Apparition of Jack

Didnt you get an education? Where did you learn to read and write? How did you learn to deal with other people (like learning how to not be a bully or learning how to get things done in a group?) again I’m not saying the education system we have is perfect, far from it in fact, but can we at least agree that having kids know how to read, know how to write, know how to do basic maths and know how to get along in a group is a good thing? I’m not saying educations only purpose is to turn everyone into rocket scientists or tech CEOs, obviously that’s not a reasonable goal. But it is destined to teach kids the basics of thinking, grammar and socialising they need to get by in the world (otherwise they turn into wolf children who only speak in barks lol)

That Mexican surgeon still also had an education though. It’s not like universities only exist in rich countries lol 💀 Also yes I agree, spending time in the country is one of the best things someone can do if they have access to it. But again, we’re talking about cities of millions of people. It’s not practical to just say if kids are struggling during lockdown everyone should just move to their lakeside cabin, especially when most people don’t own one of these.

Where do you live? Are you in the countryside? If you reject modern urban living, that’s good for you, really I’m under no illusions that modernity is perfect, but unfortunately that’s just not practical for a civilisation of hundreds of millions of people. Modern society has many problems but I don’t think trying to research cancer or make cars safer is one of them. We could absolutely make the world more environmentally sustainable, but that would still require education actually (how else do we build solar panels or use less water in our farming techniques?)

Sure dude. Because a bunch of asshole billionaires bribed their way into getting Ivy League degrees, that means we don’t need educated doctors, pilots, chemists, engineers, police commissioners, cancer researchers, etc etc. If a plane has a mechanic problem, no problem, just stick some duct tape on it! If someone has cancer? No problem, just take some aspirin! Who needs education right? If someone needs a kidney removed just ask dad for some scissors and he’ll sort it all out! 😂

Don’t make me turn into an asshole, dude. You might as well say eating food isn’t important to kids because they live off “kid energy” or some other vibes-based bullshit. Kids need school. I’m sorry you don’t think this is true, but it is. Maybe you’re right and education is a scam and kids don’t have feelings and we can basically throw them into the Amazon jungle and except them not to die, but I don’t buy it. I live on planet earth. Here on earth, education is important for not turning kids into illiterate malcontents. Feel free to fly on the next plane flown by a pilot who dropped at in Year 5 if education means so little to you.

OH YEAH. COVID also has associated neurological problems. Even mild cases can lead to brain fog, tiredness, etc. No shit you’re not going to be doing as well at school if your brain isn’t working 100%, no amount of “responsible parenthood” can fix that alone

Also, what about the fucking parents? A mum and dad can only organise so many socially-distanced play dates or try and teach their kids Grammar or whatever before they themselves have to get back to work, look after other family members, etc. I mean the literal reason we have schools is so that parents don’t have to look after and teach their kids 100% of the time. Schools is fucking ESSENTIAL to early childhood development; kids were denied this opportunity because of a DEADLY VIRUS ravaging the world.

Again, you’re putting the cart before the horse. Yes, families DID do this, but there’s only so many socially-distanced camping trips you can have before the dire need for in-person education (you’re not teaching Maths to your kids at Umina beach), socialising with other kids their age on a daily basis etc becomes pressing. Also, let’s not forget that many families can’t afford to do that shit all the time and rely on school to be the main source of education/trips/socialising for their kids. And again, ITS NOT ME JUST MAKING THIS UP. It’s observable fact. You have a problem with my argument, feel free to refute the evidence. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12574550/#:~:text=Impacts of COVID-19-Related,onset%3B Amplify%2C 2021).

Do you not understand that parents literally weren’t allowed to? Parents DID try. Parents DID organise those things. The problem is the seriousness of COVID was far too great and too widespread for a few online play dates to remedy. For fuck’s sake you might as well say kids dying during the London Blitz was parents not buying their kids hard hats to stop German bombs. The problem isn’t the parents, it’s the world they’re in.

Ok and? COVID just exacerbated those already-existing trends. Even your average game addict kid will occasionally go to a birthday party or something. With COVID no one could do that though. The whole point was that we were living through lockdowns and social distancing to stop the spread. Again, I’m not making this up. There are countless articles of the very real effects this has had. Again, just look them up. The evidence is obvious.

As a young kid? God all the time. I feel like pretty much every weekend I had some sort of park party, or swimming trip, or whatever else planned out for me. I mean isn’t that what most people urban people in the modern world do? When you have kids you take them out, go to lunch etc. That’s why parks, museums, libraries etc exist. People like to socialise and have activities, especially developing minds. Please tell me this isn’t an outlier, I feel like this was the norm for pretty much most modern people, right?

Yes because everyone - and especially young kids - are still traumatised by the impacts of the pandemic. Early childhood development is a delicate thing. If kids aren’t out there learning social skills, making mistakes, playing with other kids etc it stunts their development and makes engaging with the world harder. Just look it up, this is like well-documented human psychology (as well as just basic common sense.) Having kids miss out on these milestones creates psychological problems for these kids that, again, society has refused to address. The reason your average 8-16 year old these days is a shut-in phone addict is because for two years this was literally the only way they could survive. Plus considering how callous adults have been about COVID and recovery since the pandemic ended, it’s no wonder they’re not wanting to do anything other than play Minecraft all day.

I’m not going to get into the details about urban vs rural living, but even if you believe this, being able to go out to the park of the cinemas with your friends/family in a city is still much healthier for your average child than not being able to do that. I grew up in the city and I turned out fine, precisely because I was able to go to the zoo, the water park etc. If I had been a kid not being able to do that for years at a time it would’ve screwed with my mental development. I really feel for anyone under like 25 these days.

Yeah man toddlers being locked up in dense houses instead of being out at the park or on field trips certainly had no impact whatsoever right

Being free to run around the countryside in a pre-industrial society =/= being locked up in an urban appartment or home for 2+ years having digital screens as your only source of education/human interaction while a pandemic rages around you. This isn’t rocket science. fuck it I’ll make it painfully obvious for you. Did YOU go to school in some isolated rural hamlet?

What century are you talking about man? Are you from the 1800s? 💀 I literally just searched it up, here was the first article. It’s a real thing that happened. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/mar/18/how-covid-changed-children-britain edit: quote from the article: “Five years on the fallout continues. Uncertainty, increased inequality, accelerated screen use and crippling anxiety are just a few of the Covid legacies affecting children and young people. Covid babies are now five and struggling to meet basic developmental milestones; 1.6 million children in England are still persistently absent from school; and students whose university years were stolen by the pandemic are still struggling with low mental health“ WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT COVID.

It depends in which part of the world you are, but a lot of kids functionally spent 2+ years locked inside. Even if lockdowns only lasted like six months, most schools didnt really do full reopenings until like 2023. Not to mention even after schools reopened, a lot of kids / families simply checked out of school altogether cause of the psychological disruption and basically only showed up for lessons like one a month or something. I mean, I’m not making this up. Just search “kids education COVID disruption” or something on Google and you’ll find thousands of articles, all across the world. This is nothing to say of teenagers / young adults who missed a lot of traditional milestones (prom, graduation, moving out of home, getting a degree etc) because COVID fucked everything over.

See, this is more of what I’m talking about. Everyone had different experiences. Some people got through the pandemic rather easily; others got super frustrated and turned into like aggressive extroverts the day lockdowns ended. some people used it to grow skills, watch shows, etc, while others, idk, tried to beef with police who were telling them not to cough all over the restaurant they were at, lol. What about kids? Kids these days fucking suck at school, and that’s largely because they spend much of their most formative years learning through online zoom meets. We NEED to talk about it; it’s impacted everything but we remain silent.

Also, it had direct impacts on events still happening today. Lybvov has pointed out that Putin only invaded Ukraine because she spent too much time on brainrot internet during lockdown and came to believe his own shit about Russian destiny. Hamas only committed October 7 because Gazans were feeling super frustrated because of Covid and wanted to take it out on the Israelis. How about all the anti-social behaviour we’ve been seeing? Jan 6th happened a year into the Pandemic. What about all the crime, speeding, greed that has occurred as a result of it? We all went super insane for like 2 years after COVID and we haven’t yet accepted that fact. im not alarmist when I say COVID had dramatic implications for the whole world that we haven’t even yet BEGUN to address. This is just like incredibly basic surface-level understanding of history and societies.

Was it really though? Lockdowns changed how we thought about working in office and how much we relied on social media. A lot of people are still struggling with strong symptom of it (literally Yimpa in this thread has long covid.) The fact that we haven’t poured millions of dollars into helping people deal with on-going symptoms is criminal in my opinion. What about the social aspect? Half of society proved themselves to be petutulant children who thought wearing a $5 mask to prevent people from literally dying made them fucking Soviet prisoners in a gulag. It’s absurd. What about supply chain issues and the economy? People blame Biden for inflation or whatever but when your entire society grinds to a halt, the economy is going to take a hit no matter what. What about collective health and responsibility? Millions of people died. Could that number have been lower if society was more prepared and culturally aware of disease mitigation? It’s not lost on me that America - the richest country in human history - was also the home to the most COVID deaths. Are we prepared for the next pandemic? How many more thousands of people will die again needlessly because people haven’t gotten the memo that masks = good? Can you imagine if no one discussed WW2 or the Holocaust after 1945? We’d be culturally adrift. I don’t think we’ve “discussed all there is to discuss about it”, I think we prefer to ignore the question because it reminds us of our own mortality and that hurts our fee-fees. EDIT: What about worker’s rights and nurses? It wasn’t billionaires who got us through the pandemic (they all fucked off the Hawaii), it was front-line store keepers, factory workers, garbage men, truck drivers, etc. Shouldn’t that account for something? And nurses and doctors obviously too. Thousands of nurses - again, people literally saving lives - had to give up their jobs after because the stress on the health system and the mass level of denial put them through traumatic shock. Hell there are literally thousands of nurses struggling with actual PTSD today. That’s not “a few years ago”, that’s TODAY. For fuck sake. Why do I even bother. Pearls before swine and all that.

Are you sure? I feel like I almost never see it come up on Twitter, youtube, everywhere basically. I don’t see people talking about how lockdowns affected them, the need for more research, etc. It’s almost always other issues (Trump, Russia, AI, whatever), which while obviously important, have all also been influenced by the pandemic we all went through.

Well, see, that’s what I’m talking about. Your symptoms are a very real thing that need to be socially addressed, lol. If most people just pretend it didnt happen, then too many other people with long COVID won’t be able to express themselves and get help if they seek it. I’m glad you’ve found some humour in it though, life can be rough but it’s always good to look for the silver linings 😂

I find the distinction between “capitalism” and “socialism” to be largely made up. Ideally, an economy should take elements from each of them in order to achieve its specific goals. Want to encourage economic growth and stimulate entrepreneurship? Cut taxes and regulations so people have an easier time starting a business. Want to ensure everyone has fair wages and safe working conditions? Implement labour laws and give employees a say in how businesses - especially large businesses - are run. I will say though, as it currently stands, I think the pendulum has swung a little too far in the direction of “Wild West capitalism.” The fact that healthcare is still a commodity or new housing complexes are bought up by rich investment firms seems ridiculous to me. But even then, something like cutting back red tape on approving new housing developments (so long as they’re not also immediately bought up by these firms) also seems to make sense. I think we should focus on heavily regulating major businesses (tech, finance, etc.) and ensuring a basic minimum of quality of life (so safe housing, decent wages, national healthcare etc) whilst also encouraging small and medium-sized businesses to stimulate economic activity. I call it Abundance Populism the best of both worlds.

Not exactly what you’re looking for, but here’s a video showing the countless times conservatives (including Trump) called for political violence. People forget what an abusive asshole he really is.

The internet feels like one giant process of shadow work for humanity to deal with all the hidden corruption and egotism we haven’t yet fully dealt with. It’s why it’s so hard to find truth here. There are billions of competing voices all trying to claim the mantle of reality, and whatever is genuinely true and authentic gets drowned out. Idk why this is happening but I can only hope it’s some sort of larger process to increase human consciousness and development in the long run. I just wish it didn’t feel so fucky in the meantime.