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Missing planes


tonyh29

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they don't know what they are doing

Other than the families and so on of the passenger list, why are people so exercised?

It's a couple of hundred people. How many died in Syria, for example, over the last week?

 

 

I would say it's because it could happen to us. 

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they don't know what they are doing

Other than the families and so on of the passenger list, why are people so exercised?

It's a couple of hundred people. How many died in Syria, for example, over the last week?

Two reasons I guess.

  1. The unknown element are a draw to those who love a conspiracy theory.
  2. It could happen to any of us who fly, what is happening in places like Syria is more removed from peoples lived here and sadly more of an every day occurrence.
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they don't know what they are doing

Other than the families and so on of the passenger list, why are people so exercised?

It's a couple of hundred people. How many died in Syria, for example, over the last week?

Two reasons I guess.

1. The unknown element are a draw to those who love a conspiracy theory.

2. It could happen to any of us who fly, what is happening in places like Syria is more removed from peoples lived here and sadly more of an every day occurrence.

 

 

It is because our brains process unusual or new information in a different way to information we receive everyday which receives little attention and is pretty automatic.

 

So we take a specific interest in these unusual cases which is reinforced by the media attention they receive.

 

Whereas as stories of people dying in a conflict in a far flung land are unfortunatley so common we process them automatically without giving it any further thought.

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I was going to say we've become climatized to coverage of conflicts in the Middle East but something like a Plane going missing is bound to catch peoples' imagination. The Shock of the New.

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they don't know what they are doing

Other than the families and so on of the passenger list, why are people so exercised?

It's a couple of hundred people. How many died in Syria, for example, over the last week?

 

 

I think there are a few reasons, unfortunately most of them come down to variations of the word ‘entertainment’.

It’s on the news because people are interested, people are interested because it’s on the news. For this week, it’s replaced ugly dogs in council flats biting children. Dogs haven’t stopped biting kids, we’re just not doing that story this week.

There is the change in people’s perception of just how monitored we are. It would appear that the americans know I texted my dad a happy jihad message back in 2009, hilariously getting a predictive text jihad instead of birthday. However, they tell us they can’t find a big plane full of people. Is that believable? It’s open to debate.

We then get the three mumbling rabbits in headlights the Malaysian authorities have put up for press conferences. They are doing their best to look like evasive amateur baddies in a low budget movie. But in reality, just guys doing a job that suddenly got catapulted into the world media spotlight without a script or a PR lesson.

Personally, I’d discount the ‘it could have happened to any of us’ theory of interest. So could every car crash everyday and so could Greece or Crimea or wherever but we don’t view them in that way. Most humans will presume immortality until proven wrong, or nobody would smoke or drive a poorly maintained car.

Novelty of story is the key driver, with an outside chance of this being really really interesting. People will be ‘disappointed’ if this does turn out to be a series of mechanical faults that lead to a plane crashing into the sea unobserved. How many would prefer tonight’s news to show grainy long distance shots of a 777 under canvas in Turkmenistan, or covered in green netting in a jungle somewhere?

Much more fun than the budget.

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Good point, however if it is mechanical failure - that raises some massive questions about the T7 and maybe more generally about modern aircraft.

The Air France 447 tragedy raised questions both about system malfunctions and pilot capability , this will be another damning layer on top of this.

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The debris looks like it is right at the end of the predicted flight path in the southern direction which would backup the theory that it was on autopilot and run out of fuel at max range

 

How come Australia never picked it up on radar though 

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I would say it's because it could happen to us.

We're more likely to get killed by a stampede of wildebeest caused by Elvis hoving in to view riding Shergar.
Are you concerned about that as well? I thought it was just me.
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I would say it's because it could happen to us.

We're more likely to get killed by a stampede of wildebeest caused by Elvis hoving in to view riding Shergar.
Are you concerned about that as well? I thought it was just me.

 

 

Almost.  It was Lady Di riding Lord Lucan though.

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I think it's just the mystery of it.

We know why things in Syria are happening. We know why all these other things are happening. But we have no idea why or where 370 is.

 

Yes, it's the mystery.  But it's a particular form of mystery.  It's not just that we don't know, it's the possibility of some complicated story behind it, on the lines of the plot of a thriller which would also interest people far more than simply people dying.  There's also the certainty that quite a few people know a lot more about this but are keeping the information to themselves, eg because they don't want others to know just what their radar and other detection equipment is capable of finding (or not capable of finding).  Then there's the unresolved dramatic tension of the families not knowing what has happened and whether their loved ones are alive or dead - gruelling for them, but a classic dramatic technique to pique interest.

 

There's also the international agenda, countries wanting to be seen to be actively helping (without giving away trade secrets), the Aussie PM making a statement in parliament (how inappropriate is that?).

 

Deaths in Syria, or in road crashes or wherever are a tragedy, but I don't think it's at all surprising that something like this attracts far more interest.

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I think it goes back to empathy.  People cannot relate to people in Syria - for the majority there is no emotional connection or well not to the same level.  Take 9/11 and the number of deaths and compare that to other instances of human tragedy i.e. Syria.  The response is completley different.  Hence why Save the Children did the video below to help people understand the suffering the children of places such as Syria are going through.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBQ-IoHfimQ

Edited by omariqy
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