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

We're all crazy now, he says

Wait that was old lunch

Hey fuck you old lunch!

And uh sorry for calling you imago

Get your specific user right f'chrissakes.

My experience of the outrage of the day on Twitter tends to be very much 2nd hand or 3rd hand to the point that it becomes barely comprehensible what people are commenting on, and I rarely have the interest or energy to chase down and learn about the source of outrage. I'd rather just see posts by people I enjoy and topics that interest me, and if that starts to get old or unenjoyable, I have no problem with unfollowing, blocking, muting. It makes Twitter a fairly pleasant experience overall.

https://i.ibb.co/FwC9gbM/Screen-Shot-2020-12-22-at-13-52-32.png

so this *actually* happened, tweeps

Except for a yearly pile-on, most recently last month, I don't have trouble with Twitter; I've curated it sufficiently. I get a lot out of it, actually.

Yeah I knocked twitter for some time but now I’m getting more out of it than I am here, except on music which I don’t touch on twitter at all.

Get your specific user right f'chrissakes.

Tangent: There needs to be some serious research into the phenomenology of having the username at the bottom of posts, rather than the top. There are times when you read a post and know who it is before you get to the attribution - that's kinda fun. Also times when I deliberately try not to look at who posted something until I have absorbed and thought about the content. Also times when I'm boggling at something and let my eyes drift down to the poster and then back up at the post.

If our handles were at the top (as on Twitbook, Facetweet, etc.) it would be just ever so slightly easier to discount a viewpoint before hearing the poster out. imo this is a good not bad thing about ilxoria

You can change where names appear by changing your stylesheet under preferences iirc

xp username is first on zing

Ah! I did not know this. I like it as it is tho

No wonder my posts get skipped!

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/12/tis-the-season-for-shame-and-judgment/617335/

to katherine's points:

As cases surged in the fall, elected officials blamed the trend on misbehavior at private social gatherings. Restaurants, stores, and other workplaces aren’t the problem, the talking point goes; people just need to behave better everywhere else—in parks, playgrounds, and their own homes. But the resulting message to the public has been nonsensical. Through their policies, states are telling Americans that dining indoors is safe in revenue-generating situations, such as at a restaurant or formally catered event, while private holiday dinners are roundly condemned. Some communities have gone as far as banning all social interactions between people from more than one household, including outdoors. In truth, states probably can’t afford to pay businesses to stay closed, yet governors are under tremendous pressure to act. The result is a web of illogical rules that transfer the responsibility for containing the pandemic—and the blame for failing to do so—from public authorities to the individual.

If elected officials are going to scold the public for their disobedience, the least they can do is practice what they preach. But one after another, they’ve been caught breaking their own rules. Governor Andrew Cuomo berated New Yorkers the week before Thanksgiving: “If you’re socially distant, and you wore a mask, and you were smart, none of this would be a problem—it’s all self-imposed.” Throwing in some fat-shaming for good measure, he added, “If you didn’t eat the cheesecake, you wouldn’t have a weight problem.” Just days later, Cuomo said his own Thanksgiving plans included getting together with his two daughters and his 89-year-old mother, plans he later canceled amid a public outcry. Maybe governors and mayors are just hypocrites, but the other possibility is that they’re human too, and that even people who understand the risks of family gatherings—and chide others for taking them—feel the powerful draw to this important part of life.

Very few people want to get infected or get others sick. When people take risks, it often reflects an unmet need: for a paycheck, for social connection, for accurate information about how to protect themselves. Acknowledging and meeting people’s needs will reduce risk behavior; finger-wagging won’t.

Despite all of the media focus on holiday travel, this pandemic has been shaped more by where people need to be than by where they want to be. While many Americans were busy reprimanding one another for Thanksgiving dinners, people quietly continued to travel for other reasons: Truckers delivered goods around the country; migrant workers kept farms going. The moral outrage about people enjoying themselves during a pandemic is a distraction from where that outrage would be more useful: in pressuring governments to protect the marginalized populations that are most at risk, even when they are less visible—and provoke less indignation—than a crowd of holiday travelers sitting in an airport and hoping for the best.

As the winter holidays approach and cases continue to surge across the country, people need clear and consistent messaging about the very high risks of travel and gathering. And, just like safer-sex education, guidance for this holiday season must also include nuanced information about how people can protect themselves if they travel to that Christmas dinner anyway: minimizing contacts and testing before and afterward, keeping gatherings small, driving instead of flying, masking when indoors or close to others, meeting outdoors if feasible, and increasing ventilation when outdoors isn’t an option. Giving any risk-mitigation advice might seem imprudent when the dangers of social contact are so acute, but adherence to public-health recommendations is never universal, and everyone needs access to information and tools to stay safer.

No matter how comprehensive, public-health messaging won’t solve structural problems. The Thanksgiving testing debacle was indicative, more than anything, of a failure of the public-health system: Nearly a year into the pandemic, testing capacity is woefully inadequate and needs to be increased as much as possible before Christmas. And instead of closing outdoor venues and banning all outdoor gatherings, which have been deemed inessential pleasures in a pandemic, communities could do the opposite. Like Montreal, they can create appealing public spaces where people can gather more safely, equipped with open-air tents and heat lamps. They can outfit local parks with firepits and wood, as Calgary did. They can offer free outdoor activities, such as ice-skating, snowshoeing, and even art installations, to reduce pandemic fatigue and lure people away from indoor gatherings. Health agencies can urge people—for just this one year—to exchange gifts by mail and replace the indoor dinner with an outdoor picnic (in warmer states) or a family campfire (in colder ones). Rather than imposing rules that neglect the realities of human behavior and then reprimanding people for breaking them, the message could be a more pragmatic and compassionate one: We understand that this is hard and that social connection is important for health, so we will support you in gathering more safely.

With the federal government catastrophically failing to respond to the worst pandemic in a century, it feels like only personal responsibility can save us—so of course we’re turning on one another. But viruses are not moral agents, and infection is not a personal failure. Especially with vaccines so close to distribution, Americans need to keep one another safe, and that includes directing our outrage toward institutional deficiencies, rather than fixating on individual ones. Lambasting people for their risky behavior may be effective in expressing frustration over a mismanaged pandemic, but it’s counterproductive to what really matters: reducing infections.

feel like that excerpt is ignoring the not-insignificant culture of denial, defeatism, and defiance that drives the anti-mask protest crowd and the type of people that continue to hold indoor weddings with no masks and full guestlists.

but it’s counterproductive to what really matters: reducing infections.

It’s totally not though

I am slightly deaf to the politeness of that excerpt. Are you guys not seeing people outside everyday not wearing masks and generally not giving a shit? Like this "traveling for the holidays" stuff is the tip of the iceberg compared to the shitty everyday behavior that CAD just mentioned.

xxxxxp The fact that ILX doesn't reward you with likes or rely on you to follow others is another key, I think. Generally, people here are posting what they're thinking in the spirit of adding to the conversation instead of trying to add to their fanbase or get instant conformation rewards (excepting excelsior zings). And of course, ILX not monetizing user info or manipulating content with advertising/algorithms is a definite plus. It's closer to the good old internet of yore. I feel bad for kids growing up on social media, it must be exhausting to find a place to fit in online and as Katherine pointed out, the "rules" of fitting in are constantly changing.

man if likes were a thing here, there'd be polls "is it bullshit that my thread about Englebert Humperdinck only got 2 likes and a fart face emoji?"

all of my energy is harvested from ilx "otm"s

otm

otm

― Patriotic Goiter (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, December 22, 2020 5:26 PM (forty-eight seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

nabisco otm

how many Humor experience points do u get for being Excelsiored

absolutely fuckin zero

Counts against you, if anything

Tracer Hand, I can't believe you're lumping romance novels in there with all the evils of the world, you're now dead to me, man.

My Twitter is a pretty nice bubble. I almost exclusively follow people I know, with a few actual "experts" on a few subjects thrown in there. This idea of "the discourse" isn't something I've come across, and don't really have any interest in exploring. There are a lot of fucking stupid people on the internet. Proof to me is when I accidentally skim too low and see comments on my hometown's newspaper site. I don't want to hear their side of the argument, it only makes me angry and I don't see any value in their opinions. So I do a little research, and follow a small number of people with opinions I do want to hear, and sometimes learn some stuff. While there is some conflicting advice on my feed re COVID, it's pretty consistent, just with some shifts as info becomes available.

And that's an important thing to remember-- we are learning more about this virus all the time, at incredible speeds. Advice should be expected to change as we learn more. Getting more specific and nuanced will hopefully mean that interventions can be more useful. (and yes, I am aware that the US and UK have supremely inept governments and so don't trust the "rules" by either to be representative of up-to-date science, which doesn't help. so I do my research and try to be as careful as I can)

It’s totally not though

It's satisfying to light people up for being stupid, but do you think it changes their actual behavior? Seems as likely to reinforce their martyr complex and push them into double down territory.

Depends on the person, I suspect, and their capacity for shame.

My capacity, for instance, is nigh bottomless. I feel ashamed just for writing the word 'bottomless'.

It's not quite Hemmingway "baby shoes" brief, but this WaPo headline comes as close to encapsulating the American experience in 2020 as anything:

2 men shot up a California strip club with an AK-47 after refusing to wear masks, authorities say. Now they face life in prison.

too bad someone snitched on them

Do strippers wear masks?

Several

It's satisfying to light people up for being stupid, but do you think it changes their actual behavior? Seems as likely to reinforce their martyr complex and push them into double down territory.

― Joe Biden Stan Account (milo z), Tuesday, December 22, 2020 12:24 PM bookmarkflaglink

Depends on the person, I suspect, and their capacity for shame.

― Wet Pretzels and Other Soggy Snacks (Old Lunch), Tuesday, December 22, 2020 12:26 PM bookmarkflaglink

There's some truth to that but I found this to be a very compelling article: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/words-matter/201810/why-people-ignore-facts

I also thought this was interesting and informative: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-convince-someone-when-facts-fail/

2 men shot up a California strip club with an AK-47 after refusing to wear masks, authorities say. Now they face life in prison.

That's one reaction to The Discourse.

@DJP this too

https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/12/facts-are-an-insufficient-response-to-falsehoods/

good article. i've noticed if you actually reply with facts to a lot of these people, they usually just reply with shitty all caps memes.

even in person, which is weird

I've read a number of articles lately along the lines of "people have fewer friends and don't seem as interested in social connections" and my reaction is only ever "...have you met people? why are you surprised? everyone fucking hates everyone else"

man if likes were a thing here, there'd be polls "is it bullshit that my thread about Englebert Humperdinck only got 2 likes and a fart face emoji?"

katherine would be able to clown on Don Jr's threads about "why are all my algorithms getting crushed?"

Speak for yourself. I love my friends and feel pretty good toward most of the people I see on the street, in the grocer's etc.

And if anything, my friend circle has *expanded* during the pandemic, because the worlds that I'm involved in have been flattened— as awful as it can be, Zoom and facilitating workshops online have been a boon for my mental health, and I've become much closer with a number of people who are further away geographically. I also talk to my closest friends more than I did before the pandemic, because I have more time to do so.

Obviously it's not all roses, a lot of it sucks and we're making the best of an absolute shit sandwich.

So this isn't entirely apolitical, but in line with the discussion about epistemological divides: Two things happened in my city yesterday. One, it was named the #1 worst COVID spot in America among metro areas 250k-1m people. Yay. And two, our County Commission (which is dominated by Republicans 9-2) voted to dissolve our Board of Health because people are mad about mask mandates. Various metaphors for this were offered: Fighting about who should hold the hose in the middle of a wildfire; throwing lifeboats off the Titanic; trying to design a new sprinkler system for a burning house. None mattered.

There's still a second reading, even if they pass it, it might not change much for various reasons. But the symbolism of it was sort of amazing.

katherine would be able to clown on Don Jr's threads about "why are all my algorithms getting crushed?"

― huge rant (sic), Tuesday, December 22, 2020 3:34 PM (nineteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't know who that is unless you mean donald trump jr.

"...have you met people? why are you surprised? everyone fucking hates everyone else"

This is a bummer. It's objectively not true, and if this is the lens you are seeing things through....

I would like to introduce you to a rhetorical device called "hyperbole"

it's more effective when not quite so on the nose

It's also just continuing a feedback cycle of negativity

When you're in a dark place that kind of hyperbole is just bole.