A recent article surmised that over the last few years people have become more rude, more selfish, more intolerant to others, and that somehow COVID is to blame. The article's author reasons that there's no other underlying cause that could possibly be at the root of the sort of behaviour 'decent' folk abhor. Think of the following common behaviours and see if they boil your piss as much as they do mine:
- Cycling on the pavement. When did this become an acceptable thing? It used to be that you'd see the odd miscreant kid swerving in and out of pedestrians on their oversized bikes but now it's everyone, of all ages, and those of us who use pavements for walking on are forced to get out of the way or get hit.
- Talking loudly or using your phone in cinemas, theatres or music venues. Honestly, fuck you if you're guilty of that one. Just fuck off and don't buy a ticket for an event if you can't even be bothered to watch and enjoy it. No one is impressed.
- Rude behaviour on the roads. Yeah this one isn't exactly new, road rage has been around as long as the combustion engine but it's got markedly worse in the last ten years or so (a very good reason to arm yourself with a dash cam if you haven't already).
- Shoving, pushing, not waiting in queues. Again particularly prevalent at gigs.
- Shoving to the front of airline boarding queues just so you can stow your oversized carry-on bag in the overhead locker. That is literally the ONLY reason these wankers do this. You are allotted a seat, so it's all about that 'land grab' for baggage storage (which - imho - is the fault of the airlines not making people check that shit in any more)
- Lack of pleases and thank yous, the most basic human niceties and common courtesies, seemingly lost forever.
- Open racism, particularly from older people who should fucking well know better by now.
I could go on. The article raised quite a few more examples and again underpinned by that theory that folk became insular and selfish during lockdown which just doesn't ring true to me. People were arseholes before COVID, and they continue to be arseholes now its fangs have been trimmed a bit.
The real cause, and I do firmly believe this, is the rise and rise of mobile phone use and - in particular - the addiction to social media / the internet which is leading people to believe two key things:
1) That they are better than everyone else, because they spend all day trying to convince everyone (and themselves) that they are.
2) That everything they do is of great importance to the world. How big their house is, their car, how pretty their partners are, how much stuff they've accrued, how expensive their phone is - All that utterly meaningless shite that folk wrap their entire existences around does not lend itself well to meek behaviour.
In Mike Judge's "Idiocracy" we are presented with a humorous look at a future that emerges from the continuation of the type of behaviour I've outlined above. People are definitely becoming more stupid - possibly as a result of reading / learning less, but also because of their unwavering faith in the crap they read on the internet or on social media. They are becoming more selfish and less socially aware. With every stride that is made to try and stop the planet from boiling itself, we read of some selfish rich asshole using their private plane to nip over to Naples for a genuine pizza while we sit there sorting our different recyclables into their dutiful categories.
I used to love people. I used to love socialising, the art of people-watching, of imagining what's going on in someone's life as they sat reading a copy of "The Idiot" by Dostoevsky in a crowded cafe, sipping an exquisitely made beverage. Now people disgust me, to the point where I treat social outings and occasions as something that I would lovingly fast-forward through if I could.
I put on a fake persona to deal with these situations. I smile, I laugh, I talk too much, I babble but above all I tolerate, with all the strength I can muster. I tolerate you as, for the 6th time in our 20 minutes together, you reach for your phone to check your text, your calls, your social media feeds because you genuinely believe what you'll find there will somehow be more meaningful and important than our conversation. I'm your friend, yet you treat me like an inconvenience - and so I merely tolerate you in return.
Social media is a laughable oxymoron. There's very little about it that is social. Very little that encourages people to be social animals, more encourages them to climb to the top of their particular dung heaps in search of that level of importance they believe they deserve, through no merit or achievement, just because they ARE.
So folks, the TL;DR is that COVID didn't make us arseholes, but imagine if you could wean people off their phones and devices for 2 years like we were weaned off going out. Do the exact opposite of lockdown. Switch off social media for two years to see what would happen. Imagine that as an experiment. Imagine all those people we despise who call themselves 'famous' suddenly finding they have no outlet for their bile.
Wow.
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