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This is just an impressive level of victim blaming. Swallowed by a whale? Shouldn't have been in the ocean. It's bound to happen.



I don't know why everything has to involve a "victim" and "victim-blaming."

Swim in an ocean, walk outside, or keep breathing: there's a specific set of risks associated with every type of activity.

Ocean risks include drowning, hypothermia, strong currents, ocean-wave injuries, jellyfish, coral scrapes, Portuguese man o' wars, sea urchins, stingrays, sharks, whales, red/green/brown tides, and lightning.


I can agree that victim blaming isnt useful either in response to a victim, or in hindsight

I also agree that there is a level of personal responsibility that can’t be abstracted away to just the perpetrators

And finally, sometimes people just get eaten


> Swallowed by a whale?

How would you phrase it? "Eaten by a whale?" Is that less victim blame-y?

> Shouldn't have been in the ocean.

You can swim in the ocean just don't go near where the whales are, it might just help with not becoming a victim of whales' constant eating habit and as a result alleviate the tendency to make greatly exaggerated sarcastic remarks.


It’s not the “swallowed” part. It’s the “bound to happen” part.

He didn’t even know the whale was around.


In the ocean, the whales stick within the designated Whale Zones, marked by vast rings of starfish holding hands (??). When you cross the starfish, as Packard must have, then you’re clearly in the Zone. At that point you have no one to blame but yourself when you get accidentally swallowed.


Naah, that is the old way/conception of confinement, in modern, eco-zoo-friendly, countries whales are allowed to roam freely in the ocean, it is the swimmers that must wear high visibility vests with a sign "I am not a snack!" written in whalish.



June apparently is the whale watching season in Cape Cod [0]. At least I hope from now on after this "freak accident" people pay a bit more attention and don't confuse things that can swallow them whole with harmless little pets they can cuddle and respect nature and the wild life for what they are. A whale in San Diego Seaworld injures several trainers [1]. A whale kills its trainer [2].

[0] https://candleberryinn.com/whale-watching-brewster-ma/

[1] https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-seaworld-san-diego...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_Brancheau#Death


I take personal offense. That's freak blaming!


Are you saying you'd get pleasure from being inside the mouth of a whale?


Just that Edward Bouverie Pusey was a Jonah-Denier Shamer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonah#Scientific_speculation

>In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, naturalists, interpreting the Jonah story as a historical account, became obsessed with trying to identify the exact species of the fish that swallowed Jonah. In the mid-nineteenth century, Edward Bouverie Pusey, professor of Hebrew at Oxford University, claimed that the Book of Jonah must have been authored by Jonah himself and argued that the fish story must be historically true, or else it would not have been included in the Bible. Pusey attempted to scientifically catalogue the fish, hoping to "shame those who speak of the miracle of Jonah's preservation in the fish as a thing less credible than any of God's other miraculous doings".




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