The pandemic changed nothing

[Sweetpeaa]

For me things were already really terrible in 2019 a year before COVID hit. Rent was extremely high, everything was expensive and people were assholes. I know everyone says things have become much worse since COVID but I think that's a bit of a laugh. Things are almost the same as they were pre-pandemic. Nothing has changed.

This is an odd thing to mention, but everyone talks about all the COVID bankruptcies regarding retail chains. The thing is, it was already happening in 2019. Remember the Forever 21 bankruptcy. I think a lot of brick and mortar stores were naturally headed for their demise. People say it's COVID that caused all these businesses to go under but I disagree.

Inflation like I mentioned already a problem pre pandemic. Around 2018-2019 I was finding the cost of groceries absurd. This is when I started going to farmers markets to cut costs. Costs of eating out became ridiculous by the late 2010's.

I don't think COVID is responsible for half the problems we see now. The truth be told, they are already there. People say everyone is less friendly since COVID hit due to "collective trauma". Really? I think it's been since 2016 when smartphones became incredibly prevalent and people stopped being as social. I don't agree it's related to the COVID trauma. It's just technology stealing people's social skills.

 

[Not A Bunny]

I don't think COVID is responsible for half the problems we see now. The truth be told, they are already there. People say everyone is less friendly since COVID hit due to "collective trauma". Really? I think it's been since 2016 when smartphones became incredibly prevalent and people stopped being as social. I don't agree it's related to the COVID trauma. It's just technology stealing people's social skills.

I don't necessarily think COVID was the beginning of all the troubles, but I think it was an accelerant.

Anything that was going wrong because of COVID could have been turned around easily with a decent economy, and a reasonable societal shift - the one that would have happened to swing us away from identity politics, cultural Marxism, wokeness, whatever you want to call it. Those things were already festering in the early 2010s (I saw the advent of it all while I did my stint as a Unitarian, and after a while of that and some wild psychological damage bullshit that I received as a part of all of that - I have never seen more sanctioned bullying from an organization claiming to be sensitive, thoughtful and open-minded up until that time), and metastasized over time in the next decade.

The problem is, COVID had everyone sitting at home with themselves - something that society seemed barely capable of coping with in the first place - and pushing it all in the wrong direction. Now, selfishness and collective responsibility were the order of the day, exacerbating societal trends that were fostered probably by social media and a 24-hour new cycle. It might have all gone away three to five years sooner if humans were allowed to be humans and not some warped an unnatural version of themselves.

I always think COVID is a touchpoint for things, simply because it did something to break the collective consciousness. It made people sit alone with themselves for the first time in years, maybe ever, and most people realized that they were mediocre and couldn't stand themselves. Most people that were living otherwise normal lives now had to deal with the extraordinary pressure of owning up to how mediocre they were and did the one thing that people under high stress would do at a time like that - take it out on other people.

 

[Wicky Wicky WoW]

Ive thought about this, corona only accelerated ongoing societal ills. The death of small retail to the market being seized by retail mega corporations, inflation, racial animosity, the left becoming increasingly unhinged, the censorship engine, increasingly poor socialization of the younger, distrust of powerful institutions, and whole slew of other problems.
Functionally everything was kicked into overdrive, but I do not know if it would be as bad today if corona didn't happen. It was just all these problems all at once.

There are other problems, the lockdowns and mask requirements have made me concerned about people who were young children/toddlers during that time since that would have stunted their social development and the coerced MRNA injections had simultaneously revived the retarded anti vaxxer movement.

 

[YautjaWeeb]

Inflation like I mentioned already a problem pre pandemic. Around 2018-2019 I was finding the cost of groceries absurd. This is when I started going to farmers markets to cut costs. Costs of eating out became ridiculous by the late 2010's.

I don't think COVID is responsible for half the problems we see now. The truth be told, they are already there. People say everyone is less friendly since COVID hit due to "collective trauma". Really? I think it's been since 2016 when smartphones became incredibly prevalent and people stopped being as social. I don't agree it's related to the COVID trauma. It's just technology stealing people's social skills.

The pandemic was the excuse for crushing government fiscal policies, juicing the stock market, the money printing and "burn it all down to keep me warm" mentality from certainly one particular cohort of asset holders.

If there was some other excuse like another war on terror or some global energy conflict, it would still be going down this way. The pandemic just rushed the timetable along.

It did however specifically expose by it's nature the level of tech, state and digital control present now. Also the sheer horror of the medical industry complex and that in fact, hospitals, doctors and nurses are complete assholes who cannot be generally trusted. Maybe if your surgeon is a locally renowned red nose WASP with the golden touch that wants to get on with today so he can pour himself a drink while he's driving home, sure, but that ain't most.

But much like the pandy was the excuse for the government's tinyhat financial wizardry, socially with people the pandemic became the excuse if not permission to be socially retarded and stunted assholes in day to day IRL. I do think there was some kind of permanent trauma with minors for certain, it was a massively trauamatic event on the scale of a world war, depression, great recesssion, etc. at least according to trauma experts and personality disorder academics, clinicians etc.

 

[Blue Flying Leaf]

All small restaurants and pubs around closed. Only a few survive, barely. People stopped going out to eat anyway.

 

[Pomniman]

No, the lockdowns genuinely made a massive chunk of zoomers into much bigger socially retarded freaks than they already were. Not even in the obvious ways you'd expect either. Interacting with them is genuinely like encountering some sort of alien lifeform.

 

[Soso]

Many things changed because of the Pandemic. People do not socialize like they used to, and many children who went through the lockdowns and masking had their social skills severely damaged. Plenty of restaurants that I have seen are now closed, and even regional chains are now struggling. There is more distrust than usual around, and the lingering anger that once was there is much more open.

 

[Pierre D'Olnique]

Plenty of small shops went out of busines, including a sweet old barber lady that I frequented for over two decades, and a ton of retards suddenly completely erased common cold out of their minds. It's all covid now. "Durrdurr it's still dangerous my friend's cousin's brother's paternal uncle got covid and skipped two days of wor-" no nigger, he got a cold. Fuck you.

 

[Sweetpeaa]

All small restaurants and pubs around closed. Only a few survive, barely. People stopped going out to eat anyway.

Actually that happened for sure. But like I said, Maybe it's just my location (Canada) but for about three years before COVID hit there are so many closures of stores and restaurants that had been around for years. Things seemed to be getting really bad around 2018 (who knows why?). Retail chain stores starting closing down and being replaced by these weird pop up shop type places that would only last for a few months and then get boarded up. Covid just accelerated it. But the death of the family restaurant especially has been prevalent for years.

Then there is the dead mall phenomenon which was years and years before COVID.

 

[libRT]

I think it was just an excuse to raise prices even more and help hide the trend of how expensive everything is getting. If something doesn't break we'll probably end up in some form of neo-feudalism

 

[Blue Flying Leaf]

There is still a 10x price increase from farmer to retail price. So who pockets the profit for 0 work ?

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

People keep saying "COVID accelerated things", but almost nobody wants to name what exactly got accelerated
So I'm going to do it for you

• State control
• Central bank looting
• Mass obedience
• Manufactured atomization

Of course it's true that retail was already dying and prices were already creeping up, but in no way does that mean that "nothing changed"
What has changed is that, for the first time in modern and postmodern history, almost the entire planet has been put under coordinated house arrest, small businesses were deliberately crushed, human interaction has been criminalized, and printed money has been used to bribe people into going along
That was not just a continuation of what happened pre-COVID, that was nothing less than a regime shift

COVID didn't create the rot, but what it did was make that rot impossible to ignore. And, for better or worse, it showed who would beg for chains when you ask them nicely enough

 

[Sweetpeaa]

People keep saying "COVID accelerated things", but almost nobody wants to name what exactly got accelerated
So I'm going to do it for you

• State control
• Central bank looting
• Mass obedience
• Manufactured atomization

Of course it's true that retail was already dying and prices were already creeping up, but in no way does that mean that "nothing changed"
What has changed is that, for the first time in modern and postmodern history, almost the entire planet has been put under coordinated house arrest, small businesses were deliberately crushed, human interaction has been criminalized, and printed money has been used to bribe people into going along
That was not just a continuation of what happened pre-COVID, that was nothing less than a regime shift

COVID didn't create the rot, but what it did was make that rot impossible to ignore. And, for better or worse, it showed who would beg for chains when you ask them nicely enough

Yes but now that COVID has died down (or who knows) we are right back to 2019 again with basically some added costs, new social media and some more stores closed.

I'm not convinced it was a regime shift. Otherwise they would still be fucking with us in ways like they did in 2020-2022. But they don't care anymore.

It was hard for us in the west do deal with the lock downs. But that's because we're not used to that. People in autocratic states have been told what to do for years or be killed. We weren't used to that so it was upsetting.

The lock downs occured to protect he older generation which holds most of the wealth (let's be honest).

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

Yes but now that COVID has died down (or who knows) we are right back to 2019 again with basically some added costs, new social media and some more stores closed.

I'm not convinced it was a regime shift. Otherwise they would still be fucking with us in ways like they did in 2020-2022. But they don't care anymore.

It was hard for us in the west do deal with the lock downs. But that's because we're not used to that. People in autocratic states have been told what to do for years or be killed. We weren't used to that so it was upsetting.

The lock downs occured to protect he older generation which holds most of the wealth (let's be honest).

The regime shift wasn't that lockdowns became permanent, it's that mass lockdowns became legitimate
The population accepted criminal prohibitions on work, movement, and association, and all of that has been called "compassion"

The precedent is set, the tools are normalized, the "shut down society for the greater good" logic is now standard. That is what I'm calling the regime shift. Once the matchbook is sitting on the table, you don't need to burn the house down every year.

And locking down society to protect the asset class is not an exoneration, it's just a sneaky way of saying that the government picked winners, crushed everyone else, and used printed money to bribe everyone into obedience
Call it compassion if you want, but it would be dishonest of me to call it anything but looting with moral cover

 

[Do Not Touch Me Pls]

The regime shift wasn't that lockdowns became permanent, it's that mass lockdowns became legitimate
The population accepted criminal prohibitions on work, movement, and association, and all of that has been called "compassion"

If people didn't actually came out to fight back in the USA and the UK and there's less backlash over the covid mandates all over the world back in 2022, every single country won't be forced to ditch all of them within a total of 5 months. In fact if it was legitimized or the government is given a full signal to get away with it then we'll be holed up to play Decentraland for money right now because it's the only job opportunity available. I also noticed that the influence of the left has also been weakened severely, the far left Inclusion/woke cult felt much harder to take as seriously as in 5 years ago.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

If people didn't actually came out to fight back in the USA and the UK and there's less backlash over the covid mandates all over the world back in 2022, every single country won't be forced to ditch all of them within a total of 5 months. In fact if it was legitimized or the government is given a full signal to get away with it then we'll be holed up to play Decentraland for money right now because it's the only job opportunity available. I also noticed that the influence of the left has also been weakened severely, the far left Inclusion/woke cult felt much harder to take as seriously as in 5 years ago.

You're conflating resistance with reversal
Just become some people pushed back (and yes, they did, thankfully) it does not undo the precedent that was set
Namely, that governments can criminalize basic human life and call it "safety", and that millions will comply, cheer it on, or rationalize it after the fact
Regime shifts don't require uninterrupted tyranny. They require a single successful deployment that rewrites the terms of what is considered acceptable. And unfortunately that is precisely what happened.

As for the weakening of leftist narratives: sure, their iron grip cracked in places. But the structure that enabled mass obedience (fiat currency, emergency powers, central control) remains untouched. The slogans are different, but the machinery remains the same

 

[Angry Alt Right Nerd]

You're conflating resistance with reversal
Just become some people pushed back (and yes, they did, thankfully) it does not undo the precedent that was set
Namely, that governments can criminalize basic human life and call it "safety", and that millions will comply, cheer it on, or rationalize it after the fact
Regime shifts don't require uninterrupted tyranny. They require a single successful deployment that rewrites the terms of what is considered acceptable. And unfortunately that is precisely what happened.

As for the weakening of leftist narratives: sure, their iron grip cracked in places. But the structure that enabled mass obedience (fiat currency, emergency powers, central control) remains untouched. The slogans are different, but the machinery remains the same

No one was preventing you from having a party at your friend's house during COVID retard.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

No one was preventing you from having a party at your friend's house during COVID retard.

.... I don't know if you think I'm writing from outer space, but there are countless police incidents of interrupting and disrupting parties

Regardless, even if we assume for the sake of argument that, in the span from 2018-2025, not one single party or event has ever been prevented or disrupted:
You are confusing personal loopholes with political legitimacy. A regime shift is not invalidated because you personally got away with something. That is nothing but the cope of cowards. Mistaking permission and freedom
The issue isn't whether you had a party, the issue is that the state claimed the power to criminalize human life and millions of people cheered it on. That power was tested, accepted, and institutionalized. That is what I am referring to as a so-called "precedent" and "shift".
But by all means, tell yourself it wasn't tyranny because you found a crack in the wall

 

[Do Not Touch Me Pls]

You're conflating resistance with reversal
Just become some people pushed back (and yes, they did, thankfully) it does not undo the precedent that was set
Namely, that governments can criminalize basic human life and call it "safety", and that millions will comply, cheer it on, or rationalize it after the fact
Regime shifts don't require uninterrupted tyranny. They require a single successful deployment that rewrites the terms of what is considered acceptable. And unfortunately that is precisely what happened.

As for the weakening of leftist narratives: sure, their iron grip cracked in places. But the structure that enabled mass obedience (fiat currency, emergency powers, central control) remains untouched. The slogans are different, but the machinery remains the same

To set a precedent you need to have everything pushed with no resistance and nobody calling it out at all. This is not the case with covid but is definitely so with fiat money, the war on terror and allowing the United Nations to control narratives and ideas worldwide using the Internet. In fact after covid if the government said that "we need to lock down to prevent a next pandemic" the entire USA will be set on fire.

The second point? Yes, but you also pointed the structure that enabled mass obedience wrong. It's allowing the United Nations and Europeans to control the internet and form an unelected world government there. This essentially gives them infinite reach to spread their bullshit across countries and ignoring national laws.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

To set a precedent you need to have everything pushed with no resistance and nobody calling it out at all. This is not the case with covid but is definitely so with fiat money, the war on terror and allowing the United Nations to control narratives and ideas worldwide using the Internet. In fact after covid if the government said that "we need to lock down to prevent a next pandemic" the entire USA will be set on fire.

The second point? Yes, but you also pointed the structure that enabled mass obedience wrong. It's allowing the United Nations and Europeans to control the internet and form an unelected world government there. This essentially gives them infinite reach to spread their bullshit across countries and ignoring national laws.

???
Precedent doesn't require zero resistance. All it requires is a critical mass of acceptance, especially from the institutions that enforce it
Like, laws aren't invalidated because some people protested the. Powers don't "un-exist" because people complaint.
Precedent means: the government claimed the authority to criminalize basic life, and it worked, even briefly

And the idea that lockdowns won't happen again because "the USA will be set on fire" is wishful thinking, unfortunately. People already complied once, that is the problem. They gave up everything, for slogans, and told themselves it was noble.

As for blaming "the UN and Europeans", it's true that propaganda travels globally, but force is always local. It was not Brussels that padlocked your business or shut down your social life. It was your own government, your own cops, your own compliance