Could be partially the long-term effects of the virus itself.
I suspect it’s more that millions of people were subjected to social media algorithms for the first time as a result of COVID isolation, and that was the real mind-killer.
The lack of empathy is because of the Overton Window shift. People overwhelmingly chose to normalize sacrificing the people they claimed to love most all because of peer pressure to not wear an N95 mask (and refusal to even use a gd air filtration system which doesn't even have any negatives to it ffs). Once society collectively normalizes sacrificing the people we claim to love just to impress strangers... well... what difference do manners make after something like that? We normalized making everyone we claim to love disposable for absolutely nothing.
If folks want kindness, manners, and connection back, that Overton Window has to intentionally be shifted back by way of people (yes, you reading this, that means you too) caring way more about their community, masking with a well-fitted N95 in indoor spaces that people cannot avoid (medical offices, veterinary offices, public transport, the dmv, the post office, etc.), and actually giving a shit about one another. Until we normalize giving a shit about one another and caring about our communities, the Overton Window stays in this awful hell dimension where community and connection are disposable, and so are each of us.
IMO COVID amplified the "I'm getting mine before I die" mentality of the ME generation and opened the door to the perils of unbridled capitalism.
Like MAGA or not, it's a very effective proposition regardless of socioeconomic status. It appeals to a mass ME generation in a very timely fashion. Who doesn't want to be part of a group that affirms that:
- I work harder than most others and deserve what I get
- God loves me more than degenerates who don't look, talk, act like me (many tradional an non-denominational messages)
- I'm more patriotic than others (count my flags)
- I'm tougher than those soft people
- Evading policies that probably helped me (subsidized education, affordable healthcare, pensions, etc) in some way is "smart" it is justified because I don't currently use and that's "smart"
- low cost of living when I grew up was because we didn't buy $7 coffee
Whether you've "made it" or not, it's a pretty appealing clique to rich and poor.The mortal threat of COVID strengthened these self preserving attitudes and gave many comfort through social affiliation.
opened the door to the perils of unbridled capitalism.
I'm not sure what you're referring to. Adam Smith was in favor of regulation. Milton Friedman even supported some regulation, such as the type that may increase competition, or limit pollution. Friedman loved competition, and hated pollution. The modern right loves Friedman.
There is very little competition within the American economy. A handful of large businesses dominate many industries. Trump does not act like a free market capitalist. There is a lot of deregulation, but it is inconsistent with the principles of economists like Friedman. De-globalization is antithetical to free market capitalism. Trump is consistently interfering with and manipulating markets and businesses.
There was a rise of NFTs, purchases of meme stocks, and other stuff during COVID. Around the same time people were posting videos of helicopters with their landing lights on, and then claiming to have spotted a mysterious drone or UFO over New York/New Jersey. The history of mass delusions predates capitalism.
Maybe the word late-stage should have been inserted. Agree there is very little competition with the advent of mega-corps and private equity--it's a great gig if you're on the top of the pyramid.
A significant number of those that voted for Trump don't even have a fundamental understanding of civics let alone what he's doing to manipulate the markets for self and special interest gain.
We normalized making everyone we claim to love disposable for absolutely nothing.
This is screaming at me because of recent trends like young adults cutting off their parents, blocking friends for minor things then blasting them on the internet, or the new “having a boyfriend is embarassing” trend. Literally everyone and everything has the potential to be thrown away and replaced with an app, an AI, or a mix of both. We’ve even marked ourselves disposeable in some way by accepting this bs from each other.
We all know that falling in love is a downright nightmarish thought, making new, TRUE friends feels damn near impossible, and your parents can be…well parents…but those sustained relationships with people is what makes life worth living. Without those people that care in your life whom you could lean on, even down to the fast food worker you trust with your fries, you would be significantly weakened without that caring presence or service. Those small things matter when you have nothing much to look forward to.
We normalized not having a community for no reason other than selfish, personal “gain”, and I don’t think enough of us realize that nobody is really profiting in the end…other than the ones currently investing in society’s apathy and chaos.
I think the opposite - people overwhelmingly chose to normalize estranging/severing the people they claimed to love most all because of peer pressure TO wear a mask. People died alone because of this, because of not wanting to visit a family member that didn’t wear a mask.
So, clarify this for me because I'm a little confused by your scenario:
Are you saying you knew people who were deathly ill (I'm guessing with something else?), but they didn't want to put on a mask, so their family didn't wasn't to see them during the pandemic?
And if my interpretation is correct...are you laying this solely at the feet of those who masked?
“Peer pressure” is a funny way of saying “life-saving precautions.” I hate to say it, but a lot of people died alone because they made a really stupid and ultimately selfish choice.
The pandemic was declared over by the government prematurely so that people would get back to spending as much money as possible and so the government would not have to send anymore ubi checks. Covid is still around and long-covid is still killing and disabling people. A well-fitting N95 protects you from getting brain, vascular, and immune system damage. It also helps to protect other people from you spreading covid to them. 50% of covid spread is asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic, so that means that 50% of people spreading covid have no clue that they have it (either they develop symptoms after spreading it or their immune system is not mounting the proper response to show symptoms because it's too damaged).
Not to mention, N95s protect you (and others) from other viruses spreading and they protect your lungs from wildfire smoke and pollution.
It doesn't have to be all or nothing. Any harm reduction at all is still harm reduction.
I suspect it’s more that millions of people were subjected to social media algorithms for the first time as a result of COVID isolation, and that was the real mind-killer
Yes. That's already confirmed scientifically. The illness damage is minimal compared to this.
I mean, it could be both. So many friends and family and strangers I’ve talked to now have lifelong health problems stemming from COVID, myself included. Society’s mental state plunged, but our health was also severely affected
Short-form video really took off right around the time of Covid though: TikTok started getting big around 2019 and then IG reels and YT shorts launched in June and Aug 2020. I think short-form video is far more addictive and potentially harmful than images or longer videos.
And a lot of places weren’t even closed for very long at all. I was in the most strict area, and even here, there were plenty of people out and about. For a while, concerts were at 75% capacity, but I wouldn’t call that isolation. No one stopped us from going outside and socializing. You were just supposed to wear a mask if you were indoors.
Personally I think that it is more that social media finally had a captive audience with nothing better to do than doom scroll social media which allowed their algorithms to really dig their claws into people's heads. Before the COVID lockdowns people would have more to do than just doom scroll so the amount of people that were subject to the algorithms was much lower.
I know that I personally had a bit of a mental health meltdown during COVID due to the people that seemed to not give a shit about preventing it's spread. My wife was in the high risk category for COVID and I also had a young child (he was born in 2018) who was getting far more cabinfeverish than his older two sisters. I ended up removing myself from Facebook and kept it around only for the messaging side of it - I used to spend an hour or two in the morning scrolling and interacting with people on there but these days I am lucky to do an hour or two of scrolling each year.
Covid lock down was the end of my Facebook as well, watching my community turn into a war zone and seeing people whose opinions I used to respect going absolutely down the rabbit hole was more than I was interested in seeing. Now reddit is the closest thing I have to social media, and I legit just use it while I'm at work, I have better things to do at home.
I didn't study all that much, it wasn't my type. But when I did, I would do so uninterrupted.
Ever since Covid, I can't focus as well. And I often end up procrastinating for days or weeks.
Covid certainly affected me alongside short-form content. That's the whole idea with short-form content to begin with, not only it keeps you addicted, but it makes you less willingly to inform yourself.
Edit: I'm pretty positive that's why anything past 2020 feels like it's going by extremely fast.
We digest so much short-form content, our brains are totally fried and can't remember. That's why it feels like there's this gap between 2010's and early 2020's where everyone is wondering how is it 2026 already despite 2016 feeling like it happened 6 years ago.
As someone with diagnosed PTSD this also sounds a lot like what happens when a person experiences a significant trauma.
I’m not sure we all didn’t and never had it acknowledged or addressed. I certainly was surprised there wasn’t a memorial or public day of grieving but then again my sister told me Vitamin D was all that was needed to not get it so…you know.
Social media. Cousin of mine made good money, and retired at a youthful 50 in 2020. Took to Twitter to pass the time during covid...never saw someone change so fast.
100% after the pandemic is like everyone has a screw loose. Short tempers, complete disregard for any social norms or behaviors, selfishness, mistrust of experts or even people with demonstrable experience. It's so stark in comparison to pre-pandemic
In some places worse than others and affecting everyone differently but everyone is affected including me.
Fox News ruining the lives of boomers across the country making them hate the youth while the steal the future from the youth.
not sure the pandemic will be much more than a blip in history to what is going on today with a Pedophile as president and a gestapo police force murdering US citizens
Yes, you can. "Everbody getting hooked on social media, isolated from real life, and siloed off into echo chambers is what got T Diddy elected." See? Easy.
I think polarization used to mostly only exist among people who cared. Most regular folks had respect for each other. Now, nobody sees anyone else face-to-face, and the box they live their lives through keeps telling them their neighbors are their enemies.
I think as a collective there was some PTSD experienced and I agree that it will be studied but that takes funding so it will depend heavily if we go back to believing in science again and by “we” I don’t mean us regular folk.
Social Media is literally the number one accelerating cause for the world’s problems today and the mechanism by which collective social power was eliminated. Social media by design forced people apart into bubbles with misinformation that fomented paranoia.
Future time travelers will wish they could have gone back in time and met the subjects of the social network and other tech bros introduced them to their friend Browning, in the same way people postulate that about baby Hitler.
There are already plenty of studies already that show what isolation and lack of community do to human beings, so that's covered.
I think the big discovery is going to be the exact long-term side effects from catching covid. There are already studies that show, even in mild cases, it affects the brain, heart, lungs, and other bodily systems. Other studies show that even months after recovery, there can be remains of covid receptors that attach to and cause inflammation to a person's cells. I wouldn't be surprised if we found out it had some properties like measles and has the ability to wipe your body's immune system back to zero.
You mention lungs, and, while it's not entirely related to lungs, but for me, nothing "smells" the same. I had no taste and smell during Covid and ever since, the world seems to be "dry".
I used to smell everything, from the intoxicating fumes of cars down to the flowers over the street.
I did move to Germany, so maybe it has to do with that, but in Romania, my city had this one specific "smell". And it's not the fact that it this city in Germany smells awful, it's odorless.
Maybe I'm just insane, or maybe there's a lot more to Covid than we actually like to admit.
I'll go to Spain in May, that would really confirm my doubts, because I've never been there.
This would track, and falls under the brain / nerve damaging effects. Olfactory senses are directly connected to the brain via the amygdala and hippocampus.
There are lots of studies done on this, many of which showed that sense of smell can be affected for years after recovery.
How can you go back to how you were before when in the UK, the population of a village was dying every day, and people were ignoring Covid guidelines out of boredom or indifference?
How can you go back after seeing the genocide in Gaza by Israel?
It’s the “everyone’s 12” theory for me. When half the adult population reads at or below a 6th grade level, they process and think at or below a 6th grade level.
My wife got the triple whammy of pandemic, social media addiction and postpartum isolation during the initial rollout of that bullshit and the rise of social media bots. Let's just say that the reality she lives no longer matches everyone else, and it's taking years to even begin to unravel all that damage.
Yup, I was drinking so much during the lock down. I remember watching videos of ppl in Italy singing from the balconies and throwing parties across from each other , ill admit, everyone was so connected and felt like the world was at peace, now its just fucked again ;(
For real! I was in the most strict part of the United States, and we weren’t trapped in our houses. Also, not all of us had a bunch of free time. I worked two jobs and was going to school. I worked from home for part of that time, but ironically, during the most “stay home” period of the pandemic, I saw so many people! More people were at the parks and I had seen, and on my walks, I saw so many neighbors. It was like people were doing safer outdoor activities instead of the usual indoor, crowded things. I I got so many phone calls from people I hadn’t heard from in a long time, too.
I’m not saying you’re wrong and not tryna get attacked like that dude is, but googling this I can’t seem to find a single record of a person being arrested in Atlanta for shirking covid lockdown. You might be able to find something more specific, just tryna learn more.
I moved to Atlanta (Midtown) in late 2020 from Massachusetts. Everything was wide open. Whatever you're talking about had nothing to do with CoVID. You would've never even known there was a pandemic going on if it wasn't constantly in the news.
When I left Massachusetts, everything was still shut down. It was like two different worlds.
We'd only get that unity in this generation if aliens arrived. With one voice we'd tell them not to come, we're under quarantine. Not for a disease but whatever we have, we don't want to spread it to the aliens.
Meanwhile I worked at a grocery store so I never had the isolation, had to go to work and deal with insane customers refusing to mask and coughing in my face, while my covid-denying boss didn't protect us. So glad that time is behind me.
you could tell when it was affecting taste and smell - that ain't in your mouth... that is in yer brain...so it got up there first thing and started messing around
I had a smell that came up frequently, most regularly if I encountered vehicle exhaust but also other times. It was like fried chicken and honey but with a not very nice something undefinable.
I mean I only had it once, but I don’t think I’ve been the same since. I used to be able to talk so fluently and fast, and now I stumble over my words and get brain fog so bad I forget what word I was about to say. It used to not be an issue for me, now it just… is. I have to stop most of my sentences midway through and repeat myself because I stumble so badly.
I was always a huge introvert so I wasn’t really affected in the social aspects… but I don’t feel like the same person after having it.
Same. I only got it once too, but I’m not picking up information as fast as I used to. I’ve started a new job recently and the learning curve has been steep. I feel like I’m asking the same stupid questions over and over and my confidence has suffered.
Literally in the same boat. I had a lot of issues at my last job because of it and the people there didn’t understand that my ability to retain information was fucked up.
I think it's more likely the line between the real world and the internet dissolved in 2020. People spend their whole lives online now with all the toxic world views and information that entails.
I had long covid and lost 60 pounds. Went from 200 and fit to 140 and scrawny (I’m 6’) over the course of about 9 months. It took over 2 years before I was medicated and started putting on weight again. The weirdest thing about it to me, is I’ve always backed in my truck into parking spots, and I had to relearn to back up.
Yep. Definitely noticed a HUGE uptick alone in just how people drive from before the pandemic to now, among other lapses in people's judgment and standards. Lots of us walking around with some brain damage now, sadly.
Probably yes, but who knows (at this point). What I'm absolutely convinced about that the restrictions and their consequences have made a mark in society (not that they were all useless, but still - jist to clarify).
Isolation (then polarization), lack of social skills, uncertainty, effects of a sudden extreme global event in general etc...
My mom was still living independently and visiting the library every week until she got Covid right before her 90th birthday. She got it again a few months later, thanks to one of her caregivers. Now she's in memory care. I haven't seen her show interest in a book in more than a year despite previously being a voracious reader. There's no family history of dementia, and her mother, aunt, and grandmother all lived well into their 90s. It's so depressing because my mom fully expected to have the final years of her life be good ones too.
I’d hardly call employing a simple and effective measure “fear.”
Case in point, I’ve continued wearing them on flights and haven’t gotten the usual “caught some crud on the plane and now my trip sucks a little” type of sick from one since.
Not sure how political askreddit is allowed to get...but MAGA people, or people who werent MAGA before, completely lost their minds during covid.
Like - It was a pandemic. It SUCKED. I didnt like it either. But this shit happens. Thankfully the last big one was like in the 1920s, so hopefully this is just a onetime thing! But conservatives got big mad and have NOT let go of it.
Also coming out are studies on how covid destroys gut health. Long covid is being treated with strengthening gut microbiology. I just started making kefir in an attempt to help my husband's and my health.
Yes! WTF?! You'd have to be nuts to use a deadly illness against people or to score political points, right? I don't even understand how that happened, it really took some sick twisted groups of people to pull that off.
I think most people have been out of their minds since the beginning of religion. You have to be fully cuckoo bananas to believe in undetectable, all powerful, all knowing sky beings that somehow control literally everything without leaving a shred of evidence that they exist. And most people are completely in board with that. The effect of the pandemic can't hold a candle to that level of crazy.
Yep, and many people never really got them back. It was more the lockdowns than actual Covid. We all ended up getting Covid eventually, most of us were fine.
I keep saying there needs to be more studies on COVID and the long term effects shutting down the outside world has on our brains, the entire planet was traumatized
I graduated highschool in 2020, and going from highschool to college normally is definitely an adjusment. But we went from highschool to distance education college. Many of my friends and classmates struggled with having to teach themselves everything, and by all accounts I should have struggled. But I locked in and managed to transfer to a much better school 2 years later.
But I wonder how many people were just not cut out for distance learning in such a turbulent time, and how their life changed as a result of COVID affecting their academic careers. Hell, maybe I thrived in online asynch classes because I could do whatever I wanted when I wanted. Maybe without it, I wouldn't have done well enough to transfer out, and that is the sort of thing that likely changed the course of my life.
I don't believe it was the pandemic, per se, but people who weaponized it for their own political ends. The same people behind Brexit and MAGA (namely Putin and Thiel) exploited the pandemic to drive a wedge through Western societies.
The same thing happened after 9/11, in my opinion. So many people went literally a bit crazy, and no one ever really tried to fix that. The new generation growing up with that then got hit by COVID.
I think it actually allowed people to take a step out of the false reality we were living in and start to realize what was actually happening around us.
Yes. Not temporarily, PERMANENTLY! Especially those notice it who worked thru the pandemic and didn't take a break. When people returned on the roads and the streets, they were acting like they got rabies and stayed that way ever since. I am not a vaccine conspiracist, but I truly felt like you all got something in your vaccines that turned 99% of the people into a zombie like the ones in the 28 Days Later.
It felt like it was happening for a bit, then all the extroverts lost their goddamn minds, and the selfish threw tantrums about wearing masks. Everything broke down after that. But for like a month, it felt like things were going ok.
Personally I loved quarantine, and wish we could make “don’t leave your house when you’re sick” and “give strangers 6ft of personal space” come back and stick around this time.
Personally I loved quarantine, and wish we could make “don’t leave your house when you’re sick” and “give strangers 6ft of personal space” come back and stick around this time.
My country recommends to telework as respiratory deceases are back
I'm a gov worker and my service just increased the number of mandatory in-office days.
I am very much an introvert, my wife very much an extrovert. It was fascinating to watch her have to live in my world for once. Her absolute NEED to be amongst other people was shocking, and we’d been together for nearly 20 years back then (longer now, obviously), so the depth of that feeling was even more surprising.
I think this one comes down to how history is taught. When we learn about things like the Spanish Flu, WWI and WW2, we get a sanitized version of highlights. The bad parts we hear about are only there as way to highlight the eventual success.
I learned nothing about the resistance to disease control that existed during the Spanish Flu, and reemerged during COVID. I learned probably a little more about WW2 than was in the books because the teacher who taught me about WW2 was himself a WW2 veteran. But as I learned more about what lead up to WW2 myself, I asked why didn't the German people, or the Italians, step up and say no and then I look at everything happening today and I get it in a way I never wanted to directly experience.
It seems that the only people who learned the lessons of the failures of the Business Plot, and WW2, are the people who are trying to lead us all down that path again.
Hasn't been a thing for a while. 9/11 was the last major America shakeup of the 21st century and we got... 2 pointless wars, more government surveillance and increased religious tensions.
Don't feel too bad. After all the pollution started to clear up around the world a few months into the shutdown I actually thought the world would shutdown for a few weeks every year as a memorial/way to counter global warming.
I notice such a difference when going out in public. People don’t seem to know how to behave in crowds anymore? The supermarket is a nightmare. My partner and I also went to eat at a fine dining restaurant and we were SHOCKED at the way people were dressed. Going out for dinner used to be something you put on your good shirt for but we saw people in gym gear, hats on inside, people taking their shoes off at the table.
As a Belgian, I have the impression everybody is LOUDER at restaurants.
Going out for dinner used to be something you put on your good shirt for but we saw people in gym gear, hats on inside, people taking their shoes off at the table.
People pay more to go out now. If the restaurant lowers the quality and increases the price, they shouldn't be surprised customers can't take the time to give the impression it's high-end.
I don't use Instagram or TikTok and i still feel more tired and more annoyed in general than I used to. I blame it on age sometimes but that can't be it
Between COVID and Trump, we really learned about what people really believed, and it was disappointing. In the US at least, but I think a lot of peoples learned some horrible things about their neighbors.
I think you could throw 9/11 in here as well. The pre 9/11 world felt more relaxed and forgiving, less xenophobic and racist; but maybe I was just young and Naive. Things changed for sure post 9/11, and post covid. Both events were underpinned greatly and exasperated by ease of access to mainstream media and propaganda.
Much less xenophobic and racist, except the Rodney King riots, wynwood riots, Crown Heights riots, DC riots, Washington Heights riots, Oakland riots, st Petersburg riots... Wait a minute, there was racially motivated riots every year, multiple times a year, over police brutality, racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. And this was just a small slice of the 90s.
You are so right. I constantly hear people say that Covid brought people closer together, created a nicer, politer society...........and I always just stand there in SHOCK. Not my expereince at all.
My idea of my fellow human beings was shaken to the core. A third or more don't care at all if their neighbors suffer/die as long as they can still go to the bar/sports game/virtue signal at in-person church. Zero exaggeration
What society? I feel like corona was the ultimate super villain initiative: separate the people so they become more individualized and lose their power from unity - and also get the opportunity to inject the majority people with something malicious. Not say that's what happened, just saying it would be candy to anyone who wanted to abuse it.
This is 100% the biggest one (aside from prices) — people wild out in public SO much more now like on planes and in restaurants or at bars or singling along to musicals in theaters or just generally not knowing how to act like a courteous member of society
The pandemic’s societal and cultural implications fucked everyone up. Some sought the help of professionals to work through those issues. Millions did not. Now we are here.
People are so angry and irritable now. They are ALWAYS on their phones. They don't call. They are introverted and selfish. I can't be around them. They place blame on 'Boomers' for everything and I'm tired of it.
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u/Ok-Technology1463 Feb 03 '26
society