Social Media Husks Squabbling About Dead Billionaires and a Wrecked Titanic Submersible

A meta-meta-meta-meta-meta-meta-meta-meta-meta-meta-meta-meta-analysis.

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Conspiracy theorists are having their moment, which doesn’t bode well for the rest of us, since all these “free thinkers” are beginning to think the same thing. This past week, news broke about a few billionaires dying in an immersive underwater experience caused by a “catastrophic implosion” on the Titanic submersible’s carbon-fiber hull, which notoriously fails under increased water pressure. The most batshit counternarrative to emerge from this story is the idea that these billionaires faked their own deaths because they received advanced notice of impending climate catastrophe and wanted to sneak to their survival bunker in New Zealand unimpeded by the public. The smug assuredness that is customarily attached to these types of responses may be more insufferable than the self-described “empaths” who post nine guillotine memes in a row but, in this instance, will write a syntactically errant screed about how we need to show respect for the Titanic passengers, carrying an implicit expectation of the usual stammering apologies in the comments.

Much of what I found so illuminating and interesting and often infuriating about the Titanic submersible story is the spate of meta-analysis it generated around the broader conversation about this event. All of this sounds kind of gloomy, and I guess actually is kind of gloomy in the way that a story about some rich assholes dying in the typical hubris/farce fashion is now held up as an ur-example of how the internet has stolen our souls and transformed us all into demons. The boilerplate counterargument was a specious analysis of wealth inequality, which turned into a passionate defense for the proletariat enjoying a cathartic chuckle at the expense of the vampire albatross community who boarded this doomed submersible.

There is really nothing meaningful to say about the Titanic submersible other than to crack a few more morbid jokes before the signature Time Dilation Experience of being online will make this story feel so long ago by next Wednesday. We are all feeding from the same algorithm sluice pump, internet passengers all trapped on the deck of the ship playing “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” We can no longer conceive of ourselves as subjects of history, we are only acted upon, so all that is left is a fizzy meta-conversation about how should we react to a shattered submersible. There is no comment to be made after millions of chittering goblins have entertained themselves with the fantasy notion that posting our way through current events will create some sort of trigger chain reaction of conscious-raising within the population that will tip the balances of power. There are just jokes and the question of whether it is appropriate to laugh at the expense of some dead billionaires.

The sort of autopilot, algorithmic response to the Titanic submersible is emblematic of the discourse cycle at this stage of social media decay. The exhaustive and exhausting debates feature the typically astringent arguments about proper etiquette and such, but the question of action is always absent. The conception of action has been totally obliterated.

It seems like there is a significant dearth of empathy for people who act and live on their terms, which could be us arriving at the poisonous end-state of Western isolated individualism. That it becomes impossible to imagine anyone else having any meaning, that our life is the only life that matters, that our experience is the only experience that is valid. This barrier is difficult to penetrate, our limited capacity for empathy is extended almost exclusively to people we can recognize. There is a need for having a relatable cast in movies and TV shows because otherwise, there is no reason for the audience to care. The thwarted people chatting on social media collectively cannot empathize with someone who does anything, let alone touches grass. As a neutered mass, completely controlled drones and housebroken puppies, the only moral dilemma that ignites the public agora is how we should responsibly and respectfully react to someone else doing something, the ethic and etiquette of arranging our facial features when something happens around us.

This isn’t anyone’s fault; this is just where we are. We are not this, which is a meaningful distinction.

I’ve seen the “doomer” smear hurled at those who acknowledge and insist that we will not push any meaningful socio-political change forward through the forms of democracy via the current media landscape and its creeping enshittification. Humanity is not doomed, but this iteration of the self is not viable. It is a psychosis that will be corrected by nature. The people we interact with on social media are husks, and this ongoing culture war is oriented around fuming at these husks, identifying one point of contrast, and fixating on this point of contention. The culture war is, and always will be, a hopeless and sterile contest.

Social media is a mirror, winding us up with our own voice and kicking it back to us. We are just husks in these moments, even if we spend too many of our moments online. But we also spend other moments together and trying to survive, and this is what will change us. That transformation can happen instantaneously and dramatically enough that it can snap us from our understanding of ourselves and down a different path, a Katamari Damacy ball of spirit where we accumulate a new soul. Logging off is not the end of the world, but the closing of a discotheque. This is not the death of the human spirit, but a reconfiguration of the ego toward others. This is the beginning of humanity.

We will all have our confrontations with the true condition of our lives and will have to move forward from that. It is pointless to predict when this will happen or where it will go. The past can be examined for contours and some degree of eternal varieties to bring structure to the future, but ultimately, it will have to be lived with a full heart.

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