There’s nothing like a tragedy to bring out the best and worst of humanity. On one hand there’s lessons to be learned, acts of kindness or bravery, and societal progress that can be made; but on the other there’s fame to be earned, derision to be spouted, and money to get paid.

The recent implosion of Oceangate’s Titan submersible, resulting in the death of the five people aboard, and its aftermath is proving to be a perfect case study, with the whole gamut of actions and reactions on display. As the international maritime community scrambled to conjure up some kind of rescue mission, the speculation and hot-takes quickly piled up. When the worst news was confirmed, things really went into overdrive.

There were of course some comparisons made between the huge media reaction to the plight of five rich men (or, more accurately, four rich men and one child of rich parents) and the seeming apathy towards the plight of migrants who are dying on the seas in far greater numbers.  Also of note is the intense, and highly justified, scrutiny now being placed on the apparently cavalier attitude that was taken towards safety, with the recently-deceased CEO Stockton Rush frequently parroting silicon valley tech-bro mantras like ‘regulation prevents innovation’, and ‘move fast and break things’. In the same way that opponents of gun control get just a little bit quieter every time there’s a mass shooting, we may get a temporary suspension of libertarians glorifying the elegance of free market solutions. Probably not though.

Of course, as Skeptics, it’s only natural for us to turn our eyes towards the usual suspects whose heads bobble up to the surface when disaster strikes. Namely,  grifters, ‘psychics’, lazy journalists, and conspiracy theorists. Unsurprisingly, the pickings were plentiful, so here’s a quick tasting menu of bad taste.

Grifters

There’s money and notoriety to be had from rabble-rousing, particularly when it comes to the carefully orchestrated culture wars we’re currently being subjected to. Whenever there’s a relevant news craft in the waters, you can almost guarantee there’ll be a right-wing outrage barnacle clinging to the hull and trying to pin the blame on whatever the moral panic-du-jour happens to be.

In this case they failed to find a transgender angle to the tragedy, so had to go to the backup option of ‘wokeness’. Those accusations were largely based on Oceangate CEO Stockton Rush’s statements from a few years ago saying he wouldn’t hire ‘50 year-old white men’ who knew how to command submarines and would rather train others.

Instead of identifying this as a somewhat transparent attempt to save money and employ people who are less likely to be in the position to be able to say no (and perhaps less likely to have the experience and knowledge to identify showstopping safety issues), this has been portrayed as a misguided attempt at diversity and equality employment policy. Unsurprisingly, some of the culprits are already well known lubricators of the outrage machine, including successor to Tucker Carlson’s throne of misinformation at Fox News Jesse Waters, and Charlie Kirk, the public face of the highly-funded right-wing American think-tank Turning Point USA.

Psychics

Tireless skeptical crusader Susan Gerbic first drew my attention to psychics’ attempts to gain traction from the Titan tragedy with a TikTok video from ‘psychic medium’ Gemma Lonsdale, which is now being touted as a prediction of the disaster. In a video on the subject, Susan clearly calls out the obvious flaws in the prediction: it is incredibly vague, and clearly mentions a ship (a cruise ship to be precise) rather than a submersible. Susan also highlights how ghoulish it is to claim to channel the deceased actor from the Titanic movie, Bill Paxton. If that wasn’t bad enough, Gemma is now claiming to be connecting with recently deceased Oceangate CEO Stockton Rush.

Of course, Gemma isn’t the only one claiming supernatural powers have given her insight. We also get Kamela Hurley claiming she knew of the fate of the Titan well before it had been confirmed, and even a return for Jessica Adams, who was last mentioned in The Skeptic by me back in 2021, in a piece about people who (falsely) claimed to have predicted the COVID-19 pandemic. A quick Google will find you many more jumping on the submersible bandwagon, but I’d recommend you don’t.

Lazy journalists

The thought experiment of the Infinite Monkey Theory is likely at some point in the not too distant future to be renamed to the ‘Simpsons Writing Room’. Paleontologists don’t fully agree on exactly when The Simpsons started, but there’s general agreement that in the post-apocalyptic wasteland of the earth we’ll be left with cockroaches and Homer in an endless search for surviving donuts.

The somewhat laboured point here is that we’re well past the point where you can find a Simpsons plotline which will intersect with pretty much anything happening in the real world.

This has of course already been covered for The Skeptic by Mike Hall, but it appears that some of the writers for the Daily Record haven’t read it yet, as we get another slightly tasteless and entirely vapid article claiming that the Simpsons ‘eerily predicted’ the Titan tragedy. Credit where credit’s due though, in terms of animated comedic longevity, Family Guy is getting there too, so it’s getting in on the action with a tenuous story as well.

Conspiracy theorists

Unusually, we haven’t heard anything from speculator-in-chief Alex Jones about the Titan tragedy. Presumably he’s somewhat reticent to cry foul and talk about crisis actors these days, so it’s not all bad news. Also unusually, we didn’t get David Icke playing the badly concealed antisemitic card. Instead, we got a much more overt accusation from Stew Peters, where he ties in a long-running conspiracy theory about The Titanic and the Federal Reserve with a fresh new one about the Rothschilds funding the Oceangate company.

The final sprinkling of conspiratorial nonsense comes from the GOP in America, with Senator Marsha Blackburn making a spectacular red-thread connection on her pinboard between a Coast Guard announcement and a testimony to congress about now-permanent fixture on the conspiracy theory bingo card Hunter Biden.

Closer to home

Unfortunately, it’s not just those ‘usual suspects’ who are blotting their copybook. There are some areas in social media tangentially related to the wider Skeptics community where we’re seeing some disappointing ‘Darwin Award’ type nastiness in social media comments, and many who think that the phrase ‘eat the rich’ is a literal culinary suggestion rather than a metaphor.

At a time when those who should know better could be promoting rational thinking and scientific rigour, with a focus on human wellbeing, they’re busy sharing f*ck around and find out memes for cheap laughs.

We could all do better. We should. Hopefully this time we’ll learn, but probably not.