I think it’s hard to just handwave and say “meme bad”. These are some of the people I’ve come across with it:

First the easy one, edgelords online want to rile people up. I personally don’t care, engaging them at all is just encouraging them. There are worse things to make memes about IMO, this is not one of them to get riled up over.

Second, people who genuinely don’t care about this and think it’s ridiculous the media covered it so much. I’m half in this boat, there are way more newsworthy things to cover than 5 people drowning in a custom made sub on a mission that they literally signed away their life to do. However,

Third, people who see this as a tragedy. The other half of me is here, at least one of the people genuinely wanted to see the Titanic. Which, maybe it’s hard for us to understand the price tag, but if you had a dream of seeing it since you were a child, wanted nothing more than to see it, and were offered it, would you? And if not, if someone offered you a trip to see what you wanted to more than anything else in the world, would you want to? Go step on the moon? It’s like if someone offered you the ability to literally go to a fictional place, then that 250k doesn’t seem so much, if that was your once in a lifetime must do once and exactly once, if you saved up for 20 years. Those are the people I mourn.

Fourth, and I think this is a small group, people who are legit sad but treat humor as a coping mechanism. I think a lot of people forget about them, they aren’t trying to make situations like this into something controversial, they just cope differently, and that’s okay.