I think the last couple years have been especially bad. We've had a pandemic that isn't 100% over that removed a lot of the non-Internet interactions from most people's lives, we have a major land war in Europe now that could turn into a civilization-ending nuclear war at the drop of a hat, we had a contentious election in the U.S. about a year and a half ago that culminated in the Capital being ransacked, we've had ongoing droughts, wildfires, and heat waves that will probably just keep getting worse, we have supply chain disruptions, and so on.
It's really no wonder people are paying attention to the Internet, because at any moment some new calamity will be upon us. (It was kind of also true for me during the Trump presidency: I felt compelled to check the political news multiple times a day as if somehow my personal supervision and online comments would keep Trump from doing anything too crazy.) I've started to wonder if I'm exhibiting ADD-like symptoms, and I'm also wondering if it's not just me, that it's happening to most people at the same time.
Maybe things will go a little bit back to normal as in-person social interaction ramps back up. (I'm in the Portland area. Here, Covid restrictions are basically over but a lot of people are still operating in a pandemic mode. We've just now been allowed to work from our cubicles again, and only a couple of my coworkers actually do it on kind of a once-a-week cadence.) I don't think things are going back to anything like what I'd like to think of as normal, though. The world's just a really turbulent place right now.
It's really no wonder people are paying attention to the Internet, because at any moment some new calamity will be upon us. (It was kind of also true for me during the Trump presidency: I felt compelled to check the political news multiple times a day as if somehow my personal supervision and online comments would keep Trump from doing anything too crazy.) I've started to wonder if I'm exhibiting ADD-like symptoms, and I'm also wondering if it's not just me, that it's happening to most people at the same time.
Maybe things will go a little bit back to normal as in-person social interaction ramps back up. (I'm in the Portland area. Here, Covid restrictions are basically over but a lot of people are still operating in a pandemic mode. We've just now been allowed to work from our cubicles again, and only a couple of my coworkers actually do it on kind of a once-a-week cadence.) I don't think things are going back to anything like what I'd like to think of as normal, though. The world's just a really turbulent place right now.