We're living in a post-pandemic world (which, yes, of course, COVID is still very much a thing), and while life seems to have gone back to normal, I think most of us will agree that things haven't gone back 100% to the way they were before 2020.
Well, people had a lot of thoughts about it, as the thread got over 6K replies. Below are the top, best, and most often-repeated comments:
1. "A lot of smaller businesses completely died because of it."
"The year before, I considered opening a little pizza restaurant and venue bar. I did a lot of work selling pizzas and putting on shows as events in other venues. I asked around: Should I open my pizza place or buy a home? Everyone said to buy a home, so my wife and I did, but I was a little disappointed having not started my pizza restaurant. Then COVID hit. Ended up being a godsend. So lucky. The rest of my life would have been ruined."
2. "I work in the nightlife industry in Montreal, and what used to be a very vibrant nightlife seven days a week is now packed bars and clubs on weekends only. And by weekends I mean Friday/Saturday."
"Yes, my area is a ghost town at night, even on the weekends. Compared to before a lot of places either close at like 8 p.m. or are only open on the weekends."
3. "My sense of time. I'm at a point now where I'll be thinking of something from a couple of months ago, and then I'll be corrected that it actually happened nearly three years ago."
"Yeah, 2020 and 2021 are big blobs to me. I mix them up constantly. Also, the whole, 'This didn't happen six months ago; it was 2022' is sooo true."
4. "Cheap food. The supply chain either still hasn't stabilized, or it has, and we are being taken advantage of."
"I was working in grocery analytics at the time, and yes, we're being taken advantage of. Retail prices went up many multiples of the wholesale cost increase in 2020/21, and the trend has continued each year."
—BurtRebus
5. "The pandemic has ruined many social relationships and human connection more than we realize."
"I'm still trying to get friendships back to the same regular hang-out amount. Texts and online games just arent the same."
6. "The quality of products seems to be decreasing, shrinkflation is ever increasing, and still prices seem to be rising faster than I have ever seen in my 40-plus years of doing the adult thing."
"They found out through the guise of 'shortages and unprecedented times' they could price gouge, lower the quality, and people will still pay so they never lowered prices after. We will never see 2018 prices ever again. Except on TVs and other shit you don’t need."
7. "Availability. I’m a night owl and used to grocery shop at 2 a.m. Just me and my headphones. It was glorious."
"I live in New York, and even here stores and restaurants (take-out places) close ludicrously early compared to before the pandemic. I'm talking 9 or 10 pm on a Saturday. In New York. It used to be that I could go out with friends and come back to my neighborhood after midnight and grab something to eat on the way back home. Now, I'm lucky if two places are even open, and I often just have to hope I've got something in the fridge. It's not a tragedy, but it's annoying."
8. "My social battery. I am so drained all the time that I never want to do anything outside of work, even when it’s something I previously enjoyed. I’d rather stay home."
I'll go most workdays without talking. It gives you a kind of brain fog that's hard to shake off after work.
9. "Movies. So many new movies released in theaters these days flop when they probably would have done better had they been released before COVID times. People just wait for them to be on streaming these days."
"Movie theaters are all on life support, flashback to 2019 when we had multiple billion-dollar movies in one summer."
10. "Basically, every form of the performing arts is in trouble. I was a touring comic before the pandemic. It's not very well known, but I made a living. I have been able to eke out a bit of an existence, but the possibilities are really dwindling. So many of my colleagues have already stopped. It's not for lack of talent or popularity. The operating environment of the industry has fundamentally changed. I have always prided myself on my resilience. I built an incredibly unlikely career by slogging it out. But even for me, it's now impossibly difficult."
"I could be wrong, but I think people have shifted their entertainment sources. It used to be if I wanted entertainment, I had TV and movies and such, and now there are ten billion choices at my fingertips, and the amount of entertainment money is still the same, so it gets spread out thinner."
11. "Healthcare. The industry and the people in it who saw a lot of preventable dying and sickness are broken. It’s not the same as it was before, and it probably won’t ever be."
"This is what hardly ever gets mentioned. I know several in the field who have left, including me, because the burnout was so strong. It doesn't help that most people now only focus on or discuss how they 'miss the lockdown' and how nice it was to be home, less traffic, etc. People in frontline jobs, especially healthcare, were in it every day, hoping before the vaccine that they wouldn't get sick and die or their families because of them. All while watching the reality of it play out before them, being responsible for helping those afflicted.
There was a lack of help with staffing, and some people got no pay raises, all while prices of everything skyrocketed. I hope I never have to go back."
12. "The cost of repairing and replacing vehicles. People don't realize even four years later, parts have gone up, and there are still supply chain shortages at times. I've seen people have their trucks in the shop for up to 4–6 weeks just waiting on a part."
"This is especially true of collision repair. It can take months now."
13. "Organic dating."
"Dating period. I've gone on maybe half a dozen dates in the last three years, mostly by my own choice. Like, finding someone who can carry a conversation, has all their teeth, is actually single, and not a crazy conspiracy theorist shouldn't be this hard, and it's not worth the mental effort anymore."
14. "Faith in science and medicine for a lot of people."
"It's more faith in facts in general. If the truth upsets them, they decide to go with an alternative. Reasoning with many people now is like trying to have a debate with a Roomba."
15. "Businesses' cleanliness and hours. Go to some local box store, walk around, and see just how trashy it looks now. Clothes on the floor, because they don't have enough staff to pick up the mess. Half empty shelves. It's like they're in a perpetual state of closing down."
"I went to a department store a few weeks ago for the first time in a long time and could not believe how awful it looked. I honestly thought I had walked into an abandoned, looted, and vandalized store. It seemed like only one or two people were working in the entire place, too, and they looked exhausted."
16. "I feel like the stuff I do for money has come to feel so f'ing meaningless. Everything's so big a business needs 25 other businesses to survive. We've created millions of problems to sell made-up solutions. I don't think I'm alone in this?"
"You're not alone. The world certainly feels more corporatized than before. Everything you do, everywhere you go is some big corporation trying to sell you one or more things, a lot of which you don't really need but will feel like you need (or at least should have) by the time they're done with you."
—matrix_man
17. "Tipping culture expanded, tip expectations went up, and never came back down."
"I was at an airport recently and there was a quick grab station with self-checkout, and no worker there. I was still prompted to tip — who am I tipping and why?!"
18. And lastly, "A lot of people's basic manners."
"The 'social contract.' For example just being decent to one another. That’s been on decline, but post-pandemic it has not recovered. Things such as respecting public spaces or others is gone for the most part. It feels like no one cares anymore and selfishness rules."
You can read the original thread on Reddit.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.