Comments onlookers made were disturbing: "He is stupid. He wants to die," "Go on, go back home," and "Let him die at this point," were possibly the least offensive.
One report said they were quiet when the man's lifeless body was dragged from the water.
Could they have realised that some things, like death and suffering, exist in the real world?
No wonder it seemed best to the drowned man not to live in a world where people are capable of such casual cruelty.
The report reminded me of the teenagers here who think it's amusing to organise fights and film them on their smartphones or encourage girls to have degrading images taken of them which are then broadcast for the lols.
Kids kill themselves over such things, but it doesn't stop them happening.
Not so long ago the same mindset had tortured bears "dancing" for public amusement, bare knuckle boxing with no rules, and organised dog fights for the pleasure of seeing goaded animals tear each other apart.
We'd put such savage pastimes behind us in the civilised world until it became possible to organise them again online and spread the enjoyment with other sadists, just as paedophiles share images of torturing children.
It's quick and easy. So easy that we risk forgetting the ties that bind us into a world fit to live in: kindness, consideration, empathy, tolerance, trust.
Somehow that leads, as all roads now do, to Donald Trump, who is now able to make people's lives miserable by airily banning them, even after extreme vetting, from entering the USA.
While Americans regularly shoot each other, sometimes in mass events, they don't appreciate people from other countries doing it on their turf.
Meanwhile Mexicans will need to pole vault over Trump's "beautiful" wall, when they've paid him to build it to keep them out.
Well, such is his fantasy.
And Americans will pick up the low-paid, degrading work that desperate Mexicans did and there'll be a round of applause all over the country.
What will he do next? And what will we do next?
I hope that if we visit the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin we won't take grinning selfies in front of graphic exhibits of dead bodies from concentration camps.
A German-based satirist set up a website shaming such selfie-takers, who have apologised for their insensitivity.
Which reminds me of Trump filmed at a recent prayer meeting grinning and giving the thumbs-up to onlookers while the boring bit dragged on without him. Like minds.
But we've got nothing to boast about in our endless sale of this country to the grossly rich nationals of other countries in their hunt for bolt holes.
Peter Thiel, a Trump supporter, has become a citizen here on the basis, it seems, that he's a billionaire.
He has given money to the Canterbury earthquake fund, and his company has invested in Xero, but basically his money helped him buy a slice of land by Lake Wanaka that few New Zealanders could afford, and to which the vulgar herd, us, will naturally be denied access.
I picture a wall here. A beautiful wall.
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg chose Hawaii as his bolt hole, and recently ran foul of native Hawaiians for wanting to force an auction to enable him to buy out their small holdings within his estate there.
In a story familiar to us, Hawaiians have been alienated from their land, so what small holdings remain are important to them.
When he learned more about their position, Zuckerberg dropped his lawsuits, admitting he'd made a mistake.
Hopefully he's set a good example to others who want to skulk in the south Pacific while Trump stuffs up the Northern Hemisphere where - he knows this for a fact - climate change is not happening and Isis can be destroyed by lunchtime.
