A fishing boat crowded with migrants traveling from Libya to Italy sank in Greek waters last week. While hundreds are still missing and feared dead, it has garnered far less attention and resources than the Titan rescue efforts for five people.
There’s a lot of complaining about, “why is news covering these billionaires, there’s nothing tragic about their circumstance” versus “you’d have to be heartless not to sympathize with such a horrifying fate”
But the real villain here is our morbid curiosity. It has nothing to do with sympathy nor classism. Dozens drowning by relatively conventional means? Eh people die every day, whatever. A family dying in a particularly bizarre and agonizing manner? Oooh let’s think about and discuss in detail what their final moments may be like! We can dress it up in hate or dress it up in kindness, but the real reason anybody is interested is that it’s just a weird way to die.
The world is a stage and we love a good horror story.
There’s a lot of complaining about, “why is news covering these billionaires, there’s nothing tragic about their circumstance” versus “you’d have to be heartless not to sympathize with such a horrifying fate”
But the real villain here is our morbid curiosity. It has nothing to do with sympathy nor classism. Dozens drowning by relatively conventional means? Eh people die every day, whatever. A family dying in a particularly bizarre and agonizing manner? Oooh let’s think about and discuss in detail what their final moments may be like! We can dress it up in hate or dress it up in kindness, but the real reason anybody is interested is that it’s just a weird way to die.
The world is a stage and we love a good horror story.