Pragmatically speaking, this is of little consequence to most people, there are greater human tragedies going on, there are more catastrophic engineering failures happening, more egregious negligence,.. something about the unknown element of it.
Most tragedies the people are dead, outcome is known.
These situations usually have these things in common:
1. Very unusual situation
2. Race against the clock
3. Remote location
4. Extreme measures needed for rescue that may have never been done
5. May still die even if found
In this particular story: Those guys are pioneers, they are doing something almost nobody has done before, like going deep down 4 kilometres under the surface of the ocean.
This takes guts. And people admire those that have the guts. It is primal instinct, as the people that take risks and survive usually makes the tribe or society improve.
Things that are routine today like planes flying without crashing down or reusable rockets or going to the moon were at some time extremely risky.
They are rich tourists going down to look at a famous shipwreck, the same as hundreds of actual professionals have done. Much like the rich tourists who are mostly carried up Everest this does not take guts or ability, it takes a fat wallet and nothing more. Actually, it probably takes more ego than intelligence if you get into the craft they took down now that we have learned more about its potential safety flaws.
The nature of the event is why we are paying attention. The people trapped and how it happened is icing on the cake, but we would all still be watching if it was the Alvin submersible and some university researchers inside. To be honest we would probably care more if it was actual professionals who were at risk doing work to expand human knowledge instead of a tourist day-trip; I certainly would actually care about the outcome in that case, while I can't be bothered to care one way or the other if this particular group of tourists lives or dies.
Not quite fair to call him a tourist.
You can be both rich and the foremost world expert on the Titanic at the same time.
Plus, being unable to call for help is not something we are used to. To me, just BEING somewhere where I could not contact anyone and nobody could get to me in an emergency sounds terrifying even if nothing was actively happening.
Plus, to laymen it seems like the tech to prevent it should be absolutely trivial in the age of satellites. If I was lost somewhere all because I didn't have a $200 beacon device I would be horrified, and these people paid $250k. I'd expect multiple redundant forms of communication, immediately surfacing with a refund if there was any sign of trouble, etc.
For me, it's a lot of things. A metaphor for the mating habits of spiders. A reminder to be thankful for what I have. Just something grisly to contemplate.
If it were me or you, we'd be sleeping with the fishes without mention.
If that cave was just full of random divers, we'd probably not heard of that one either.
It was a lot of people (more than 30), and IMO wasn't covered as heavily as say, the Thai cave or this may be.
There is definitely a disaster angle news latch onto, but it's pretty rare for a group of adults this small. There are small plane crashes with more fatalities multiple times a year...
And it can't be the 'missing people' angle, there are like 400k kids every year reported missing with less than milk carton coverage...
Brown noise?