Here's why people are being so mean about the Titan going down

They had it coming. They deserved it. Who's stupid enough to pay $250,000 for a ride in a tin can operated by a video game controller? Why should we be footing the bill for the rescue?

These sentiments flooded social media as countless people sounded off — and even said much, much worse — about the missing Titan submersible even before its fate and that of the five people trapped inside was known. And they didn't stop even after news emerged that the vessel had imploded and the victims' families began grieving.

When a news story has all the hallmarks of a Hollywood thriller — billionaire characters, a mysterious adventure gone wrong a massive search as the clock ticks down to zero oxygen — it is difficult to look away. Some say the tidal wave of cynical sentiment and bad jokes in social media that accompanied the coverage, and still persists, is schadenfreude, or pleasure people get by celebrating others' misfortune. Other experts say it's driven by wealth inequality, or that the response ultimately reflects a lack of civil discourse.

"Once you see a few of these memes popping up, making fun of the situation and they get attention, it becomes easier to then express the same feelings," said Jessica Gall Myrick, a professor of communication at Pennsylvania State University and expert in media and emotions.

She documented the same type of response when former U.S. president Donald Trump revealed he had COVID in 2020. Online dictionary searches for schadenfreude jumped more than 30,000 per cent, Myrick said.

"We've seen it before, but this was really more intense," she said.

Victims' wealth driving response

At the core of the story are its wealthy characters: A chemical company executive and his son; a businessman who held several world records; a former French naval officer; and the submersible company's CEO. The guests paid $250,000 US each for the experience.

They were essentially "very, very rich people" pushing the limits of what's possible, and perhaps what's ethical to do, said Yotam Ophir, head of the Media Effects, Misinformation and Extremism (MEME) lab at the University of Buffalo. It's easy for people to imagine all that money could have been used for a more noble purpose, he said.

But he cautioned against taking the social media response to the Titan as a true reflection of people's feelings.

"We are all performing online, right? The things that we post on Facebook, on Twitter or Instagram, even between those platforms, we often have kind of different personalities that we project," he said.

"Just the fact that somebody clicked on share or retweeted a joke about the incident, I wouldn't infer from it that they are really truly happy about somebody else's tragedy.

"I think they find that there's the kind of opportunity to maybe perform their social identity, and part of their social identity is often resisting, again, the deep inequalities in wealth."

WATCH | Who should pay the cost of finding the Titan?

Who should pay rising cost of finding the Titan submersible?

1 year ago

Duration 1:59

The price tag to find the doomed OceanGate Titan submersible keeps growing as efforts now shift to recovering wreckage. Ships, planes and other resources poured in from multiple countries including Canada, the U.S, Britain and France before the rescuers announced all five people on board had died in a catastrophic hull failure on their way to the Titanic site.

People's fascination with the wealthy is fuelled by both curiosity and envy. And when rich people find themselves in trouble, it makes the rest of us feel better, Pamela Rutledge, director of the California-based Media Psychology Research Center, wrote in a piece about social media and the submersible for Psychology Today.

"At least in the States, we love heroes and we love rich people, and we'd love to hear all about it, but we really like to pull them down because that makes us feel better, because then we find out they're really not special," she said in an interview.

"And so it's a way of equalizing or normalizing."

Amid all the online commentary, some good may have come from people focusing on the size of the passengers' bank accounts, Myrick said. Many people who posted to social media pointed out the glaring disparity between the Titan passengers, who opted in for adventure, and the hundreds of migrants who drowned off the coast of Greece just days before, many of whom had little choice but to get on that ship.

While seeing people make fun of the situation unfolding off the coast of Newfoundland, people may have learned something about the tragedy in the Mediterranean, which they may not otherwise have heard about, Myrick said.

"Sometimes you have to take the good with the bad in social media," she said.

Lack of accountability, civility in social media

Rutledge, who holds a doctorate in psychology with a specialization in media technology. pointed out anyone can make a point in social media without accountability. Some platforms reward the most outlandish theories and viewpoints with greater exposure.

"The internet is incentivized to be outrageous or funny," Rutledge said. "If you get enough likes, it monetizes, and so it becomes entirely disconnected from whatever the event was and entirely about something else."

It's a trend she sees reflected in other aspects of contemporary culture, even offline. Rutledge pointed out a lack of civility also affects the offices of political leaders. 

Indeed, just weeks ago, outgoing MP and former Conservative leader Erin O'Toole lamented the effect social media has had on the House of Commons, warning about the dangers of "performance politics" to generate clips.

"We are becoming elected officials who judge our self worth by how many likes we get on social media, but not how many lives we change in the real world," he said at the time. "We're becoming followers of our followers when we should be leaders."

But Rutledge predicts the online commentary won't stop anytime soon. It's far too easy to give in to impulse.

"You need some good examples at the top," she said. "Unfortunately, at the top you don't win by being a good example."