If anything the oil platform is much much more appealing. You can go diving and see a bunch of sea life. That's part of why as a human I'm more excited by sea steading than space exploration.
We can do both. We should do both, as both will provide technology for creating and maintaining artificial, closed environments for long-term habitation.
(Though in all honesty, I want to see both happen because I loved both Star Trek and SeaQuest DSV as a kid.)
But yeah, it's not for everyone. Imo, it would be pretty exciting to continuously enlarge some sort of habitat somewhere.
In case there's no way to return to Earth, would definitely need a steady supply of drugs of all kinds and good doctors, otherwise suicides would become the number one cause of death soon enough.
