plenty of shipwrecks but why is the Titantic the big one? Is it because it’s so far down or is it because of the ship itself?
@Senseibu @SpaceDogs It's one of the more well known and relatively large and modern era wrecks. Probably also implications of valuables still trapped inside. It was a top of the line ocean liner and there's the added irony that it was specifically advertised as being unsinkable.
Yeah the unsinkable thing is a big part of the mythos. The wreck of the Titanic stands as a testament to humanity's hubris; its creators were so arrogantly confident in the technology they were using that they cut back on basic safety features and precautions. It's also what makes the Titan stand as a testament to humanity's ability to repeat the mistakes of the past even when the consequences of the past are staring you in the face.
Or because the people inside are rich
Yeah I guess it’s a rich persons folly to visit it, tons of titanic enthusiasts who can’t pay can’t visit it though, don’t get it but whatever.
One thing I do think about it maybe the obsession stems from that the wreck location was only discovered in the 1980s, prior to that it was mostly a mystery.
It’s just a ship that sank 112 years ago and didn’t have enough lifeboats, yeah people died but at this point no one on this earth had a direct connection to them.
Not that many lessons were learnt by it either, considering 737max happened.
Wait what does 737max have to do with the Titanic
Inadequate planning and design for customers safety in both cases
Probably because of the movie
As someone who has a slightly unhealthy obsession with shipwrecks and ships in general, it's mostly because compared to most ship disasters, the Titanic has much more information publically available and has a greater presence in modern culture, resulting in more books movies and other things being made on it than compared to something like literally any lake freighter accident which is much more horrific and much more unsurvivable than the Titanic. The general public however does have more familiarity to the Titanic because of the type of people who went down on it. The Titanic claimed the lives of people such as John Jacob Astor who was the 12th rich person in the world when he died, if I recall correctly, while the crew of the Edmund Fitzgerald , for instance were all working class sailors from the Great Lakes.
Great explanation, thank you for this information!