To think this lockdown is very revealing

[prince55bananahammock]

We're in a pandemic and the outside stimulus of normal day to day life is removed and our usual rhythms have been interrupted.
At first it's about survival, getting food, dealing with finances, putting new habits in place (hand washing, social distancing etc) so we have plenty to keep us and our brains busy.
Plus we're all glued to the breaking news watching as the cases develop, death rates climb, the lives lost get younger and everything gets more scary - lots of things to process here.
Now we're a few weeks into UK lockdown and in a phase of 'the new normal'. We've accepted our fate to an extent and are finding ways to get through each day- in our own ways.
What I've observed is that there are some people being productive ( gardening, cleaning, using the time for homemaking, baking, sewing etc). Some are developing skills (learning, creating etc), some are making daft videos for laughs and others are curtain twitching and making their disapproval known, some are doing none of this and simply trying to get through the day.
But what I find revealing is the people who are drama queens and kings in their lives. They are missing their fix of attention/ chaos and are so desperate to be 'seen' and acknowledged. Because the rest of us are busy with our own situations, and not sending attention their ways, I find it very outing to observe what they text or upload next to provoke a reaction.
Does anyone else find this? It's easy to spot the drama llamas at the moment?

I feel sorry for Ellen, her joke was about being gay and wearing the same clothes every day being a bit like prison, not that her luxury mansion is soooo awful like prison. Plenty of people having drama jumping on that!!!!!
People are getting angry IRL very easily, is it that manners and the usual rules of society get ditched first in unusual times?
Every instance of bad behaviour (too close, jogging, cycling, driving, attacking workers) seems to be a particular category of person...

Some "celebrities" seem to be cashing in on the situation, some Loose Women stooping as low as begging for money as they have been furloughed, making daily live videos to entice people to give them money. My local area facebook page is full of people watching other people/neighbours and uploading photos of them having a BBQ in their garden or doing something else they deem to be selfish. People uploading when they've done a "good deed". I definitely need a digital detox!

Definitely getting fed up with the celebrities. Their attention seeking antics annoy me.
Then there are the Debbie Downers who get some sort of perverse pleasure from making people feel scared.

@OhLook. Ha ha. I was thinking for him to clutch when he’s offended.
See my mind isn’t as bad as he thinks😂

I find the lockdown revealing in other ways

How to control citizens

1. Tell them they’ll die
2. Tell them loved ones will die
3. If 1 and 2 don’t work, Tell them if they don’t fall in line, they have BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS.

All the while cancelling treatment for diseases we know how to treat, to reduce the numbers for something new.

Very worrying. Hardly anyone questioning it.

Looking at the comments here, I wonder if social media use will actually decline after this.

I am thinking of deleting 2 twats of my facebook, a married couple. Always posting up how we need to stay in as they are missing the grandchildren, how people are idiots and stupid for going out, and because of them we are in lockdown longer and they cant see their grandchildren.

They went on holiday and came home about a week before lock down, them and their friends posting photos of them on sun loungers wearing facemasks, laughing at the people at home having to wear them and how they need to get used to wearing them, ha ha ha, very funny.

Only not so funny now that they cant see their grandkids.

It will be interesting to see how people react to the lockdown extension announcement.
My bet is on the lockdown being lifted on Monday 29th June.

Possibly something like this thread.

People not being motivated with work is a bit of a red herring, those people might just be struggling mentally with the situation. I’ve had loads to do this week and it’s been an absolute struggle even though it’s my own business!

Penners “My bet is on the lockdown being lifted on Monday 29th June.”

You mean for the earliest stage? Though I’m not sure what the earliest stage would be.

@LilacTree1

Totally agree

The people who usually post or message me about drama with their child’s teacher (doesn’t understand their kid, is rubbish, whatever) or drama at work (so and so is a bitch etc) have now sort of transferred it on to ‘sobbing hysterically’ At the news, the latest fake thing they’ve been forwarded on WhatsApp about paramedics leaving babies to die or whatever horror story is going round, or having a panic attack in the street at seeing a jogger - ‘do they not know I am ASTHMATIC and COULD DIE’? (Reader we have never heard about this asthma before and never seen them use or indeed possess an inhaler in 20+ years of knowing them)

I mean I think we have all had a bit of a blub, but we don’t put it in the group chat, the Instagram story AND the Facebook feed complete with tear streaked face selfie.

On the other hand, some people who I thought would be freaking out, posting constantly etc have just been getting on with things and been really quiet. So I’ve been checking in with them more as it’s usually people not saying anything that are actually suffering.

People are getting angry IRL very easily,

People are incredibly stressed. That's all. Frightened, confused, unsettled, some of them grieving. Brings out the best and the worst in most of us.

If it helps someone to post lots on SM then what is the harm? You choose whether to respond or not. People are getting through it, and yes some will find it harder than others. Anxiety and depression are likely to be exacerbated and go untreated, too, which doesn't help.

Whitegrenache I’m so relieved someone agrees.

Yes you appear to be quite angry the way you leapt on me @LetsBeSensible

No need to get so irate for an opinion of mine on a public forum .

I've noticed how some people are lovely, many are stoic, thrifty, practical, kind and community minded.

But also some attention-seeking, selfish gifts who I would never want to share a supermarket with (let alone a trench)

The twats on local FB groups posting themselves singing to ‘cheer everyone up’, no thanks you roaster, sit down, shut up.
Using this to sell their MLM shite and trying to class it as donating, off you fuck.

I was saying something similar to dh earlier. I'm in Ireland and while our schools are closed a month now it was only 2 weeks ago that they brought in tighter restrictions like only exercising in a 2 mile radius from your home. Up to this I had been coping well. Wft and homeschooling to primary aged children while dh continued to work. What was giving me my lift was at 1pm every day (my lunch break) I would bundle them into the car and head up the remote mountain behind me and let them and the dog loose for 40 minutes.

When the new restrictions came in my world shrank and I was a bit down for a few days but readjusted and bounced back.

I was saying to him how many crutches we still had, wifi, tv, money, food, good health, safe house etc and I was wondering how many of these things would need to be removed from us for it to cut us to the bone and turn in on ourselves or each other.

You really get thr chance to reflect on your freedoms and privilege in its many forms.

I have found the dramatic posters always posting looking for attention or sympathy are being pretty much ignored or told everyone is struggling. I think no one has patience for them at all.

Who are the celebs in question who are posting annoying stuff? I’m very out of the loop!

What prompted me to start the thread was a friend telling me that she'd taken some food shopping to her elderly mother and had to come home on a motorway. On the drive back she had a scary encounter with a driver who (despite there being nothing on the road) cut her up and then got in front of her car and started braking. It was like he was trying to cause an accident. It shook her up.

Lone woman drivers should all have dashcams. Sadcase men are less likely to try and bully them if another man might end up seeing the proof.