COVID-19: 5 Weird Ways The World Has Adjusted To The Pandemic
“F---, you've gone completely sideways, man.” –Raoul Duke, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
That's what I imagine myself saying, but instead of screaming it at a drug-crazed lunatic who's steeped in a poop bath and requesting death by electrocution, I'm shouting at an anthropomorphic planet. Like it's me and Earth and Ego hanging out in a comic book panel and Earth just got done telling us about COVID-19 and I'm shaking my fist and yelling and even Ego is saying, “Hey, I can relate to being a planet and how that means we have to do certain things. But still, this is kind of a dick move.”
Not even the internet can keep up with how quickly society is changing because of the coronavirus pandemic, and really, that's the problem that I had trying to write this article. This is my ninth attempt -- as I type this I'm looking down below at previous versions of intros I wrote that include references to my son's 18th birthday and the “contactless delivery” pizza we got that night (March 26), my drummer seeming annoyed that I wouldn't go over for band practice after our state was locked down (March 24), and an adventure to my local grocery store for some bare necessities that felt more like Bird Box than it did The Jungle Book (April 2).
The point is, everything feels so ... heavy. So what I thought we'd do is look back at some of the quirky, silly, or otherwise non-heavy things I initially read about when people really started staying home all over the world, and check in on them now. Because who knows? Maybe some of these will persist in some form into the future and then 30 years from now when people are trying to figure out why public roads are the preferred location of wild monkey battles they’ll stumble upon this dumbass article and think, “Whoa, pandemics are weird.”
That sounds like an appropriate place for our little record of this moment in history to exist. So let’s start by talking about how …
Animals Are Moving Into Our Spaces
Have you ever seen the movie 12 Monkeys? If not, you should, because it's awesome, at least as far as 25 year old movies about the future go. I haven't watched any of the newer series yet, so I have no idea how it compares, but I know it doesn't have Brad Pitt as Jeffrey Goines in it so I'm not even sure if I'll bother:
The Statute of Limitations on Spoilers has expired on this flick because it came out in 1995, which means I can legally tell you it's about a virus that goes crazy and drives humanity underground so they send people back in time to try to learn about the virus so they can fight it in the future. Anyway, on several different occasions, we see animals where we usually are not accustomed to seeing them, because humans have abandoned the cities of the surface so the critters just kind of moved right in. Even the trailer for the movie has monkeys crawling down a skyscraper that was abandoned during construction, an elephant wandering down the street, and a bear that yells angrily at Bruce Willis.
As it turns out, real life is far more terrifying, as some folks in Thailand found out when the obviously-coronavirus-related drop in tourism indirectly caused an increase in monkey hunger, which resulted in a full-on street fight in the middle of an intersection:
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And it’s not just random monkey wars -- all sorts of animals are wondering where all the humans have gone and are now wandering into the cities, including deer and turkeys. Some mountain goats decided to see what was going on in a town in Wales. Coyotes in San Francisco, wild boars in Tuscany … you get the idea.
To be clear, this is not a long-term situation, and once we get back to normal, so will the animals. But in the meantime, it does look like it might mean good things for available turtle egg-laying real estate in Florida. And also for rec time for penguins, which a couple at Shedd Aquarium in Chicago found out when they were let out to roam the empty hallways.
I really hope the employees keep doing that for them even after the pandemic is over, because that’s cute as hell and the world needs more of it.
Video Conference Boozing Is Now A Big Deal
As much as I love the various memes about how this whole quarantine thing is going to be no sweat for the introverts, the next “however long we have to do this” is going to be a draining, anxiety-filled, possibly-hallucinatory nightmare for a lot of people. Being in the company of, and personally interacting with, fellow human beings is how many keep themselves away from "all work and no play" territory. And like with every other aspect of coronavirus, getting out in front of and addressing it early is super important.
For some, visiting a public establishment to imbibe socially-lubricating beverages with friends (and maybe strangers) provides the perfect opportunity to fill that wanting-to-talk-directly-into-people's-faces void. But now we can't do that, so we turned to the internet to solve this issue because apparently it's our new duct tape.
Now, you obviously know where this is going, and may be thinking, “Dude, people have been getting drunk together online for years.” Oh, I know; IRC was always a good place for that. And I'm sure plenty of friends have shared a bottle or two over FaceTime or Xbox Live or whatever, but this is different.
This is enough fully coordinated meetings between groups of people to hang out, drink, and socialize that it makes me wonder if it has contributed significantly to the shortage of webcams. This is companies coming together in a way they rarely get to otherwise. This is a group of Japanese women boozing it up over Zoom with complete and total strangers. This is me seeing tweets like this all the time:
OK, maybe this one isn’t the best example.
What do you think: Should we coordinate a Modern Rogue drinking session over video conference where we just vape alcohol and ingest homemade whiskey pods? Before you answer, you should know that I didn’t ask Brian about that idea, so be sure to send your hate mail my way when it doesn’t happen.
In the meantime, know that while this was something that began almost immediately after the lockdowns did, it was not a brief, reactionary fad. Even though news outlets stopped writing about it, it’s still going strong, if the #zoomhappyhour hashtag is any indication. At this point I’m actually kind of worried about all the bars when we return to some semblance of normalcy, once a bunch of people get accustomed to the convenience, drink prices, and obvious benefits of not having to drive that are apparent in a virtual environment. If that industry does end up struggling to recover, however, I’m sure we can probably just blame the millennials for it.
We View User Generated Content Through A Different Filter
Have you seen those videos where people stick the suction cup end of a dildo to a Roomba to play a slightly-more-challenging-because-it’s-mobile game of ring toss? If not, congratulations. But I have, and normally I’d file that sort of content into the “Dumb Stuff On The Internet People Think Is Funny But Really Isn’t” category. But in the middle of a pandemic, posting that sort of thing on social media explaining that that’s how you’re currently alleviating boredom during quarantine is, in fact, kind of funny. Or at least it is to a fellow-quarantined brain that could be slowly going crazy, I guess.
Maybe that’s the thing -- suddenly all of this goofy-ass, off-the-wall stuff has some very specific context. It’s almost like an inside joke, but everybody’s in on it somehow. And it only exists in this time period, which means that someday you’ll have to explain to your grandchildren that, yes, the T-rex costume videos were way overdone and decidedly unfunny, except for this one from March of 2020 because look it’s holding toilet paper, and there was this shortage and it was a big thing in the media because it’s what you used to clean your ass before everybody sucked it up (figuratively) and had bidets installed. And they will marvel at your story, then later tell it to their friends in the same way we tell the story about how people used to wipe their butts with corn cobs and rocks.
But it’s not just user-generated content that has seen a shift. For you see …
We Now Have Comedy's Newest Sensation: Performances With No Audiences
Surely you've seen those hilarious and audienceless WWE performances by now. If not, I have no idea how this is the first place you're watching one, but here you go:
If your brain can reach back that far in history, you'll probably remember that at the start of this, most professional sports leagues toyed with the idea of proceeding with the contests, just without any people actually there to watch, and fans would have to settle for tuning in on TV. But then coronavirus time happened, spacetime did something physics doesn't understand, and 1 million things occurred simultaneously including every event everywhere being canceled.
The next thing I know, I go to watch the latest episode of Last Week Tonight and see this:
It's still funny, but you really notice how much the audience plays a part in the show's entire dynamic. The jokes hit differently -- it's almost like watching someone go through a somewhat awkward 20 minutes at a comedy open mic. Which makes sense because that show is written with an audience in mind, much like the WWE folks deliver their elaborate monologues to incite a reaction from the crowd. So yeah, still funny, but in a completely different way.
And sure, the settings for lots of different things are changing, and rapidly. But the ones that usually do—and currently don't—have audiences are unique in their weirdness. Have you ever watched a televangelist single-handedly expel a deadly virus from the planet without an enthusiastic congregation roaring support for his super-loud wizardry?
OK, that probably would've been weird with an audience, too.
Yet despite all the oddities, general terribleness, and laughable buffoonery from the occasional nitwit, what’s really cool is how …
People Are Finding Creative Ways To Help Each Other
I remember reading stories about factories repurposing themselves during wartime, and even as a kid, that seemed like a big deal to me. My young brain imagined the exhausting life of everyone, in the entire country, burdened by focusing all their thoughts and efforts toward a single goal that’s more important than any other because so many human lives were at stake. Even then, that idea seemed surreal.
And it is, which I can confidently report while living through such a time. Sure, there’s no widespread Defense Production Act stuff going on, but businesses and even individuals have stepped up on their own. The first stories I heard were from right here in the Michigan area, like the distilleries that pivoted to hand sanitizer or the boutique that started making face masks for health care workers. And then the stories were everywhere, all at once. Like everything is right now.
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Well, maybe not everything.
Here’s one where an animal shelter was struggling due to COVID-19 and the community swooped in and adopted every single animal. And this one about some people who got together to 3D print some respirator valves to donate. Or this college student and her mom who designed face masks for the hearing impaired. And this group of moms who are keeping medical workers fed. Here’s an anonymous woman who just leaves free bagged lunches out for literally “anyone who needs it.” There are many more, and they are awesome.
These are stories worth retelling, so go forth into the world and do so, fellow Rogues, and let everyone know— wait. Do not go out into the world. Just stay put and share them on social media for now. We can congregate on street corners with our pamphlets and bullhorns at a later date, when it’s safe to do so.
