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They made their money from the premise that society would instantly collapse if the wheels of capitalism/ industry paused for even a second. Then we turned them off and it didn’t collapse. Instead we relearned the importance of things like family and community. This is them fixing that “mistake”.

I don't think Covid changed people, I think it _revealed_ people, and once they have been seen (and seen themselves) they don't feel the need or the feasibility of going back to performative social niceties.

Found this 3-post thread in my saved posts. Seems pertinent: bsky.app/profile/whis...

I agree regarding the effect of lockdowns, but also covid itself made our brains foggy, for some temporarily and for others more permanently. We are all collectively a little crazier and a little more feeble-minded in the aftermath. I hope we can collectively recover.

I would add “metoo” to that, the first time it was shown consequences might turn up on a minimal way and fuck that’s could not be allowed

😭this is what I think when my doctor is like “You’re so resilient” and it’s like yeah with so much mental illness the strength it takes to stay alive

COVID stole our 24/7 society. Walmart and others are not open past 11pm. THAT WAS COVID!

TBF they clearly weren't the only ones who went insane.

'My awful latchkey children had to stay home from school and I was confronted with the horror of what I had wrought; the only solution is Nazis and robots'

I remember trying my damnedest not to expose myself or my wife to COVID while trying to make sure those "essential staff" weren't needlessly exposed either by my actions. The folks that saw all that going on and basically said "fucke em" are still out there. You can't unsee that.

It's probably the first time they've had that much close proximity to their family.

So true. And every single American receiving Covid checks with no strings attached created a level field of buying groceries without shame. I think that was the biggest case study on how good the USA could be given more respect to everyone.

Genius level post. Hadn’t really stopped to think about this. But marry this with the outrageous concentration of wealth that happened during the pandemic and maybe it explains why everyone has turned into Lex Luthor all of a sudden

Many went down internet rabbit holes and never came back

IMO it viscerally shook them that the real heroes, the essential workers, who keep our country safe and moving forward were identified and celebrated and those people were not them.

don't discount "they were forced to allow the first expansion of social welfare in about 70 years and lost their minds imagining peasant uprisings when people demanded more"

Nah, they were always this evil. The Rich just gave up on the PR when they realized how much they could get away with after Jan 6th.

I think it depends on where you lived at the time & the restrictions imposed tbh.

The rich and super-rich are just as susceptible to "number go up" instincts as the rest of us. Yet they don't use their massive wealth for social good, only for self-aggrandizement.

Witnessing numerous wealthy people lose their minds because things were out of control, I can attest to this as fact.

Both inconvenienced and forcibly reminded that they actually rely on other people

Funny how the supposed benefits of water cooler* talk are suddenly not that important when everything can be done with "AI agents." Physical human serfs: good, disembodied AI slaves: better, humans working remotely: "COVID-era privilege" *Water coolers are definitely a feature of modern offices.

"I'm stuck in my SoCal mansion and 6 figure entertainment rooms just like you"

In the UK it was funny because we had aristocrats living without servants for the first time and suddenly realising how vulnerable they were as they had to figure out basic things like how to prepare food.

Also, it's not that some weren't calling this out in real time. DeSantis, for example, was pushing to open quicker, did open quicker, and, in retrospect, looks prescient now. I'm not a DeSantis supporter, but I also think it's important to call out those that got some things right.

I dunno. I kind of thought it was a nice break. What upsets me way more is what it did to schoolchildren. And what it did to the social life of those in their 20s.

everyone went insane. covid actually reduces IQ by about 5 points and causes stones to form in the brain, particularly in the cognition and reaction departments. rich people just have more toys to throw apart during the insanity

True here in Oz. ‘Normal’ rules they just ignore or buy their way out of. Restricting movement during Covid hit them harder than the rest of us who mainly obey rules for a better community.

I really think that it's become more prominent over the recent years cause the rich people haven't healed from COVID yet, they're still crazy. But, now they are getting lazy with hiding it so now we're seeing it more and more.

If your intention is to say "not all Boomers," you're just as big an asshole as anyone barging into a conversation about men, in general terms, to say "not all men, etc." If you're a Boomer who has always voted against the GOP, assume we're not talking about you. If you're an ally, act like it.

Someone should make a movie about it. I know a few characters that we could tap into.

that was a point made- people were throwing tantrums because they weren't "served". the lack of entitled obeisance sent these twunts over the edge 🤷

Oh no! Not cereal! Delicious, delicious cereal!

Ok because here in Dallas, which is extremely segregated (Black and Hispanic south, white and Asian north) I never saw a bare face south of the river. All of the nonsense and entitled BS was firmly up north.

The fact that they were already sociopathic parasites utterly lacking in basic human empathy or any sense of obligation to a social contract or any value of community to begin with, by virtue of being rich in the first place couldn't have helped either.

Yeah, same, it was GOOD for me as i avoid crowds and my personal space is about 2 metres, or pref, no people at all, trauma thing. It helped me get used to just being in public spaces, like therapy of sorts.

One can hope.

Wealthy fucks are still the only ones I hear complaining about it. I was shopping for people during it, mixing with the common rabble. I'm still glad to be alive and to have only caught Covid post-vax. But yeah, yhe wealthy seem stuck back there mentally when I deal with them now.

Don't forget that workers momentarily had choice of jobs and leverage for raises

I think I agree. I also think being rich makes you insane, and am proven right every day. But Covid actually made these people lose their minds. They arent really human anymore. They're less.

That same dynamic also put the reactionary in reactionary centrists. Mess with their convenient consumption and some people don't just lose perspective, their perspective becomes inverted.

Definitely what didn’t kill ‘em made ‘em meaner.

They are acting traumatized by having to wear face masks and not hold big fucking parties that they did anyway. They were more mad about the shutdowns than people who work paycheck to paycheck. Money is stupid.

The problematic cohort isn’t Boomer or Gen X. According to several studies I’ve seen, the most MAGAish folks were born between 1961 and 1975. I call it Generation Douchebag. (Was born in 1966 and have dealt with them all my life.)

Just because a lot of people are responding I want to make clear that I don’t actually like the way generational division has become almost a new form of prejudice. I just do also think that the stereotype of the boomer MAGA type obscures MAGA types in other generations

😲😲😲😲😲

It’s also because they went deep into social media during the isolation and found out everyone fucking hates them

it has a very bad time for people who cannot just be chill

That and sitting indoors on the internet for months on end made a lot of people crazy

I'm just saying he was already on the list.

As if I thought that Putin was as poor as a church mouse.

I feel like I have to be outside or have moving air around me now from COVID, so I could see other people losing it in worse ways. A conscience is a terrible thing to lose, though.

This. This. THIS.

@ceej.online They're insane all the time, I think it just got more noticeable. Why the hell do they want more and more? It's a sickness.

Was listening to Bill Burrs podcast yesterday and a fan emailed in saying that the weathly elite get special classes at the legacy institutions on how to manipulate society economically etc. Cause bill gates daughter exposed it kinda. Doesn’t seem so far fetched now

I remember no one gave a fuck till they started pegging it after coming back from skiing

Yeah, the things that finally impact their reality even a tiny bit and it's a five-alarm freakout - notably not to fix anything, just to get it out of sight ASAP no matter the human cost

"treating cops like customer service" is something only privileged people do. If you've ever been rightly scared of what the police might do to you just for being poor, or a minority, or gay, or some other outgroup, then you are almost certainly not going to think of them as a "service" you can use.

It’s time…

He lost his mind. Even Marc Cuban cousins handle the very mild pushback with facts from average people who know what they’re talking about regarding policy and economics. It was an ego blow

Ah yes Ackman and his wife 😅😅

I mean they also all got covid and permanent brain damage from it, that probs helped as well

I brought this up to my adult son during covid...and I told them the wealthy are hella pissed off and we will end up paying for it. Sure enough, we have ever since. With AI and the data center bullshit, it will only get worse. They would prefer we didn't exist at all.

I know someone who rented a condo at a ski resort for the spring so the kids could get some exercise and outdoor fun while doing school online. It was an Inconvenience.

Yep

Coved is known to cause neurological damage. Explains a lot about the world since 2020.

And most of them had to do their own cleaning

It's partly that, but also that their brains were affected by covid, which everyone seems to forget was not just a respiratory virus.

You’re correct and also wealthy corporations are still driving to make up lost profits by laying off people they need and going AI.

Ever become an informer? Cute imagination but the worst disaster of your life already happened. You are not going to live through more interesting times. You learned what you would be like in an emergency, in an apocalypse, you'd be bitter, recalcitrant and unhelpful.

Not just that they were inconvenienced. I think it was also realizing how despite their billions they all just looked like normal people without hair, makeup, camera, and trappings. The same shitty Webcam interview setups across the board. A thousand people who could do your job better.

Agreed. And in the first read though of your post, I thought it referred to the rich as reductive and honestly, I think that’s actually correct too. They weren’t just inconvenienced. They were sidelined and made to feel diminished.

But knowing this makes it really clear why a sustained general strike would be extremely effective.

Dont forget they also got cut off from their favorite pastime in late 2019 with the murder of Jeff Epstein

To a first approximation it's not bad

That and the “racial reckoning” that summer of 2020 broke a whole lot of brains. People decided they’d never face a consequence *ever again* and here we are 😡

So true! 👍🏻

They realized the world was interdependent and they didn’t like it.

Have rich tech exec friends. Covid was intolerable cause they had to wear masks and stand 6 feet apart. It was an inconvenience they had zero tolerance for. Petty.

..but that everybody else, should!

“It was awful. The Yacht club was closed. Muffy and Bugsly’s polo games were canceled.”

i think sometimes, it's just a little scary how simple the answer is...

I think they were already increasingly upset that business, a great refuge of the authoritarian personality, was being told not to discriminate, not to let workers get killed even when it might be cheaper, imposing the costs of polluting the commons back on them etc, on top of taxation.

And Lords vs Serfs, rich need the poor to stay poor so they remain stay rich so Serfs were forced to work no matter poor health, which kept the dynamic in place. During Covid, we Serfs were forced to stay at home, thereby threatening the Lords wealth status bc it’s not sustainable if we can’t work.

Weird when the "Wisdom of Crowds" butts up against the "Ego of Rich Assholes"

Yup. He was a little weird before that but that was when I stopped wishing I could afford a Tesla. I can, now, and much prefer my Kia EV6. It's never locked me out or spied on me.

The last time they were inconvienced before was the Great Depression and they tried to overthrow FDR. It tracks!

You don’t understand - the only way my wife can enjoy her fajitas is with cheese

I mean, the uprising freaked a lot of rich folks out. The fact that people power was mad manifest in contravention of law broke a lot of small biz owner/landlord parasite brains.

Similar to how so many suburban cranks lost their minds when they couldn't boss around service staff inside of a restaurant, while still mostly being able to eat restaurant food to go.

Fascism, or at least its social technologies, already existed in Europe's African colonial by that point.

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