Oceangategate

“Who wants to die on vacation?” asks Molly Osberg in a Curbed roundup of the trend of rich people doing dumb stuff to amuse themselves, but it’s better than dying at work, as Oceangate now confirm its CEO Stockton Rush did on Sunday morning. It’s not the outcome we hoped for, but it’s also not the worst possible outcome. To return to a useful Quora post I linked earlier this week:

“Hull collapse at 35 atmospheres” might be the most instantaneous death available to a human being, so at least they didn’t suffer. Meanwhile NORAD Distant Early Warning radar reports a swarm of incoming wrongful death lawsuits large enough to wipe the entire concept of private deep-sea exploration out of existence.

Also dying at work this week is the Wall Street Journal editorial board, who first published Samuel Alito’s hapless flailing at ProPublica and then today tried to clean up the mess he made and subsequently the mess they made. In the New York Times Katie Robertson covered the contretemps with a restrained but perceptible glee:

The crowd is both hooting and, indeed, hollering. WSJ Editorial hasn’t done anything this disgraceful since June 2020, when they brought in Mike Pence to assure us “There Isn’t a Coronavirus ‘Second Wave’.”

Meanwhile, every big Tabs news event includes some minor side character who’s determined to take advantage of the free-floating attention surplus and make a fool of themself online. Leaving his own titanic debris field on the `net this time is Brian Szasz, the “Submarine Stepson,” and, regrettably, Intern Mariam is here with a full Today in Tabs report:

Everybody shut up! The submarine stepson vibing at Blink-182 shows deleted his Twitter after using the n-word in a feud with Cardi B. Is he a Milkshake Duck or a Bean Dad, or something altogether new? If you understood the previous sentences, are either of us going to be ok, you think?  

37-year-old Brian Szasz achieved what may be a world-record narrative arc speedrun in the Twitter Main Character universe. Minutes after announcing that his stepfather, British billionaire Hamish Harding, was one of the five tourists aboard the missing Titanic submersible, Szasz declared he was at the Blink-182 concert in San Diego. “It might be distasteful being here but my family would want me to be at the Blink-182 show as it’s my favorite band and music helps me in difficult times,” he wrote on Facebook alongside a photo of himself outside the venue. His mom made him delete the post. 

Things began to go off the rails when he tweeted a plea for prayers then immediately asked an OnlyFans model to sit on his face. Being horny on main while your stepfather sinks to his watery grave is not criminal, but going to jail for stalking and harassing female DJs and threatening to shoot up an EDM festival is. Receipts also rapidly exposed an established pattern of unsavory sex pest behavior. Then Cardi B roasted him, he called a Black man the n-word, and it’s been all downhill since. Before he went dark I noticed he was “liking” photos from the 2021 EDM show he promised to “massacre.” Seems like a cool guy!

Early Thursday morning Submarine Stepson took to Instagram Stories to once again slam “complete bitch” Cardi and defend his decision to see Blink. “Believe it or not, I have about $100 to my name,” Szasz said. “I can’t go out to the ocean. I have a legal situation keeping me here as well. I can’t get on a flight. I don’t have a passport.”

Only one question remains: is submarine stepson a billionaire now? Or will he get rizzed up by an OnlyFans model and lose his inheritance?

—Mariam Sharia sincerely regrets helping you know about any of this.

Today In The B Plot: In other rich guy news, waxy humanoid Mark Zuckerberg and multiply-divorced Nazi Elon Musk are planning a physical fight over their competing online platforms. This impending shitshow has already pulled in Andrew Tate, Jake Paul, and Joe Rogan, and we’re only seconds away from hitting the Jordan Peterson Horizon. I hope they hold it at the bottom of the ocean, or the surface of the sun. John Herrman wrote about the potential upcoming Nazi Twitter vs. Facebook Twitter battle.

BookForum is coming back, under the auspices of Bhaskar Sunkara and The Nation. In New York Magazine’s “Dinner Party” newsletter, Tirhakah Love wrote about Pharrell Williams‘s Louis Vuitton show and “The Death of Cool.”

Music Intern Sam flagged this related thread by Russ Bengtson:

And I would love to close out this Gentleman’s Friday with some good news, but all I have left is Christopher Cox reporting in the New York Times that apparently all of California’s dams have been built two or three times too small for the kind of flooding predicted by historical records and ocean sediment research.

Happy… weekend? 😬

Today’s Song: Chappell Roan, “Red Wine Supernova (Magician's Cut)”

If you’re reading this between 1 and 3 pm Pacific time on Jun 22, Music Intern Sam is broadcasting live on kchungradio.org’s “live from the geffen contemporary moca” stream RIGHT NOW. Let’s see if I can get this sent before he’s finished. Thanks Intern Mariam, and tomorrow Senior Correspondent Allegra Rosenberg returns for subscribers, probably! Here’s hoping for fewer deaths in next week’s tabs.