34
votes
What are three things you wanna do once the pandemic is over?
To simplify, consider the pandemic over once a reasonable person feels safe enough to go to a department store on Black Friday.
To simplify, consider the pandemic over once a reasonable person feels safe enough to go to a department store on Black Friday.
Wow, that's tough :(
In your position, I would similarly not be able to think about anything else.
I can only imagine how awesome that reunion will be. Something to treasure, at least!
These are my three things:
Assuming this isn't a euphemism, why checkers? Is this unique to the two of you, or is it a cultural thing in Brazil?
Re: Point #2 - I have also threatened all of my male friends with "hugs that last so long they become uncomfortable and then comfortable again" once we get back to a place where such things are safe again
That's 100% a euphemism and I do intend to fuck until my dick falls off :P
AFAIK this is not a common expression.
Checkers is quite popular in Brazil, but I'm not a fan.
And maybe we should always hug our friends just in case? IDK, I think I'll adopt the practice.
Ooh, you fooled me! I thought you were just really into checkers, hahaa!
Come on, it's a nice game, but it's not that good, is it? hahaha
LOL I mean, you like what you like!!
I was trying to do this in the Before Times, but I'm really going to make a thing of it after living through this!
Hug everyone! I already lacked physical touch in my life even before the pandemic happened. And when what little physical contact I had remaining was taken away... after six weeks, I almost had panic attacks. I've made the necessary arrangements to safely get what I need for the duration, but I'm going to make sure I get lots of physical touch after this is all over. I'm going to hug all my friends, and lots of other people. I've heard about "cuddle parties", where people just cuddle each other non-sexually. I might track some down. To quote from Rocky Horror: "I've got an itch to scratch. I need assistance. Touch-a touch-a touch-a touch me!"
Re-start the in-person boardgames events I hosted once a week. For now, we've shifted online thanks to https://boardgamearena.com/. But I want to start hiring tables again at the venue we used to go to, and sit with real live people to play games, instead of just seeing them in video chats.
Go to live theatre. I was missing this already, and had just started going again occasionally when the pandemic hit. I'm going to see all the live theatre.
I’ve heard about those. I’m not an orgy guy, but somehow those sound weirder than orgies. Cuddling is more intimate than sex in my view. Not the kind of thing I’d wanna do with a stranger. Sex, not so much.
Literally one of my favorite movies.
The same!
IDK dude, IDK. To each their own I guess.
I agree. When I was trying to find a source of cuddles, I reviewed all the people I know - and found out there are more people I'd feel comfortable having sex with than cuddling with. It's easier for me to have casual sex with a stranger than hug them.
But, "weird" is contextual. Wearing clothes is normal on the street, but weird in a nudist environment. If everyone else in a room is cuddling, then it would be weird not to.
I don't know how I'll feel about cuddle parties but, like they say, you gotta try everything once!
I’d probably enjoy cuddling with people I have at least some kind of affection towards already. You can cuddle me if you want @Algermon_Asimov. I think you’re an okay dude!
For all you know, I have bad hygiene, and I smell horrible!
Thank you for the invitation, but I'd like to get to know someone in person first.
Are you rejecting me? IDK know if I can take this 😭😭😭😭😭
Yes, I'm rejecting you. Like you said, cuddling is more intimate than sex. I might fuck you, but I don't know you well enough to cuddle you. ;)
So sex is on the table? I’m not gay but it’s good to know I have options!
I can live with that.
I don't really think everyone should go out distributing hugs. People are different and the push for PDA and self-expression can be a form of "tyranny of the extroverted". So I'd say be as physical as you're comfortable with.
Physical touch is necessary for humans' mental health. It doesn't have to be a public display of affection, but everyone's mental health is improved by regular physical contact with other people.
Have you considered getting a weighted blanket? It's definitely not the same thing, but a very good substitute as it provides the kind of whole-body pressure that reduces physiological and thus psychological stress. I'm about to buy one myself for similar reasons.
I tried weighted blankets last year. I bought one, tried it, exchanged it for a lighter one, tried that, and returned that. They cooked me. :(
Ah, bummer. Do you know which brand? Because Gravity Blankets, although slightly more expensive because they were the first, I believe, also a have a cooling version. I would expect some other companies to also have them.
Have you tried them outside of sleeping? Or I guess it's just too hot anyways?
I forget the brand, but it was a cooling version.
Why would I do that? I was looking for something to help me sleep better. They didn't help.
For the purpose of whole-body pressure to simulate and aspect of hugs, which decreases stress i.e. comfort in the absence of access to humans (not as a permanent replacement). Which is what I was getting at with my original comment.
Oh. Okay.
You should change the URL for boardgamearena. I clicked on that and it took me to a "trap site" that links further to who knows what.
Fixed. Thanks. And sorry.
My life hasn't really changed since the pandemic, I already worked from home full time. It's been nice having my wife working from home though, we get to go on more 1:1 dates now that the day homes have re-opened.
The only thing I really miss is occasionally visiting my friends in a pub and taking my kid to indoor play centres and pools.
I'm in a similar situation. I already worked from home part of the week. (I used to work from home full time, but it's been a few years since I had that situation.) My spouse is already fairly homebound due to a chronic condition (she can't work or drive at the moment). So we were rarely going out before. We would take an occasional trip to the country, but even doing that has been difficult in the last year. So I guess I'll probably try to get out a little more once things open up, but it's going to be a while before that happens here. We're about to start another lockdown because the people around here haven't been able to follow directions for some time.
Play fucking hockey. I've missed it so much. My body feels like it's aging so much more without hockey (I'm 38), but more than that, I simply need the thrill of gliding fast over the ice, handling the puck, and firing it at the net. I miss my hockey buddies a lot, too. I don't have many friends and have never really been a "dude" or a "bro," but I'm getting the hang of male camaraderie with my teammates. I like 'em.
Go to a restaurant. I can't afford to eat out very often, but I enjoyed it on occasion. I'll sit at a table with my family, have a few beers, and enjoy a nice meal that I don't have to cook or clean up after.
Do whatever the hell I want without wearing a mask or being so cautious. I'm full of stress simply grocery shopping nowadays, when it used to be a fairly relaxing, enjoyable experience (at least when the store wasn't busy). I'm also looking forward to the stores having most things in stock regularly again. Shopping, now, is an annoying game of finding an adequate replacement for what I actually want. I'm pretty sick of that.
Do our Japan trip. It was planned for April this year, go figure. Thankfully, we got back almost of the money already invested. Maybe next year, even though even that seems optimistic.
Go clubbing. I must say that, generally, life is feeling more normal already here in Europe and I've been to outdoor parties and whatnot without feeling particularly unsafe. But I always liked the crowds and random people around me when going out and it will be a while before that will be allowed/not-stupid again.
Delete about half a dozen corona-related bookmarks that are constantly looming under my browser's address bar. They serve little purpose, honestly, but they make me feel a little bit in control or at least informed. Lately, there was an uptick in numbers for my country, I'm worried.
Look at @nothis with his or her fancy trip to Japan and high life clubbing in Europe :P
You'll be doing all those awesome things and more in no time, I'm sure ;)
Me too, but in my case it's about like 15 mobile tabs.
But then again, I barely use them and I've kinda stopped following the numbers too tightly because of the efforts several governments are undertaking to suppress them.
This was a good idea, I've enjoyed reading everyone's posts.
Meet my girlfriend and play a few games of checkers. Obviously, that's my first priority.
Leave the United States. I was living abroad for two years and I really miss my old life. I barely missed the window to return home - my flight back was scheduled on the day after the borders abruptly closed. Fortunately, number one is willing and able to roll the dice and give number two a try, and I've loaded up on Greek food and Taco Bell during my stay so I won't be missing anything when I'm gone. I've had enough of the United States for a while.
Go back to work. I'm a teacher and due to the pandemic and mind-blowing incompetence of the people running my school, I haven't had any contact with my students since January. I try not to think about it very often, but I really miss my job. I can't wait to be loud and dumb and make a bunch of four-year-olds laugh their asses off while they learn a couple things.
Bonus round. I really want to play pickup basketball. Not having to work or worry about finances has given me a lot of extra free time which I've spent shooting baskets at a handful of courts around in my area. I love basketball, but I've always sucked at it so I rarely play. Now that I'm getting a few hours of practice every day, I'm getting petty good.
I’m really hoping this checkers thing catches on!
How many times do we have to reference it before it becomes A Tildes Thing?
Enough times to make me uncomfortable, that's what /s
But seriously, is there any site with sexual slang specific to it? Because sexual slang/euphemisms are some of the oldest stuff there is so people don't feel like coming up with any more of them.
If this does take off, that would also imply this site's culture will be driven in large part by socially active adults which, given how valuable lonely teenagers' free time is for social media platforms' stats, might be a first outside places like Facebook, Instagram and private messaging apps.
Or maybe I'm just very unhinged.People are always coming up with new slang/euphemisms for sex. Every generation, every sub-culture, comes up with something new, partly because their parents' slang is so old and uncool.
Have you heard of "Netflix'n'chill"? That's a sexual euphemism which didn't exist a decade ago.
Huh. I guess it's a fun social game you do when you're bored/out of pastime stuff to do. I don't bother, unsurprisingly play the role of naive kid every so often, become somewhat paranoid as a reaction and also have a bunch of shameful personal moments that will never leave my memory and make me hate past me for a moment, to no avail obviously.
I did, and fell face first for the prank. Where did all the harmless memes go?
It's not a game. Like all other slang and linguistic changes, sexual slang just arises naturally among people.
Oh, okay. (You can tell this is not what I know about, right?)
Anyway, my original question was that, since until somewhere around 2010, the Internet (at least social media) was relatively separated from the physical world and the people who would use social media/forum websites enough to create their own website culture (probably a bunch of 90s forums I have never heard of, all the 'chan' boards, reddit, digg, early YouTube Hacker news) would be people who use the Internet as a escape from or replacement for the physical/'real' world and just in general be introverted, right? And even after the Internet became universally used by all types of people, since social media platforms emphasize watch time, lonely teenagers who have upwards of 12/15 (more?) hours per day for social media to capture are still more valuable targets for social media companies than adults with jobs, friends, chores, dates and in some cases children to take care of/enjoy.
With that constraint lifted, socially active adults seem to be a large part of Tildes and the site's culture. Is that new?
I happen to have some interest in the history of the English language, so I geek out about it occasionally.
It's new to Tildes, but the concept itself was first studied back in 1957. It's called the technology adoption lifecycle. Social media is in the "late majority" stage, which means a wider variety of demographic groups - including your time-rich teenagers and socially active adults - are joining social media.
But, teenagers were among the "early adopters" of Facebook. I joined Facebook nearly 11 years ago, as part of the "early majority". The teens were already there. In fact, over the next 5 years or so, as I and similar daggy middle-aged adults joined Facebook, the teenagers left because "OMG now my mom's on Facebook!!1! its not cool anymore!"
Teenagers aren't new to social media. Most new social media platforms, from MySpace and Facebook to Instagram and TikTok were adopted by teenagers first, and adults followed.
The innovators of social media platforms are the geeky, introverted people you talk about, but the teenagers came very soon after in almost every case.
I agree and I've heard of that cycle. Only that I would've thought it would have happened a bit earlier since half of the US was already on social media by 2010, so I would have thought stuff like this should have been old news by now and everywhere on the Internet, so I assumed:
Social media recommendation algorithms segregated everyone into their corner not just by politics, but lifestyle
If your site has a mainpage like r/all or r/popular, it didn't prioritize you as a demographic so I don't see childbearing memes and jokes about how tiring sex is/how annoying it is to clean up all the cum you 2 left in the bed because said teenagers (who as you said, are time rich and thus a/the primary target for any attention based social media platform) won't relate unless it's explicitly marked as such. (See r/absolutelynotmeirl.)
So I assumed that was the reason I didn't and don't see stuff like 'checkers' in my social media feeds since Tildes has neither of these incentives at play, I would see these people more often.
(I do not remember where I got the 2 examples from, so probably not accurate but it's enough of an example.)
Fair enough.
Anyway as the time-rich teenager archetype you mentioned, thanks for this conversation because, to be honest, the fact that 3 people immediately said they were gonna have sex after the 'crown virus' is behind us left a mark too much on me because I felt it was completely unexpected.
Also, just as an annoying nitpick:
Then teenagers. Eat it geezer /s
Travel to another city by bus.
I've been stuck here for a while, marinating in my own thoughts because I wasn't able to travel out for my birthday in the early summer.
As soon as I feel confident things are okay, I'm dropping everything and going for a week.
Hang out with both my friends!! We want to go to an art museum, I'd like to hang and eat and catch up. I love them so much and miss hanging out with them.
See all my niblings!! I have 5 nieces and 2 nephews, the oldest being 5 I believe. I used to see them pretty frequently but now not so much. I miss the lil terrors. I love all of them and seeing them grow and become people. I'll be very happy to see them again.
Swim!! Even if it's just an indoor pool, fuck I miss swimming right now. I'm not brave enough to use the outdoor pool where I live, especially with the current spike. I'm just trying to avoid people as much as possible.
I miss seeing people that aren't my SO. I love him but I also love my family and friends and miss being able to see them in the real world!
Gods, I hear you about swimming. I was going to the pool at the YMCA, and the old ladies in my aquatics class were the best friends who cheered me through hip replacement last year. I haven't seen any of them since February, and I miss them sorely. Swimming is the one aerobic activity that doesn't leave me aching, as well.
Ugh that's rough. I feel you, swimming is the only cardio I can do without my asthma acting up and half killing me.
Hopefully we'll both be able to get back at it again sometime this year (maybe next year lol)
You're a smart person. I usually find museums so boring :(
Today I learned the word "nibling". Kinda wish we had something like that in Portuguese. Gender is so hard-coded in romance languages it's ridiculous.
I live literally in front of the ocean, but the mayor closed the beaches and put the police to guard them. I could swim, but I might end up in jail afterward!
I don't think smarts have much to do with my enjoyment of museums lol. I've always liked them since I was a kid and have a background in art and some anthropology :D
Yes, niblings is a great word, it's less of a mouthful than having to say my nieces and nephews or niece and nephew. Better to have a larger group word. But yeah romance languages really be like that. Gender coding is super weird in language lol.
Hopefully you'll be able to swim before the year is over! That's such a tease, having the ocean RIGHT THERE but not being able to go. I hope people don't risk jail for a swim though!
I'm so lonely and sedentary a mass shutdown of nearly every major industry doesn't really affect my routine so I'll do nothing and just peacefully continue my life as a 10-word avatar on some site with like 300 people in it who are almost all adults I'll never meet from several thousands of miles away indefinitely and pretend that's a normal or mentally healthy thing to do :)
But more seriously (and taking the liberty to define 'end of pandemic' as 'I have to go to school again' which is supposedly gonna be September 8th), I'll probably be seeing many of my classmates for the last time of my life in this year (9th grade fundamental and 1st grade medium are separately schooled and people move a lot, so many of these people will just pick a school closer to them) which is a pretty good incentive to try to approach some of them or at least have their WhatsApp/phone numbers instead of gradually forgetting them over several years. Thing is, I don't really know how to go about that too well, and I've certainly never tried to do it.
Using that same definition, maybe try NNN again as a joke/just for the sake of it.
I was thinking about buying a barbel but I’m afraid it’ll become a testament to my laziness :P
I've been eyeballing the various heavy objects around my house and thinking "you know, if I just lifted that a few times every time I walked by this area of the house....".
I bought a kettlebell and am working out more focused on conditioning right now.
This is me, with my third being hug my friends. I'm a big hugger and at best seeing them six feet apart, and more likely just digitally communicating, has absolutely sucked.
SEE. MY. FRIENDS.
OMG Yes. Play DnD in person! Drink together ... in person! Chit chat .. in person! IN PERSON!!!
See friends in person to cook, hang out, game, really anything, and live theatre.
I will miss all the extra personal space when I'm out and curbside pickups though.
Campaign organizing in person! It's an awful year to have no face-to-face events when there's so damn much change needed. My small community's party organizers still haven't got good mechanisms in place to compensate for an inability to knock on doors or hold public speeches and rallies.
Visit Canada. I'm now 2 1/2 hours from the border and it's just galling that I still can't see friends and family there. There's also some great rock-hounding in Thunder Bay that I've been hankering after.
Restaurants, bars, film festivals, etc., presuming any of them survive this mess.
Adopt a cat at the local Humane Society.
Where I am the virus is more-or-less under control, but we still have restrictions on large indoor gatherings and on travel. I was allowed to visit my local family & friends again starting last month, in gatherings of 10 or less indoors and 50 or less outdoors. I definitely cried A LOT. I hope anyone who is still waiting gets to visit soon.
I think the first thing I'll do is go to a restaurant. They're technically open now, but I'm still leery about them personally so I'm putting that off until we have more medical breakthroughs with the virus.
I hope that eventually going to a concert or festival is feasible again, that'll probably be my first "PANDEMIC IS OVER FOR REAL" act. I used to travel to the USA a lot to go to concerts, but I'll be sticking with Canadian concerts for a while.
Move. Not sure there's ever a good time for a pandemic but this one was especially poorly-timed for me, as I was just about a month out from getting a new place.
Date.
Play soccer.
A lot of my default lifestyle is compatible with sheltering in place and social distancing lol, so it probably hasn't been as strenuous for me as for many of my friends.
Like many others, I'd like to hug my friends.
I also miss going on large group bike rides (and just hanging out at the bike shop in general).
See a movie in the theater. I'm not even sure why I miss this one, since we have a pretty good setup at home, but there's something novel about going somewhere, getting popcorn, and sitting in a big dark room with a bunch of strangers watching a new(ish) movie.
See my family and friends, that's it. Anything else would be nice, but doesn't matter in comparison to being stuck halfway across the country in a state where it would be technically illegal for me to visit my family in the Northeast without getting tested first (we don't even have enough capacity right now to keep up with the current case rate here...)
I am missing organized team sports this summer. I usually play Ultimate from May - October, but there's none of that right now. So playing an organized sport again would be near the top of my list.
My bubble is currently extended only to my parents, so I want to give my sister a big hug, and I want to hug my nephew, who is 1.
I would love to go out for a nice dinner with my wife. My oldest daughter is now old enough to babysit, and we can't really take advantage of it! Date nights were supposed to be a thing again!
Vacation vacation vacation.
Of course the irony is that I started this epidemic with a vacation, but the disease ruined it! It was supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime trip and we didn't get to go to half of the places we were scheduled to go.
And of course, my business is essential even though the parts of the business I work on is not, so I've actually been going to and from work this whole time. And my fiance has been furloughed this whole time so he is not getting any sort of vacation pay accruing.
But I have somehow managed to come up much better than most during this epidemic; people are spending a lot of money in my industry right now and I have managed to save a pretty decent figure - I've even managed to finish paying off my car and basically all of my debts. I've even got a small cache dedicated specifically for vacation.
I don't actually know what we'll do when we actually do vacation next, though; we've become spoiled by cruises and apparently the Pacific ocean is a wasteland compared to the Atlantic thanks to the coriolis effect.
I want to visit my grandson. My grandson was born 16 months ago. I met him just after he was born, and had planned to head back over Christmas, but a snow storm meant I couldn't make the trip during winter break, so replanned the trip to go over spring break. This was just before we went into lock-down, but at the time our little part of the world was the hot spot in the US, and it felt irresponsible to head to a little town in the middle of nowhere when I might be carrying the virus. Then I was going to go over the fourth of July, but with the uptick in cases, I once again felt like it would be irresponsible. My grandson doesn't know who I am, and I'm missing out on my favorite part of a human's life (infancy through toddlerhood). I just want to hold him and snuggle him and spoil him.
Edit: You said three things
I want to eat at freaking restaurant!
I want to go back to school, the online stuff isn't cutting it. Some of the classes have been good, but some of the teachers just aren't prepared. I don't want to waste my money on online classes just to get a degree, I want to be learning.
Just off the top of my head:
Honorable mention to seeing a movie in a theater, since I usually see at least 1-2 movies in an actual theater per year and I have a bunch of free tickets burning a hole in my pocket. Who knows when I'll be able to use them now.
Department stores on Black Friday are never safe. I have never seen someone so rabid over a toaster.
Really though, once campuses actually open up I'm planning on going back to school for computer science. Preferably not in the US, because things are..... not great here right now. Uprooting my entire life and getting on a plane across the Atlantic aside though, I want to be able to go to the beach again. From what I've heard, the Mediterranean is streets ahead of the Gulf of Mexico there. Way less densely packed too. Would be nice to go thrifting properly again too. People just aren't donating stuff right now, and there's a lot more people that need cheap clothes. Luckily leaving the house wasn't a huge part of my lifestyle to begin with. Really sucks to not be able to get a job though, I was really banking on getting something part-time.