Hacker News Reader

Comment by ameminator | Hacker News Reader

It's surprising to me that this article, which was mostly about the life of a man on an oil rig, could inspire such discussion about divorce.

Obviously, divorce touches on a very fundamental part of many people's lives (especially, it seems, for men) - and we so rarely discuss it. It's amazing to me that there are so few places to talk about this, that the comments section on a short character piece (which in all honesty, barely discusses the problems in a divorce and did not present a single statistic) seems one of the few places where people do share. Maybe this is something to think about for the people untouched by divorce, and who can avoid its pitfalls before the "bullet hits the bone", unlike the rest of us.

View on HN

> It's surprising to me that this article, which was mostly about the life of a man on an oil rig, could inspire such discussion about divorce.

It's only surprising if you assume people read the story, instead of simply reacting to the headline. It's against the rules to say, but I'd bet the big majority of commenters never opened the link above.

The author of the article (or the editor) also must have thought that it was a key aspect of the article given that it was chosen to be the title.

And there wasn't a great deal else in the article (some discussion of oil rigs, including Piper Alpha, but not much specifics). We never got to find out what the stories written by the person being interviewed were. I actually found it a bit odd, like it was an introduction to a longer article that got cut off just as the main part was starting. In the end, the anecdote involving divorce was the only substantial thing in there. So even if you did read it, that's a fair part to react to.

Agreed, felt I was dropped into a big-oil exposé and then it made a left turn and stopped.

That was exactly the feeling I had. I actually thought it was a very interesting article about the life of an oil rig worker. Suddenly, and in a throwaway fashion, we get a rumor about some unfortunate man and that's all. If this was meant to be an article about divorce, why wasn't there more divorce-related material? If this was supposed to be about oil rigs, why not focus on that and change the title? Very jarring experience all-around.

You can see a note under the text noting that it's a book excerpt: https://bookshop.org/books/sea-state-a-memoir/9780063030831

Ah, thanks, I missed that

Our society doesn't have much incentive in speaking about things which are seen as negative like death or divorce.

Marrying and having kids is also a pillar of the economy / consumption. Having multiple kids and spending several hundreds of thousands of dollars (in the US) between school, healthcare, nanny, sports gears, clothes drives the economic machine.

If men knew the dire consequences of divorce and stopped marrying and having kids, the whole GDP would take a hit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com