Covid hit for me on the afternoon of the 12th. We had planned a Pi Day celebration at work for the 13th (Friday) and got word late in the day on the 12th that all in person events would be canceled until further notice. So I rushed to let folks participating in our bakeoff know, and posted this pic on the door of our auditorium. https://imgix.ranker.com/user_node_img/50060/1001191305/original/hn-photo-u1
“Which, you know, is probably an inevitable consequence of allowing the #discourse to be dominated by introverted weirdos with broadband Internet and family relationships that are strained at best. But it was grating then, and remains so today.”
I dunno, Chad. I take your point, but my memory is considerably darker than yours, regarding the chunk of the population that was variously all about science denialism, hoax cures, anti-vax hysteria, freaking out over being asked to do the slightest inconvenient thing, and even being belligerent toward other people who were wearing masks.
I'd even go so far as to say that the seeds planted back then, and continuously watered and fertilized since, have contributed in no small part to a lot of the problems we have today.
The anti-vax stuff has roots that go way back before 2020, so those folks were always around, but their absolute number was pretty small. You had to be in particular circles for them to have much of a presence-- I certainly saw them online, but they had absolutely no presence in the not-online spaces I was in. I basically never saw anyone being belligerent about masking around here until pretty late in the process, where the mandates were starting to fade out anyway.
My work certainly had belligerent anti-maskers from the beginning (and the company decided to basically do nothing about it). It wasn't a majority, but it was definitely there. The anti-vax stuff took a while to crop up, but only because the vaccine took a while to be developed. I can certainly remember the early days of the group chat that popped up among some college friends at the beginning of the pandemic, griping about people's responses and how they were being politicized.
It certainly got *worse*, but I think it was always there in fairly substantial numbers.
Agree that anti-vax attitudes predated the Covid pandemic, but I do believe that this problem has been made far worse lately. There is plenty of data to support this, as a quick Google will show, and let's not forget about our new Secretary of HHS.
As to anti-mask belligerence, I'll say two things. First, we must move in different circles. I experienced it regularly, starting at the beginning of the pandemic, often from customers (I was working in a grocery store then). Second, there is no justification for A to give grief to B because B is wearing a mask, even today. Perhaps B is immunocompromised, perhaps B is just plain worried, perhaps B is sick and is being considerate of others. The point is, no matter what B's reason, how is B's wearing a mask hurting A?
Covid hit for me on the afternoon of the 12th. We had planned a Pi Day celebration at work for the 13th (Friday) and got word late in the day on the 12th that all in person events would be canceled until further notice. So I rushed to let folks participating in our bakeoff know, and posted this pic on the door of our auditorium. https://imgix.ranker.com/user_node_img/50060/1001191305/original/hn-photo-u1
“Which, you know, is probably an inevitable consequence of allowing the #discourse to be dominated by introverted weirdos with broadband Internet and family relationships that are strained at best. But it was grating then, and remains so today.”
10/10, no notes.
I dunno, Chad. I take your point, but my memory is considerably darker than yours, regarding the chunk of the population that was variously all about science denialism, hoax cures, anti-vax hysteria, freaking out over being asked to do the slightest inconvenient thing, and even being belligerent toward other people who were wearing masks.
I'd even go so far as to say that the seeds planted back then, and continuously watered and fertilized since, have contributed in no small part to a lot of the problems we have today.
Just my two cents.
The anti-vax stuff has roots that go way back before 2020, so those folks were always around, but their absolute number was pretty small. You had to be in particular circles for them to have much of a presence-- I certainly saw them online, but they had absolutely no presence in the not-online spaces I was in. I basically never saw anyone being belligerent about masking around here until pretty late in the process, where the mandates were starting to fade out anyway.
My work certainly had belligerent anti-maskers from the beginning (and the company decided to basically do nothing about it). It wasn't a majority, but it was definitely there. The anti-vax stuff took a while to crop up, but only because the vaccine took a while to be developed. I can certainly remember the early days of the group chat that popped up among some college friends at the beginning of the pandemic, griping about people's responses and how they were being politicized.
It certainly got *worse*, but I think it was always there in fairly substantial numbers.
Agree that anti-vax attitudes predated the Covid pandemic, but I do believe that this problem has been made far worse lately. There is plenty of data to support this, as a quick Google will show, and let's not forget about our new Secretary of HHS.
As to anti-mask belligerence, I'll say two things. First, we must move in different circles. I experienced it regularly, starting at the beginning of the pandemic, often from customers (I was working in a grocery store then). Second, there is no justification for A to give grief to B because B is wearing a mask, even today. Perhaps B is immunocompromised, perhaps B is just plain worried, perhaps B is sick and is being considerate of others. The point is, no matter what B's reason, how is B's wearing a mask hurting A?