It doesn't celebrate people dying, it celebrates people for dying, with an award. Many, many lives have been saved through their noble sacrifices and effective self-censorship.
This is entirely conspiratorial. Subscribers are subscribed to this not through some advertising campaign, but because they already believed those people deserved to die.
>"Subscribers are subscribed to this not through some advertising campaign"
Perhaps the subreddit grew entirely organically, but it does show up on r/Popular and r/All. It is entirely reasonable to think that a significant number of redditors saw it, wound up subscribing, and after being there for a while they have learned to dehumanize the people that get showcased there. Whereas before they were probably anti-anti-vaxxer but probably not giddy about seeing them suffer because of it.
You're attempting to insert agency to account for natural repercussions of how we live our lives and the nearly 750k deaths we've already seen. That's what is conspiratorial.
> It creates an atmosphere that reinforces the idea that these people "had it coming" so to speak.
People are just posting what they believe. They believe that death after spamming facebook about the so-called danger is come-uppance.
> after being there for a while they have learned to dehumanize the people that get showcased there
I'm sorry, but I face an almost impenetrably large barrier to the belief that your average American (judging based on Reddit demographics and content of the sub) has to go through a process of dehumanization. Most people get up, try to avoid eye contact with the massive homeless population, ignore news about our empire droning children, grab some lunch, try not to think about us having the largest prison population in the world, and then call it a day.
The single defining political moment of my, and many other Americans lives, has been 9/11. The bloodthirst in the aftermath is that only political consensus I've ever seen. How does one reconcile higher covid mortality rates than 9/11 with calls to reopen Fuddruckers regardless of the outcomes? It appears this subreddit is one of many answers.
Just like Darwin awards don't just mock the dead in general, they mock people dying doing crazy dangerous things that they should know will kill them.
I am once again reminded of my favorite Dril tweet "the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: 'theres actually zero difference between good & bad things. you imbecile. you fucking moron'".
Loudly proclaiming ignorance (usually ideologically driven) of modern medicine while actively endangering those around you and then facing the consequences of your actions is a totally different beast than making a decision about your body (or affirming something about your body) and societal pressure around that decision fueling depression and resulting in suicide.
HCA is much more similar to looking at posts made by people who drive drunk celebrating their inability to drive sober and then that person dying in a single person car accident.
Really gross take.
[1] https://twitter.com/dril/status/473265809079693312?lang=en