#watching my fyp and my dash and my timeline and all that other bullshit do *exactly* what those in power want us to do

[henrysglock]

Wonderful! A group of rich people died! Let’s dance on graves; I’ll get my good shoes.

But first, tell me:

Did the accident redistribute their wealth to the masses?

Did those deaths take out a harmful corporation in a way that makes life markedly better for those it was harming?

Did it enact any kind of helpful policy, regulatory, or socioeconomic change?

Or:

Are they just going to replace that CEO?

Is that wealth just going to get passed to their next of kin, remaining withheld from the masses who both need and deserve it?

Is this whole thing going to be forgotten by the next news cycle?

Is our collective glee just ‘bread and circuses’ type behavior that gloats over useless and frankly stupid deaths without any actual impact being made?

“People are justified in their lack of pro-social response to this event because of the socioeconomic state of the world.”

Okay, so show me where any of this changes the socioeconomic structure of the world. Show me where there’s anything worthy of “I hope they all die a slow, agonizing death for,” [checks notes], “hubris, a typical characteristic in most humans at some point in their lives.”

Was it all incredibly stupid? Absolutely. Did most of the dead have it coming? Absolutely. The tragedy in it is that there were no regulations in place to say “Uh…no?” when that voyage was in its planning stages.

And the worst part is? Nothing. Changes. So far, these are meaningless deaths.

Imagine we’re in ancient Rome. The CEO of Oceangate has convinced a group of his buddies (and the kid they dragged along) that “Hey, y’know what would be really fun? If we all dressed up as gladiators and paid to tussle with the lion. No, no, yeah there’s a chance you could die, but trust me, it’s gonna be so cool.” And then we all fucking ate it up, half of us cheering on the lion while the other half wept for those poor, poor rich people (yeah I know, I’m rolling my eyes too)…all under the watchful eye of our royal highnesses who put on the show: The Corporate System and The News Cycle, who both stood to profit whether the group of idiots lived or died.

Did the rich folks have it coming? Absolutely. Is it still horrific that it was allowed to happen at all? Yes.

This is why they don’t broadcast the other tragedies. It’s not good for them as a partnership. Those gut wrenching tragedies, the ones with true injustice? They don’t placate us, they upset us and turn us against those in power.

But dumb rich folks dying? On my TV? Oh goody, my fave show is on. Let’s see if it’s started another useless internet war, creating low-level enemies for us inside our screens so we forget about the real enemies for a while longer.

Not only that, but killing a CEO won’t change anything. That’s a replaceable employee, and the corporation as a unit cares about that person about as much as it cares about the rest of us (which is to say: not at all). That CEO’s wealth will just be given out to their relatives, and the money will stay contained within that family unit. The CEO will be forgotten in the next news cycle, when their death is no longer profitable for the news industry and the internet has moved onto its next useless spiral.

Guillotines in France worked because they dismantled the government, which also happened to consist of all the rich folks, to enact socioeconomic change. Thus: people celebrated the deaths of the rich, and rightfully so.

That’s not what this is. This isn’t “eating the rich”. This just the joy of entertainment, a good show.

Nothing ever changes. We stay entertained, temporarily placated by the deaths of a couple rich people.

Bread and fucking circuses.