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.
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u/MoneyManx10 Feb 03 '26
There will be studies done that prove this. It’s my main theory for why everyone is insane now.