Why do people want to see a concert in person, or a famous building, or a piece of art? You can see the Mona Lisa anywhere in the world on your computer screen, why would you want to go to see the actual picture itself? There are better videos of a Beyonce concert on YouTube than you’ll get from a seat in the audience. A football game on ESPN has better coverage than a stadium seat. Why do any of that?
Because the thing itself is special. Viewing it through the screen isn’t the same as being there, as having your breath taken away as the sheer enormity of the moment hits you.
The Titanic was only found in 1985. Imagine if we found the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 today intact at the bottom of the ocean. Also it wasn’t just some common vehicle like a Boeing 777, the titanic was the biggest luxury ship ever built at the time. So change Malaysian Airlines flight 370 with Air Force One for cultural parity.
It would be incredibly interesting for someone of our generation to visit it. But a young person in 2060 would just ask why anyone would find an old airplane wreck of any interest.
Also, it speaks to the imagination. It’s a brilliant tale of hubris; the ship touted to be unsinkable brought down by an iceberg.
I have a side-question: do they actually see the Titanic directly, when they go down there? It seemed from the pictures that there was only a computer screen in that submersible, and no window. Is it all about seeing it on the screen and feeling the moves of the submersible synchronized to it? That experience feels easily replicable from the surface…
I don’t understand why one would think there is no window. I’ve read a couple of comments like that. The thing is called “cyclops”, articles discuss the large porthole dome window, and it’s fairly visible in photos.
At the time I had only seen pictures from an angle where the window couldn’t be seen, so yeah it didn’t make sense to me at the time. I also had not read anywhere about the Cyclops name before just now, or read articles about the vessel itself. I’m not sure what there is to be puzzled about, we’re similarly not all similarly caught up, we just haven’t all read the same articles.
I get it. If I had stupid amounts of money and someone was like, “hey wanna go see the Titanic?” I’d be like, “nah, I saw it in theaters and it was too long. Oh wait you mean the actual Titanic?! Fuck yeah!”
