Some TikToking Gen Z Miss the Lockdowns; What Does this Say about Society? By James Reed
I read Chris’s article below about how the Covid lockdowns are being forgotten by many people, as the time was so terrible that a natural memory censoring mechanism come into play. I imagine that it is much like people being subjected to violence or other forms of misery and degradation; the mind moves to block out the horrors, so life in a fashion can go on. It is common with sexual assault victims.
Yet, having said that, there are always exceptions to almost every rule and generalisation made about human behaviour, which is one reason why the discipline of psychology fails to be a hard science. Some people on the dreaded CCP spy cite, TikTok, actually miss the lockdowns, as it gave then a well-deserved break from the rat race. This is not as silly as it might first seem, as for many people, lockdowns would have been preferable to the daily grind. But of course, numerous videos of the time showed the opposite, with people undergoing severe stress and psychological trauma, as their livelihoods were threatened through business closures. I think only a minority would have been in the TikTok camp, and while a break from the rat race is an understandable response, it just shows how alienated modern life has become, that a plandemic can offer relief from the existential pain of daily being.
“Most people won't be looking back fondly on 2020, or missing the days of lockdown, social distancing and uncertainty that were brought on by the global pandemic.
The World Health Organization estimates that three million people died from Covid-19 in the first year of the pandemic worldwide, and many are still suffering from the negative impact on their mental health.
Yet, Gen Z TikTok users from the US and the UK are reminiscing about how much they are missing this period of their lives, calling quarantine their 'best year ever', and a 'well-deserved break.'
Search terms like '2020 nostalgia', 'missing 2020' and 'missing lockdown' are trending on the platform, which was created in 2016 but became a go-to for teenagers and 20-somethings in the throes of the pandemic.
For experts, this feeling of nostalgia stems from the fact that lockdown offered a break from the pressures of our busy lives and obligations, where people who were not key workers used social media as a window to the world and a form of digital escapism.
Since late 2022, TikTok pages have been circulating '2020 nostalgia' videos, featuring clips that were popular in March of that year.
One video includes footage of Boris Johnson announcing the implementation of the national lockdown on March 23 2020, with the former Prime Minister saying: 'You must stay at home.'
In the same clip, the creator went through the main trends that swept the UK during the first three months of the pandemic until lockdown was gradually lifted in May of that year.
They included Joe Wicks workouts, foamy Dalgona coffee and the home baking trend, followed by pictures of empty shelves in supermarkets due to stockpiling, and families clapping for carers.
The video received two million likes and gathered more than 18,100 comments from people reminiscing about the early days of lockdown.
'I miss that stage of the pandemic,' one said, while another added: 'I miss 2020 TikTok.;
One described the pandemic as 'the last time I was mentally stable.'
'It's sad that this era won't come back,' one wrote, talking about the early days of TikTok before the app blew up.”
By contrast to those who loved the lockdowns, there are multitudes of young people who developed depression and other mental illnesses from the isolation that the lockdowns produced, and these ill-effects will be felt for years:
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-pulse/2023/04/07/curbing-covids-assault-on-kids-mental-health-00090866
https://twitter.com/ninnyd101/status/1644606897515888642?s=20&utm_
“The COVID-19 house of cards continues to crumble. Epidemiologist Gerald Gartlehner on the benefits of quarantine for the unvaccinated: "It was a purely political decision. They wanted to somehow satisfy the vaccinated population by making life difficult for the unvaccinated. From an epidemiological point of view, it had no real effect at all.”
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