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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   38232 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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How many of you know zombies? I believe that’s the appropriate term. I’ve in the past few months become aware of a few friends who never really recovered from COVID. They work from home sometimes at decent salaries and few hours. But a lot of their life energy has been taken from them.

I visited a friend a month ago. And I woke him up from being a zombie. I got him to clean his smoker and make wings. I feel like this was something happening before COVID. People lose their life energy but I think COVID and some of the culture war fights have sapped a decent amount of people of what I would call life energy. And I think as a society we want these people reintegrated.

I know one person who still suffers from the aftermath of getting Covid.

She got Covid at the start of the year and got a cough bad enough that it resulted in multiple broken ribs. She already had asthma and has gotten additional chest infections during the year, meaning she’s been constantly coughing resulting in lots of pain and her ribs not being able to heal properly. Her doctor only recently managed to get her cough under control enough for her ribs to start healing.

One of my in-laws is an amateur elite athlete who ran long distances before Covid. She complains of multi-day periods of physical exhaustion that she attributes to long covid. I won't comment on her mental health other than it seems fine and we aren't close.

I think it's mostly lockdowns knocking people off their healthy extroverted life habits and hooking them on a NEET-ish lifestyle. This is akin to governments mandating that everyone try crack one year. For crack addicts, nothing will change. For most people, they'll go through one degenerate year and then resume their regular lifestyle on the other end. But for a portion of the population that were healthy but predisposed to become crack addicts, they will emerge in 2022 as crack addicts. That happened but for junk food, Netflix binging, and vidya.

Yup it could be just as well falling into internet or internet porn addiction as much as 'long covid'.

some of the culture war fights have sapped a decent amount of people of what I would call life energy

I accept that this may have happened to some, but I doubt it is significant on a population level. The proportion of people who are genuinely 'in the trenches' of the culture wars is not very high. The vast majority of people are either passive consumers of a propaganda outlet of their choice or otherwise are completely grillpilled and let this stuff pass them right by.

Average Twitch viewership increased by around 80% from 1.4M to 2.5M between February 2020 and April 2020. It never really went back down. In September 2022, it's still around 2.5M. I think a lot of people dramatically shifted their day-to-day habits during the lockdowns and never went back.

Twitch is probably the most depressing internet phenomenon I've seen the rise of. At least with porn the viewer gets a real orgasm. at least watching sports is something you can enjoy while engaging with a social group. At least when you play a game you're playing the game. It's like they took something beautiful and pure, turned it into something boring and reamed out, and layered in some insufferable talking heads because that is what we needed more of. I have a lot of hope for mankind, but we need to be able to escape the event horizon of shit like Twitch.

I will often have a stream going on a second monitor as background noise while doing more mindless tasks like collecting and sibmitting billing records, or drafting "cookie cutter" documents that are 95% template.

I wonder how much of that is people watching while WFH. I don't watch twitch a lot, but I see a fair amount of it later on youtube, because the streams themselves happen during normal-ish working hours.

Zero.

I have a friend who has been suicidally depressed all of his life. After he had covid twice, possibly three times (we all did - meaning my friend group), he now had all the symptoms that he's always had but blamed it on long covid while I politely kept silent.

I do think people who were / are overly worried about covid probably now have more depressive symptoms but I just don't know any of these people. I live in South Florida - not the culture.

Also, no one I associate with is getting their energy sapped from culture war fights. That's just a mega online thing that mostly doesn't happen in real life. Note however that I'm not saying the culture war hasn't exploded into our modern lives over the last decade, it's just different than what you're referring to here.

I moved to south Florida so yes it’s not the culture. But it’s when I visit old friends in other areas where there seems to be this thing I’m describing as “zombies”.

I know (of) two people with fairly severe long COVID that still haven't recovered. I don't know anyone like what you described. Then again, we didn't have a very severe lockdown in Sweden.

I'm not sure if I know anyone who has died from COVID, or has mentioned they have a long COVID (from an ordinary bout of COVID, at least), or where I would have a reason otherwise suspect it. I know one guy who had a really serious case of COVID and went to the hospital for it and I'm not sure that they have fully recovered, but haven't really inquired to it, either, since I don't know them all that well personally. I don't know anyone who I have a has had a serious vaccine injury either.

Of course some old and sickly people in my nearby sphere have died and there was one younger person who died an unexplained death, but they also had extreme mental issues that might have contributed.

I actually know of three people but one guy recovered after 6 months or so and is now mostly fine although he complains of being tired but he muddles along.

Neither of the two i know that are still sick had super serious infections, it just didn't really go away and has kept reflaring when they exert themselves. One is a guy in his early 60s and the other a woman in her mind 30s. Both are fit and otherwise healthy.

The one person I know that died was a distant relative of mine in her late 80s with terminal cancer and COPD. I'm not joking.

If it weren't for the 2-3 with lingering symptoms, COVID might as well not have existed for me as disease any different from the flu.

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