I feel like the world has been going downhill since the boom of the internet/social media. The technology has gotten a lot better and a lot of things are more convenient, but it has made a lot of people less social and have a lot lower attention spans.
People went inside and onto their computers where the rich people had a feeding frenzy dividing the working class. This, and a lot of people realized that the rich people were dividing/screwing them and there was nothing they could do about it.
This caused people to latch onto whatever copium they could find in politics, confirmation bias on social media, and anger.
Yes, Covid forced the dumbest people to get online for work and school. They figured out how to communicate with other dumb people and now don’t realize how dumb they are.
We’ve settled into the current state of affairs and technology, and are now toying with / treating institutions/nations/everything differently. And all the territory that comes with that.
Absolutely much worse in every way. Travel more difficult and expensive. Jobs pay less. Everything costs more. People don’t socialize as much. People use phones more. Social media spiked. Screen time spikes. Isolation increases. It’s all much much worse now.
Yes everything is a little worse. People are colder, neighborhoods are dirtier, restaurants are shabbier, stores are emptier. We’re living an an off-brand version of the world we knew before.
It was already going down Hill. The hill just got a lot steeper during Covid… I’ve always been a pessimist so I don’t have my vision filtered in front of me. People often choose to live in denial and look at the bright side so it takes something huge for them to see reality. But we’ve been going anywhere but North for a very long time.
Vaccines and masks got intentionally turned into a political weapon that massively divided both sides of the political isle. This was intentional.
I also believe there are in many, lasting negative cognitive effects, both from Covid itself and the isolation people endured. Some people straight up can’t handle being alone.
It’s not in my imagination, people are shittier drivers, gen z got fucked out of a good education fundimentally altering their view of the future, and crowds still seem to stress people out more than they used to. I catch myself maintaining 6 feet distance at the store, and I can tell that others are still overly wary of their personal space.
As if small, indivudually, locally owned business weren’t struggling enough, COVID basically ended them. Everything is a chain or corporate owned now. Especially in foodservice.
From a north american standpoint, the governments used it as an excuse to grab a whole lot more power over the lives of individuals than they used to have, which combined with the dramatic decline in quality of politicians over the past couple decades has led to a lot of just openly illegal stuff being done by the powerful to the poor that nobody bothers to even question anymore.
Also a lot of businesses, sometimes entire industries, basically shut down overnight which means not only is more power concentrated in the hands of a few oligarchs, but the quality of their goods and services has taken a nose dive because there’s no longer any competition.
I don’t think Covid had anything to do directly with the situations in the middle east or Ukraine; those had been going badly for decades beforehand.
Yes, yes, and yes. People will over pay anything, restaurants offer reduced menu or options, service is crappy. Prices inflated because of supply chain issues stayed high after those issues were resolved. Manufactured realized they could cut back on production to keep prices high and idiot consumersl gladly pay for it.
No. There are lots of long term problems like war and inequality that predate Covid, and health outcomes globally overall are improving. A lot of people just ignored problems inherent to capitalism before Covid for whatever reason.
Nope, since social media became a thing presidents used to communicate, and racists used it to organize and realize there’s a lot more of each other out there.
I feel like the pandemic shined some pretty harsh light on issues that were already here but veiled/ignored because it was status quo. To make things really simple, people had Big Feelings about what was happening and a lot of that was fear – it’s easier and more comfortable for a lot of people to be angry than it is to be scared and so I feel like we had people who were drawing harder and more extreme lines in the sand over things that previously had fallen under the ‘agree to disagree’ side of things.
It felt like (to me) instead of coming together, humanity turned and focused on tearing each other apart. This was not helped by, for example, the way that the US administration handled things during the pandemic (I am in the US so I realize my answer may be more US centric).
In the stark light of the pandemic, certain inequalities in our systems became very apparent. But at the end of the day it really highlighted to me what a capitalist society we live in and how much people would rather point their fingers and blame someone else than band together to take down or force change where the blame actually belongs (in this case corporations).
People were so eager to move on from the pandemic and “get back to normal” when there is no going back. Companies raised their prices and are still seeing record profits while struggling to find employees (and treating the ones they have poorly). They started to find out what they could get away with and have run with that. And people are tired, and angry, and still looking eager for someone to blame.
I think some of this was going to happen anyway but covid accelerated things by a lot and made them very apparent.
I think it’s a trend in the United States. I trace it back at least to the 1990’s, when politically, the discourse moved from policies and toward name-calling and attitudes. Part of it was the impeachment of Bill Clinton, where Republican and Independent investigators went through a reasonable list of potential conflicts or wrongdoings, only to discover that there wasn’t much evidence, and then moved to Monica Lewinsky.
It might have been a longer trend than that. I note that, starting with “George Bush the Elder”, whose time in Congress, the CIA, and at the UN, made him arguably ‘the most qualified President in history’. And after that, each following President was somewhat less qualified, culminating in Donald Trump.
So yeah, covid wasn’t the start of things. I don’t know if we have ‘hit bottom’ yet. I think we’ve got a few years to go there.
Since covid? Everything’s been in decline post 9/11. Gas doubled in price. TSA made flying unbearable. The patriot act made spying on US citizens legal. Ect.
oh absolutely. social skills are down the drain, kids can’t learn. Nobody seems to know how to do anything anymore. For me, I can’t sit down and pay attention for more than an hour anymore. I used to be the hardest worker pre covid now I can barely make it through the work week without crashing and burning. Going from doing nothing for a year to re entering life full force is nearly impossible. Thought I would have it down by now but i’m just getting worse
I was literally talking about this with my family today. Didn’t associate it with Covid per se but it’s crazy how many people are extremely confident and dumb at the same time
I think things have being going down hill since the 2008 crash. Media and corporations have been trying to distract us with divisiveness. There seems to always be something new that we need to be angry at everyone about. I remember when gay marriages was a hot topic, now most people don’t talk about it. Then there was the #metoo movement, now barely anyone gets cancelled for coercing women. Recently it was trans rights and that seems to be talked about less lately. More people are starting to get mad at the people at the top instead of their peers, so hopefully that trend continues.
It has been going downhill for quite some time, i think Covid was merely the breaking point for a lot of people, so instead of a few thousand people checking out each week or whatever millions did it at the same time.
Not only did something like Covid really force a lot of people to take a step back the sheer bluntness by which the governments moved to protect businesses over people was undeniably everywhere.
Yes. I lost three relatives in the span of three weeks to Covid and the part I’m most shocked of is that I still have relatives that are Trump supporters…
Well it was a historically significant world event that fucked supply chains everywhere. The last few years have been the consequences filtering through
Those consequences include the modern wave of populist right wing governments who tell you everything would be fine if it wasn’t for those damn immigrants
i felt it happening while slogging through customer service at a large box store. I heard customers lose their patience, lose their rationale, become angry. And it never went back
I do wish tiktok didn’t exist and they keep threatening a ban but it never happens… just ban it. Worldwide. It will be better for everyone. It’s no longer educational or informative for anyone.
Covid much like 9/11 kind of caused Americans to loose their innocence. I think people started to feel cynical and angry at the world but they had to way to direct their anger and instead of self reflection they started to lash out
Yes. Covid drifted us apart. Some became socially feral. We were all allowed to see the world if it wasn’t ruled by Capitolism for a bit. Now the corporate heads want us back under their thumb. People showed how selfish they were. Officials made big mistakes in the beginning.
My dad died, can’t find work that is consistent and pays a living wage, house and car costs have skyrocketed, community seems to have continued its trend toward extinction, whatever was left of an excuse for democracy in the us is under direct attack. Yes. Things feel worse.
It’s been going downhill for me my entire “professional” career. Ever since 2008, it’s been one after the other “once in a lifetime” events. I don’t care anymore. Not having kids, I’m just going to focus on enjoying my time in this dumpster fire.
Not everything. Covid actually forced some industries to use technology that was readily available for years like Skype or zoom meetings. That’s one example. Another would be working from home or remotely.
The slippery slide was greased when the nation’s money supply was handed to private bankers in 1913. It picked up speed when JFK was murdered on TELL-A-VISION. While all this was happening, the population was being dumbed down through the indoctrination (education) system … to the point where there are no questions about THREE buildings being knocked down by TWO airplanes. And then we are fed the (coNvid) story …
So to answer the question — the slide started way before covid (Certificate Of Vaccine ID).
I agree with most of these comments and will just add that COVID has destroyed a lot of families, as some family members believed in COVID and others did not, resulting in families literally and psychologically splitting apart. Plus, I wonder if COVID killing off a lot of the elderly people in our families also contributed to the loss of family bonds, as ‘getting together for grandma’ was holding a lot of families together. idk. it’s all just conjecture on my part.
Yes, as a life like ng customer service person I have dealt with it all. People BC, before Covid were definitely different. I understand it was a terrible, trying time; full of struggles, loss, financial problems for some and the children being home schooled. These reasons do not give anyone the right to be mean and cruel, but that’s what happened. This country went straight to hell and I don’t believe we will ever be how we were BC.
100%. There has been a noticeable difference in the general spirit, attitudes, and well-being of pretty much everyone post Covid. Anger is a go-to emotion.
More like since Facebook MySpace insta etc. I don’t and have never had any of the above or similar but damn the experiment has ran its course and needs to go away
Ironically, it has become more socially acceptable to be asocial. And in some cases, it’s really fucking weird. Being in places that are normally sociable, like a classroom or fitness class, and people don’t acknowledge each other at all.
Even basic human decency, like saying “hello” or “excuse me,” has become nonexistent.
We — as a species — are terminally online. It has increased isolation, driven us into tribes, and restricted our ability to observe humanity as the vast and diverse wonder that it is.
Covid did not create this phenomenon but definitely enhanced it.
People were okay with where things were at in 2019. They figured it really couldn’t get any worse.
The world broke that social contract.
It can absolutely always get worse. How does not being allowed to grocery shop unless you work first shift sound? How about risking jail if not wearing a mask in certain areas?
There is no bottom to how much life and the world can suck. We are all aware of that now, there’s no putting that back in the box.
Absolutely. The entire service industry has gone to absolute shit. I don’t actually blame the workers. What’s happened is COVID taught service businesses we’d pay more for less service so they basically just cut most of it out entirely, hire fewer workers and raised prices and/or offer us paid “services” that used to be baseline included.
And while service has plummeted customers also treat each other and the service workers like absolute shit. This just creates more animosity between everyone.
Add to this absolute polarizing intentional shit mongering by both political parties towards each other (Fascists to the Right of me, Snowflakes to the Left…sing it!) and here we are stuck in the middle of a shitshow of our own slinging.
Personally I think it did. Everyone got angrier and the economy declined and a bunch of greedy bad actors moved in to take advantage. Products are worse, communities are worse, infrastructure is worse, the internet is worse, voting patterns are worse, literacy rates are worse, feelings towards everyone’s fellow man are worse, access to information is worse.
A lot of people lost social skills and never got them back. Call it phone dependency or whatever, but I never saw anyone before Covid walk into a restaurant and show their phone to the host to pick up a Doordarsh order rather than saying “Hi, I’m picking up an order for _____.”
One of my best friends has dementia, which really started being obvious during the pandemic. She doesn’t remember Covid at all. It was so strange to talk to her, she who was in the thick of it (she’s a scientist who followed the development of the vaccines very closely) who had zero recall of Covid, the pandemic, masks etc.
I’d say it started noticeably going downhill since the Iraq War and the Patriot Act.
Things have gradually gotten shittier since that time. Great Recession, polarization and misinformation from weaponized social media, ever increasingly terrible political leadership and of course even higher prices(homes, food etc) and stagnant wages.
Covid did seem to be a breaking point for a lot of people though. There is a noticeable lack of empathy since.
The world peaked around 2009-2013 and then went downhill around 2016 to the back end of 2019 right before Covid conveniently. Think it was when social media really started to takeover massively in 2014.
I feel it has gotten really bad. I think the fallout and sequelae from Covid will take and ruin more lives then during the pandemic itself, in the long run. We need to do something ASAP to rebuilt society.
Post Covid, everyone is in the stock market, we are definitely more capitalist than before, believing that the past 5 years growth in the stock market is forever and endless.
All the excessive money and people too late in the stock game is now in crypto or NFT, gladly the NFT scam died first, I wonder when crypto is going to follow.
Yes, yes very much so. Things are just incredibly awful, and I have to be alive because my best friend made me promise. I’ve been working so hard to make things better, but it obviously isn’t enough. Plus we lost The Best Man in the World–my dad.
Comments
I swear people got dumber
Yeah but to this day traffic is still less bad than it was before covid, at least in my city.
I feel like time stopped since Covid
No, it started with Harambe
People are angry. The feel of community at least near me has vanished into social media hard line opinions.
I feel like the world has been going downhill since the boom of the internet/social media. The technology has gotten a lot better and a lot of things are more convenient, but it has made a lot of people less social and have a lot lower attention spans.
Yes. Late night and 24 hour places just stopped being open.
In some cases yes, but not all
100%. This is when I realized something like half the population was a bunch of selfish assholes that put their politics above wearing a fucking mask.
I hate Trump supporters.
Yes. People became bigger idiots
Covid & the rise of social media has created a world devoid of real life community
Absolutely. Fully half of people have completely lost their minds and there really doesn’t seem to be anything anyone can do to fix anything.
I don’t think Covid necessarily created all the issues, but it certainly exposed a lot of them
No. Some people went downhill and over the edge since covid.
Not since COVID but since Trump.
Fear makes people stupid, or maybe cynical is a better description
100%
People went inside and onto their computers where the rich people had a feeding frenzy dividing the working class. This, and a lot of people realized that the rich people were dividing/screwing them and there was nothing they could do about it.
This caused people to latch onto whatever copium they could find in politics, confirmation bias on social media, and anger.
Dramatically.
Yes, Covid forced the dumbest people to get online for work and school. They figured out how to communicate with other dumb people and now don’t realize how dumb they are.
It all started with CERN and the timeline switch
Not sure it was Covid I think since 2000 we been going backwards
We’ve settled into the current state of affairs and technology, and are now toying with / treating institutions/nations/everything differently. And all the territory that comes with that.
Yes. The greedy bastards printed an ocean of money, now everything is ridiculously expensive and no one will fix it
We all died during Covid and this is the bad place
Since 2015
Honestly?
I feel like I went down hill
My perception of time is a blur
It’s either general fatigue or brain fog…
It just messed with us in so many ways
Yup!
Absolutely much worse in every way. Travel more difficult and expensive. Jobs pay less. Everything costs more. People don’t socialize as much. People use phones more. Social media spiked. Screen time spikes. Isolation increases. It’s all much much worse now.
I think it was TikTok more than anything. Lots of false information being spread out.
Yes everything is a little worse. People are colder, neighborhoods are dirtier, restaurants are shabbier, stores are emptier. We’re living an an off-brand version of the world we knew before.
Yes.
Absolutely. Ppl are weirder, ruder, and more self-absorbed than before.
It was already going down Hill. The hill just got a lot steeper during Covid… I’ve always been a pessimist so I don’t have my vision filtered in front of me. People often choose to live in denial and look at the bright side so it takes something huge for them to see reality. But we’ve been going anywhere but North for a very long time.
Yep
We all actually died. This is hell
Nah, it all started when they killed that gorilla. Everything has felt… just off since then.
Yes
Vaccines and masks got intentionally turned into a political weapon that massively divided both sides of the political isle. This was intentional.
I also believe there are in many, lasting negative cognitive effects, both from Covid itself and the isolation people endured. Some people straight up can’t handle being alone.
It’s not in my imagination, people are shittier drivers, gen z got fucked out of a good education fundimentally altering their view of the future, and crowds still seem to stress people out more than they used to. I catch myself maintaining 6 feet distance at the store, and I can tell that others are still overly wary of their personal space.
Nah 2016
Yes. That said, as an antisocial introvert, 2020-2021 was pretty awesome IMHO. It gave me an excuse to be the hermit I always wanted to be.
Unfortunately, during that time people forgot how to be neighborly and civil with one another.
As if small, indivudually, locally owned business weren’t struggling enough, COVID basically ended them. Everything is a chain or corporate owned now. Especially in foodservice.
Yes, for sure. Especially the rise of the anti-vax, anti-science crowd.
Yes. For several reasons that are already mentioned below.
Also, the quality of life we can afford on has diminished noticeably from pre-covid.
I’ve been watching a steady decline since at least 2003, probably since 9/11 and I just wasn’t quite old enough to see it.
From a north american standpoint, the governments used it as an excuse to grab a whole lot more power over the lives of individuals than they used to have, which combined with the dramatic decline in quality of politicians over the past couple decades has led to a lot of just openly illegal stuff being done by the powerful to the poor that nobody bothers to even question anymore.
Also a lot of businesses, sometimes entire industries, basically shut down overnight which means not only is more power concentrated in the hands of a few oligarchs, but the quality of their goods and services has taken a nose dive because there’s no longer any competition.
I don’t think Covid had anything to do directly with the situations in the middle east or Ukraine; those had been going badly for decades beforehand.
Yes, yes, and yes. People will over pay anything, restaurants offer reduced menu or options, service is crappy. Prices inflated because of supply chain issues stayed high after those issues were resolved. Manufactured realized they could cut back on production to keep prices high and idiot consumersl gladly pay for it.
No. There are lots of long term problems like war and inequality that predate Covid, and health outcomes globally overall are improving. A lot of people just ignored problems inherent to capitalism before Covid for whatever reason.
Covid broke a lot of people who were susceptible to being broken, unfortunately. Many didn’t recover.
Nope, since social media became a thing presidents used to communicate, and racists used it to organize and realize there’s a lot more of each other out there.
I truly think the CERN collider fucked up the timeline. I’m basing this on zero expertise but it feels right.
I feel like the pandemic shined some pretty harsh light on issues that were already here but veiled/ignored because it was status quo. To make things really simple, people had Big Feelings about what was happening and a lot of that was fear – it’s easier and more comfortable for a lot of people to be angry than it is to be scared and so I feel like we had people who were drawing harder and more extreme lines in the sand over things that previously had fallen under the ‘agree to disagree’ side of things.
It felt like (to me) instead of coming together, humanity turned and focused on tearing each other apart. This was not helped by, for example, the way that the US administration handled things during the pandemic (I am in the US so I realize my answer may be more US centric).
In the stark light of the pandemic, certain inequalities in our systems became very apparent. But at the end of the day it really highlighted to me what a capitalist society we live in and how much people would rather point their fingers and blame someone else than band together to take down or force change where the blame actually belongs (in this case corporations).
People were so eager to move on from the pandemic and “get back to normal” when there is no going back. Companies raised their prices and are still seeing record profits while struggling to find employees (and treating the ones they have poorly). They started to find out what they could get away with and have run with that. And people are tired, and angry, and still looking eager for someone to blame.
I think some of this was going to happen anyway but covid accelerated things by a lot and made them very apparent.
Since internet. Lonely fans tic toc
Yes.
I think it’s a trend in the United States. I trace it back at least to the 1990’s, when politically, the discourse moved from policies and toward name-calling and attitudes. Part of it was the impeachment of Bill Clinton, where Republican and Independent investigators went through a reasonable list of potential conflicts or wrongdoings, only to discover that there wasn’t much evidence, and then moved to Monica Lewinsky.
It might have been a longer trend than that. I note that, starting with “George Bush the Elder”, whose time in Congress, the CIA, and at the UN, made him arguably ‘the most qualified President in history’. And after that, each following President was somewhat less qualified, culminating in Donald Trump.
So yeah, covid wasn’t the start of things. I don’t know if we have ‘hit bottom’ yet. I think we’ve got a few years to go there.
I think it started before that. About November 2016. It started to get really noticeable in 2020.
Since covid? Everything’s been in decline post 9/11. Gas doubled in price. TSA made flying unbearable. The patriot act made spying on US citizens legal. Ect.
The world went downhill in 2016
oh absolutely. social skills are down the drain, kids can’t learn. Nobody seems to know how to do anything anymore. For me, I can’t sit down and pay attention for more than an hour anymore. I used to be the hardest worker pre covid now I can barely make it through the work week without crashing and burning. Going from doing nothing for a year to re entering life full force is nearly impossible. Thought I would have it down by now but i’m just getting worse
I mean, literally nothing is better than it was in 2019. The economy, politics, media, and the culture as a whole has declined.
An overreaction in one way tends to get an overreaction on the flip side.
Trump part 1.
9/11
Iraq War
Bush
Tea Party
Great Recession
Dot com bubble burst
Columbine and other school shootings including elementary schools
Mass suicide cults
Reaganonmics and trickle-down economics
Explosion of billionaires while middle class deteriorates
Vietnam War
Great Depression
Civil War
Slavery
Etc
There’s been lots of horrible things over the years. Lots of good things to.
Yeah but it’s been going downhill since the early 90’s
It accelerated things. Trump was already stirring up hysteria for years going in.
I was literally talking about this with my family today. Didn’t associate it with Covid per se but it’s crazy how many people are extremely confident and dumb at the same time
No, since 2016
I think things have being going down hill since the 2008 crash. Media and corporations have been trying to distract us with divisiveness. There seems to always be something new that we need to be angry at everyone about. I remember when gay marriages was a hot topic, now most people don’t talk about it. Then there was the #metoo movement, now barely anyone gets cancelled for coercing women. Recently it was trans rights and that seems to be talked about less lately. More people are starting to get mad at the people at the top instead of their peers, so hopefully that trend continues.
It was definitely a contributing factor
It has been going downhill for quite some time, i think Covid was merely the breaking point for a lot of people, so instead of a few thousand people checking out each week or whatever millions did it at the same time.
Not only did something like Covid really force a lot of people to take a step back the sheer bluntness by which the governments moved to protect businesses over people was undeniably everywhere.
Since Trump
Yes. I lost three relatives in the span of three weeks to Covid and the part I’m most shocked of is that I still have relatives that are Trump supporters…
Well it was a historically significant world event that fucked supply chains everywhere. The last few years have been the consequences filtering through
Those consequences include the modern wave of populist right wing governments who tell you everything would be fine if it wasn’t for those damn immigrants
Service and quality are worse, while everything is more expensive. The world is palpably worse. Thanks Donald.
Oh, it was going downhill long before that!
It all happened after Harambe.
Worlds been going down since trump
More like after 2008. Covid just made it all obvious
i felt it happening while slogging through customer service at a large box store. I heard customers lose their patience, lose their rationale, become angry. And it never went back
[removed]
Harambe shifted the timeline.
The world went downhill after 9/11, story at first.. and then quickly.
I do wish tiktok didn’t exist and they keep threatening a ban but it never happens… just ban it. Worldwide. It will be better for everyone. It’s no longer educational or informative for anyone.
OoOoooo yeah. sips cocktail.
The world has been going downhill for decades, unfortunately.
Covid much like 9/11 kind of caused Americans to loose their innocence. I think people started to feel cynical and angry at the world but they had to way to direct their anger and instead of self reflection they started to lash out
Social media did it.
I feel like the world went downhill since Reagan
Humanity has.
brah its impossible to socialize
Yes, but it’s only going to get worse. I think we’re approaching an extremely historical moment. Probably an enormous war
Yes. Covid drifted us apart. Some became socially feral. We were all allowed to see the world if it wasn’t ruled by Capitolism for a bit. Now the corporate heads want us back under their thumb. People showed how selfish they were. Officials made big mistakes in the beginning.
My dad died, can’t find work that is consistent and pays a living wage, house and car costs have skyrocketed, community seems to have continued its trend toward extinction, whatever was left of an excuse for democracy in the us is under direct attack. Yes. Things feel worse.
In the U.S. I feel like it started before that. 2015 ish.
Way downhill, and it was already downhill from before that. The thing thats cares me is we haven’t found a bottom and there isn’t one in sight.
It’s been going downhill for me my entire “professional” career. Ever since 2008, it’s been one after the other “once in a lifetime” events. I don’t care anymore. Not having kids, I’m just going to focus on enjoying my time in this dumpster fire.
Not everything. Covid actually forced some industries to use technology that was readily available for years like Skype or zoom meetings. That’s one example. Another would be working from home or remotely.
So I guess it has its pros and cons
I don’t notice a difference at all, same dumb shit as usual
Politics were extremely divided before and things like social media were there before like tiktok
I would say since 9/11 even..
The slippery slide was greased when the nation’s money supply was handed to private bankers in 1913. It picked up speed when JFK was murdered on TELL-A-VISION. While all this was happening, the population was being dumbed down through the indoctrination (education) system … to the point where there are no questions about THREE buildings being knocked down by TWO airplanes. And then we are fed the (coNvid) story …
So to answer the question — the slide started way before covid (Certificate Of Vaccine ID).
I agree with most of these comments and will just add that COVID has destroyed a lot of families, as some family members believed in COVID and others did not, resulting in families literally and psychologically splitting apart. Plus, I wonder if COVID killing off a lot of the elderly people in our families also contributed to the loss of family bonds, as ‘getting together for grandma’ was holding a lot of families together. idk. it’s all just conjecture on my part.
Yes, as a life like ng customer service person I have dealt with it all. People BC, before Covid were definitely different. I understand it was a terrible, trying time; full of struggles, loss, financial problems for some and the children being home schooled. These reasons do not give anyone the right to be mean and cruel, but that’s what happened. This country went straight to hell and I don’t believe we will ever be how we were BC.
Yes.We have never er gone back to normal and those in power have avoided taking responsibility for their actions and lack of foresight.
Feel? I know.
Yes. My wife and still call 2019 and earlier the “before times”
Of course it went downhill. We endured four years of Biden
It started going downhill in 2016, it just accelerated in 2020
Yes by design.
I feel like we’re walking backwards toward World War…
Not at all. My living situation is literally the covid lockdown regularly 🙂 i honestly had a great time watching people suffer as i
100%. There has been a noticeable difference in the general spirit, attitudes, and well-being of pretty much everyone post Covid. Anger is a go-to emotion.
No, but it sure exposed what was already there.
More like since Facebook MySpace insta etc. I don’t and have never had any of the above or similar but damn the experiment has ran its course and needs to go away
Ironically, it has become more socially acceptable to be asocial. And in some cases, it’s really fucking weird. Being in places that are normally sociable, like a classroom or fitness class, and people don’t acknowledge each other at all.
Even basic human decency, like saying “hello” or “excuse me,” has become nonexistent.
It’s Trump, Covid just accelerated it.
I think certain things that already existed were highlighted. Inequality, teaching, health issues.
I definitely do
It would be extremely difficult to argue that it hasn’t.
Yes!! Manners and respect are gone. People got weird.
To me it feels like they planed it that way. I know. Who are they
We — as a species — are terminally online. It has increased isolation, driven us into tribes, and restricted our ability to observe humanity as the vast and diverse wonder that it is.
Covid did not create this phenomenon but definitely enhanced it.
Not since Covid, since someone came down an escalator.
YES! Ty!!!
Greatly, yes.
People were okay with where things were at in 2019. They figured it really couldn’t get any worse.
The world broke that social contract.
It can absolutely always get worse. How does not being allowed to grocery shop unless you work first shift sound? How about risking jail if not wearing a mask in certain areas?
There is no bottom to how much life and the world can suck. We are all aware of that now, there’s no putting that back in the box.
Yes. But most of that had to do with the wilful ignorance and scientific illiteracy – not the disease itself.
Technically after 9-11 but honestly after 2010
“Since Harambe” is more accurate
Covid changed nothing.
The government’s reaction to Covid is what caused all the problems.
Absolutely. The entire service industry has gone to absolute shit. I don’t actually blame the workers. What’s happened is COVID taught service businesses we’d pay more for less service so they basically just cut most of it out entirely, hire fewer workers and raised prices and/or offer us paid “services” that used to be baseline included.
And while service has plummeted customers also treat each other and the service workers like absolute shit. This just creates more animosity between everyone.
Add to this absolute polarizing intentional shit mongering by both political parties towards each other (Fascists to the Right of me, Snowflakes to the Left…sing it!) and here we are stuck in the middle of a shitshow of our own slinging.
The world changed with COVID. The world changed with 9/11. The world is changing with Trump 😒
Personally I think it did. Everyone got angrier and the economy declined and a bunch of greedy bad actors moved in to take advantage. Products are worse, communities are worse, infrastructure is worse, the internet is worse, voting patterns are worse, literacy rates are worse, feelings towards everyone’s fellow man are worse, access to information is worse.
No, since Harambe.
A lot of people lost social skills and never got them back. Call it phone dependency or whatever, but I never saw anyone before Covid walk into a restaurant and show their phone to the host to pick up a Doordarsh order rather than saying “Hi, I’m picking up an order for _____.”
Feels like it since 2015 for me.
Simply yes
Covid and the vaccine injured so many
No since 1/20/2025
Yep!
One of my best friends has dementia, which really started being obvious during the pandemic. She doesn’t remember Covid at all. It was so strange to talk to her, she who was in the thick of it (she’s a scientist who followed the development of the vaccines very closely) who had zero recall of Covid, the pandemic, masks etc.
COVID was just the catalyst that made things, that had been brewing since the early 2000s, go wonky
I’d say it started noticeably going downhill since the Iraq War and the Patriot Act.
Things have gradually gotten shittier since that time. Great Recession, polarization and misinformation from weaponized social media, ever increasingly terrible political leadership and of course even higher prices(homes, food etc) and stagnant wages.
Covid did seem to be a breaking point for a lot of people though. There is a noticeable lack of empathy since.
Eh, the world still sucked before, I’m just glad more people realize it now
The world went downhill after 9/11, then again after the ’08 economic crisis and then bottomed out during COVID.
It was going downhill WAY before Covid.
The world peaked around 2009-2013 and then went downhill around 2016 to the back end of 2019 right before Covid conveniently. Think it was when social media really started to takeover massively in 2014.
I feel it has gotten really bad. I think the fallout and sequelae from Covid will take and ruin more lives then during the pandemic itself, in the long run. We need to do something ASAP to rebuilt society.
It’s been going downhill since 9/11
I think it’s been going downhill since 911
Post Covid, everyone is in the stock market, we are definitely more capitalist than before, believing that the past 5 years growth in the stock market is forever and endless.
All the excessive money and people too late in the stock game is now in crypto or NFT, gladly the NFT scam died first, I wonder when crypto is going to follow.
Things really started to slide in…oh, around 2016 I’d say.
Yes, yes very much so. Things are just incredibly awful, and I have to be alive because my best friend made me promise. I’ve been working so hard to make things better, but it obviously isn’t enough. Plus we lost The Best Man in the World–my dad.