Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

i miss band practice so gd much

i miss band practice so gd much

Yup. And like even the most sparsely attended acoustic-open-mic thingy seems like a paradisical lark in retrospect. Some of my musical friends kept gigging through the summer and fall on rooftops or outdoor venues with tents and heaters, but I just didn't feel like that would be safe. Maybe next spring the picture will change.

the last round of gigs i did before covid were pretty depressing and dispiriting experiences (unrelated to impending covid), enough to get me questioning if i wanted to keep doing it tbh, having an enforced break from performing has been good for me as far as taking that whole issue off the table for a good long while

the most undeniably "bad" thing anyone can do in the current circumstances is to be unkind

* without reasonable provocation

a neighbor directly across the street has a handicapped parking spot right in front of his house, and it's the only thing in the world he cares about. whenever someone parks there, he comes stomping out of his house within 30 seconds, so i know he just sits by the window, watching. he is obviously not doing well. but he also likes to scream himself hoarse, uses racist epithets, and has called the police called on him for physical altercations multiple times in only year i've lived near him. he is a fucking asshole. lately i've started standing in my window and staring at him as he yells, pointing, putting my hands up in the air like "what the fuck, you old fucker!?". today he was going off on a neighbor again, then he saw me in the window and let me know that he would like to shove a stick really far up my ass.

i'm thinking about buying an airhorn and blasting it at him next time, only when he talks

multiple neighbors were shouting "shut the fuck up!" at him today, from both directions down the block. it almost brought a tear to my eye, it was like being back in brooklyn

Old Lunch, that sounds very hard. Since I lived across the continent for many years, not seeing each other all that often hasn't been as hard for me and my folks, even tho we now live a 20 minute drive from them. We're going to meet on Christmas eve to do a handoff of presents, and that's about it. Maybe a Zoom that evening.

xp -- I am just trying to figure out the right thing to do because the pandemic is probably one of the highest-stakes ongoing moral decisions of my lifetime, but that is almost impossible when the definition of "the right thing to do" changes every day to mutually contradictory things

It doesn’t, though?

I don't see the contradiction in being angry at both
a) the government for not providing guidance, mandates, masks, etc.
and
b) people who recklessly, ignorantly or maliciously endanger others

my take, which I've fallen back to multiple times here, is that you exercise caution to the point you can without feeling like you're causing harm to yourself -- seek out medical care if you need it, do things that help your mental well-being even if there is some low level of risk involved -- and then adjust accordingly. being able to see family is a huge emotional boon, imo, and if it can be done cautiously, I'm not judging anyone for it

I think the big thing is there is no "right thing to do" if there's no strong guidance from authority. I think when I was a kid I thought that being an adult was a matter of knowing what to do and how to make decisions but every decision, from the trivial to the important, has its own payoffs and drawbacks

I mean, I was just thinking about the safest lives of abstinence and socializing and I think I just reinvented the lifestyle of the Heaven's Gate cult in my head

I just don't get what this definition is, katherine - is this some Twitter thing? (I say this with all good wishes - it sounds like you're a bit overwhelmed which is very much par for the course right now?)
Is there a specific situation you're trying to navigate?

the definition is whatever The Discourse comes up with; I have no influence or control over it. sometimes the lessons are easy enough (some lessons from yesterday: don't fall in love with martin shkreli -- ok, no risk of that; don't tweet about people at the grocery store buying cakes and crab legs on ebt -- ok, wasn't going to do that either) but some, like the ones I mentioned, are mutually contradictory. and no, "being angry at both" isn't an option as defined, it is one or the other.

not caring about what people say online unless you have a good reason to is another option

I think it's pretty fucked up for one's reaction to someone saying "this is the wrong thing to do and it hurts people" to be "I don't care"

basically makes you melania trump with the jacket

I don't think I know what 'The Discourse' is.

twitter

We've done all this several times before, over issues of varying objective seriousness- perhaps this is valuable context that some posters who have been shocked- shocked!- at how horrid (really?) some of the responses have apparently been

Most of it has been squarely in the realm of good advice as far as I can tell and given the above context (which ofc you could argue either way) certainly I'm not too sure anyone couldn't be forgiven for either treating the carryon as quite passive-aggressive if nothing else

or at the vey least rolling the eye a little at it, is the end of that 'either' clause, sorry

I think it's pretty fucked up for one's reaction to someone saying "this is the wrong thing to do and it hurts people" to be "I don't care"

I distinctly recall being told as a child not to step on a crack in the sidewalk, because this would break my mother's back, which I could only understand at the time to be a very hurtful outcome and one to be avoided at all cost. Eventually I came to not give a flip when told this, as I had come to the conclusion that this assertion did not align with reality and the promised hurt was not something I needed to heed.

I think it's pretty fucked up for one's reaction to someone saying "this is the wrong thing to do and it hurts people" to be "I don't care"

I suspect you, like all of us, do this constantly, though. The Pope says abortion is a sin, American evangelicals say it's tantamount to the Holocaust. Do you give a fuck what they say?

no, because there is substantial disagreement with that. it is not consensus

also it's very disingenuous to claim you don't know what this is or engage in it when some person was just screenshotted upthread. would you say that this person was doing something wrong and should have done something different? OK, then you both know what this is and engage in it

If “the Discourse” is constantly changing and contradictory, wouldn’t that mean there’s “substantial disagreement”?

no, because the changes happen in unison. once one change has been enacted, you are expected to follow it and have always followed it. (see also milkshake ducking; once something is milkshake ducked, you are no longer allowed to like it anymore. it's now bad.)

Whose consensus matters? If you moved to an openly sexist and homophobic country, would you suddenly question the validity of feminism and gay rights?

the consensus of people who are generally correct on other matters and who are agreed to be generally correct by others who are as well. basically, a lot of people you know, many people in this fucking thread

no, because the changes happen in unison.

That’s not how changes work (action/reaction/synthesis blah blah blah) but I think this just illustrates again that I have no idea who you’re talking about, what they’re saying or why you care what they’re saying.

then why not try making the slightest effort to find out

the consensus of people who are generally correct on other matters and who are agreed to be generally correct by others who are as well. basically, a lot of people you know, many people in this fucking thread

my personal input doesn't matter, and if I were to say or do something wrong and become a target, then I know for a fact that nobody else would think my personal input mattered for anything but how well it served as ammunition to better mock me (see also: this thread)

like that woman who was screenshotted upthread. do you think her personal input matters?

COVID study sponsor for Moderna says they're unblinding the study soon so those who got the placebo can get the vaccine.

Makes sense. Guess I'll know for certain now!

then why not try making the slightest effort to find out

I can’t because the people and what they’re saying are never specified. Searching Twitter for “discourse” doesn’t seem like it would be particularly useful.

I gave two examples earlier

Guess I'll know for certain now!

Good news, for sure.

(although searching twitter for "discourse" is in fact more helpful than you think, I didn't make the term up)

There were two internet commentators mentioned whose opinions we should trust?

actually there are three specific discourses that I mentioned:

1) the martin shkreli article

Christie Smythe covered white-collar crime for Bloomberg News and lived "the perfect little Brooklyn life" with her husband. Then she threw it all away for one of her sources: infamous pharma bro Martin Shkreli. https://t.co/Xk0zXmYkgF

— ELLE Magazine (US) (@ELLEmagazine) December 20, 2020

Know what else I see every single day working at the grocery store? I'm gonna get a ton of shit for this but it's true. $40 birthday cakes, $60 worth of crab legs on EBT cards.

— Maura-y Christmas 😷💪🇺🇸 🌊 🌈 ❄️🙋‍♀️🎶♊ (@mrose1965) December 19, 2020

AITA for telling my son to grow up and accept the consequences of his choice to snitch on his friends? https://t.co/4FrPBru6CJ pic.twitter.com/QZ0c2NPY10

— Am I the Asshole? (@AITA_reddit) December 19, 2020

Is there a reason we should pay attention to any of these, let alone derive our morality from them?

I know the use of “the discourse” on Twitter - it’s ironic, highlighting that your timeline is not real life and that Twitter arguments don’t matter.

My personal point of view is that "someone said something dumb on the internet" is the least topic to which we should give any credence.

many of these are people whom I either know in real life or that I have mutual acquaintances with, and of the ones who aren't, almost all of them are, in fact, real people, who exist in real life, whom I could well encounter

many of them are people you know in real life, too!

The Shkreli story is a human interest oddity, nothing more. You don’t need to have an opinion on his girlfriend or her choices. It’s a frivolity.

But accepting that you do care, what is the ping pong consensus that traps you on the wrong side of history?

what happens if one just does not look at twitter

also it's very disingenuous to claim you don't know what this is or engage in it when some person was just screenshotted upthread. would you say that this person was doing something wrong and should have done something different? OK, then you both know what this is and engage in it

I don't know if that was aimed at me for asking what The Discourse was - I reloaded the entire thread which is huge and took ages, and the only screenshot I could see was about someone going to Mass? Is that what you meant? So, the answer to my question 'is it Twitter' is ... yes?

I mean, I'm not lying, I am still none the wiser. But I guess you are free to not believe me. I'm not really good at trying to analyse statements or summaries I'm only able to guess at, so I'll leave it there.

xp, oh ok. I have no idea what to make of that crab legs tweet or how it has any bearing on how I travel or stay home this Christmas.

But accepting that you do care, what is the ping pong consensus that traps you on the wrong side of history?

― Joe Biden Stan Account (milo z), Monday, December 21, 2020 7:00 PM (fifty-three seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

for the millionth time, it is "it is wrong to shame people for their personal choices, when the government's response for the pandemic is what is causing harm" vs. "it is wrong to travel/shop/_____ during a pandemic, the context doesn't matter, and people who do so deserve to be shamed for it"