The complete lack of empathy people have for cavers and especially cave divers should not be seen as acceptable.
God damnit, every video that has literally to do with caving, the comments are a fucking echo chamber of people who seem insistent that you die the moment you step into a cave, right down to the prerequisite “my favorite thing about caving is that it is 100% optional” comment every single time, pretty much verbatim.
Anyone dies in any other freak accident and someone acts all smug and condescending about it, they’d be seen as an asshole, yet stick them in a cave and that’s just the prevailing narrative? What sense does that make? Yes, caves can be relatively dangerous, but if you use your thinking brain it’s pretty obvious to realize you only hear about the ones that go wrong.
And going back to that prerequisite comment again, is it really? Think about it, there’s so many weird little ecosystems found isolated in caves, and given how we found GLP-1s by swabbing lizard throats in the desert, we can only guess what breakthroughs could be found in studying these weird little ecosystems. Plus, if a mine collapses, who would be most qualified to rescue those trapped inside?
In either case, those involved would probably be pretty fucking thankful that this community exists, but we shouldn’t need to think of practical examples to have some basic sense of compassion. And like, yeah, it’s the internet, but even then I genuinely cannot think of another group that it’s as socially acceptable to be this callous towards.
Edit: TLDR is that acting smug and condescending when someone dies is bad. That’s it, that’s my point.
Edit 2: Paragraph 3 should not be seen as representative of the average caving trip or as pertaining to the rest of the post, and only serves as a debunk to the one ad nauseam comment.