Nobody’s 2020 has been exactly the same as anybody else’s. We’ve all had our own experience of a year unlike any other in living memory, our own coping mechanisms, our own battles to fight. We are "in the same rough seas, but in different boats."
But as the coronavirus pandemic brought the lives of people all over the world into a strange and necessary uniformity, most of us found ourselves having more in common with more people than ever before. Our jobs, if we were lucky enough to keep them, looked more similar. Our social lives, once scattered across cities and towns, shrank to the size of our living rooms. Our conversations, and those of strangers we passed on the street, always circled around to the same thing. Lockdowns or self-isolation, homebody hobbies, massively increased reliance on digital connection, and a worldwide reckoning meant that suddenly, there were fewer things to do, and more people doing them with us. Here are 10 phenomenons that have brought us together as we hit the mid-way point in a divisive 2020.
1. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
The latest title in Nintendo’s Animal Crossing franchise was released on March 20, the week after the WHO declared a pandemic, Tom Hanks contracted the coronavirus, and the NBA was cancelled — in short, mere days after the shit seemed to hit the fan all at once. The beginner-friendly gameplay, soothing repetitive chores, and sudden expanse of newly free time spurred arguably the biggest and most inclusive gaming phenomenon since Pokemon GO, with over 13 million copies sold in its first six weeks. Entire economies sprung up to help people acquire items to build the islands of their dreams, Bobby from Queer Eye offered advice on interior design, and public figures like Elijah Wood and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez visited regular folks’ little patches of imaginary paradise. That feature also created the ability to “visit” friends, hold meetings, and even stage political protests — all without leaving your couch.
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Even if you were one of the people who couldn’t get their hands on a Switch as lockdowns kicked in, having to grudgingly google Tom Nook or find out why everyone was suddenly talking about turnip prices was a collective experience in itself. And for the millions who got on board, Animal Crossing: New Horizons let us roam in a world of our own making, free of anything scarier than the odd tarantula.
2. Sweatpants (or no pants)
One thing that went out the window alongside handshakes and hugs was what one genius memorably dubbed “hard pants.” (Full disclosure: Said genius is an acquaintance.) Sweatpants, leggings, or if ambient temperatures allowed, no pants, swiftly replaced all kinds of lower-half garments that were for looking good, not feeling good. Whether you’re an essential worker, a from-home worker, or not working at all, when we weren't outside, we were all dressed down with nowhere to go. (And now, months into various levels of lockdown, there are now two kinds of people: those who change out of those pants for a grocery run, and the rest of us.)
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Our top halves, of course, have been utter chaos. From fancy sweatshirts to the now-standard “business on the top, pyjama party on the bottom” look, certain necessities of pandemic-era social interaction (see point 5 below) require us to not dispel the illusion that we might be wearing actual clothes just out of frame. No matter how put-together we work to look on top, our lower garments are a Schrodinger’s Hard Pants situation, and it is a pandemic faux pas to dispel the quantum uncertainty by asking, even as a joke.
3. The Last Dance and Tiger King
Like Animal Crossing, these very different documentary series tracking the rise and fall (and in Michael Jordan’s case, rise again) of compelling and unique figures dropped on Netflix at just the right time (i.e. March). With hundreds of thousands of people settling in to stay home, these two shows more than any others created a virtual, global watercooler discussion about the TV we were all watching at more or less the same time, right when we were starting to wonder if Game Of Thrones had killed that vibe forever. (It also put Netflix back on top of the streaming pile.)
The beauty of The Last Dance, an ESPN/Netflix coproduction, was that it gave sports fans something to cheer for again, but was still fascinating even if you didn’t give a shit about basketball itself. It’s about celebrity, race, hero worship, tribalism, masculinity, and the globalisation of U.S. culture when we had boundless optimism about the future. It's also a really well-told story that could get away with having Barack Obama as a talking head and crediting him as a “Former Chicago Resident.”
Tiger King, on the other hand, was a voyeuristic, exploitative, meme-ready mess with just enough bananas soap-operatics in the storytelling to pull you back in just when you thought you might tap out. “Carole Baskin killed her husband” replaced “Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself” as the conspiracy meme of the moment, with about as much consideration for the fact that these were real people. It’s as trashy as a polyester leopard-print caftan, as disposable as one of Joe Exotic’s poor teenage tigers, and as stuck in its specific 2020 moment as jokes about hand washing.
4. Hand washing
Before face masks and social distancing became the norm of a full-blown pandemic, we all got a refresher course in much more basic personal hygiene. We soaped up our paws and counted to 20, then sang happy birthday, then sang literally anything else, then made memes about singing literally anything else. We stress-picked at desiccated cuticles and asked coworkers for hand cream recommendations. Some men found themselves queuing for bathrooms for the first time in their lives as a shockingly large number of dudes sheepishly made their way back to the basin.
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This was one of the most truly universal experiences of the pandemic: something everyone needed to do, and for the most part, did. (We hope. Have you washed your hands recently? It's still a thing. Go do it now. We’ll wait.)
5. Video calls
Ah, remember back in February when Zoom was just what dogs did when they were bored? Now it’s somehow become the catch-all shorthand for what we used to call FaceTime. The weird, overtalking staccato of the video meeting, the fascinating and sometimes chilling windows into your coworkers’ homes, begging whoever’s eating to please mute themselves — these new parts of work life made many of us wish for the days of IRL meetings that could have been an email.
Not everyone could or did work from home, of course, and there’s probably not a retail or hospitality worker in the world who doesn’t wish they could have dealt with their local mask-averse Pandemic Pams through a screen. But everyone who was separated from loved ones by lockdowns, closed borders, or health concerns has had to learn to catch up via video calls, fugly front-facing camera angles and all, or not catch up, period.
People got creative with their video socialising, too. From “bar” trivia to board games, themed cocktail nights and even weddings, so much of what we’ve done with our friends, relatives, and chosen families this year has been via something between a “call” and a personal livestream.
Late-night hosts, celebrities, schoolkids, and even fictional characters have had to do the same things. Kids and pets interrupting Zoom interviews became a viral video genre all its own, as did show hosts surprising fans with Zoom calls from famous faces. TV shows even filmed gonzo quarantine specials and cast reunions in that familiar Brady Bunch layout.
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As annoying as they can be, and as sick as we are of looking at our own stupid faces in the corner of the screen, this technology has kept us in touch, proven how flexible work can be, facilitated moments of real joy (and rage), and given us reasons to wash our hair.
6. Hair
While we felt stuck in one place, not knowing what day it was, our hair kept growing. For anyone accustomed to shorter styles, the sneaky speed with which things got unruly was unnerving; for those with high-maintenance headsuits, from bottle blondes or secret grays to natural hair, being socially distanced from trusted grooming professionals and having to make do with what we could DIY forced a reckoning. (And that’s before we get into what everybody’s below-the-neck fuzz did when left to its own devices.)
As the cabin fever set in, many of us stared into the bathroom mirror and wondered: What's the worst that could happen? I could shave my head, do a home bleach job, cut my own bangs, turn this Lighthouse beard into a Ron Swanson ‘stache, cut my boyfriend's (or dog's) hair. If it looks terrible nobody’s going to see. It’s not like we're trying to date right now.
Hair (usually) grows back, and my little gray streak is coming through nicely. Here’s hoping everyone emerges from this with a little more forgiveness for our ungroomed selves.
7. Instagram Lives
Some were great. Some were not (subtweet). But there were so, so, so many.
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8. The clap
No, not that kind. (If you somehow managed to catch something sexually transmitted in the last three months, no shame, but you might have been doing social distancing wrong.)
For many people, staying at home meant just that: work from home, relax at home, socialise at home, cook at home, and do your best to get through it. For healthcare and support workers, though, this has not been an opportunity to catch up on the Netflix queue. In a few places, it’s been a full-on horror movie; in most places, it’s meant ethical dilemmas, long hours chafing in PPE (some of it improvised amid shortages), heartbreaking FaceTimes with next of kin, and angry or terrified members of the public. Underlining all that was the humming baseline of daily fear that it would get worse in a week or two or six, and that you might be occupying one of the hospital beds by then.
The evening clap, aka Clap for Carers, began in Italy and then spread to other hard-hit, locked-down cities like London and New York. Every night at a certain time in these places, citizens confined to their homes would emerge onto front steps and fire escapes and balconies and clap for frontline and essential workers. Even for people in places where it never took off, social media videos of entire cities stopping to applaud the people keeping them and their neighbors alive were often the brightest spot on a bad day.
9. Existential dread
Even if you’re one of the lucky ones — relatively healthy, safely employed and housed, and not too lonely — it was hard not to feel overwhelmed by this moment. Worried eyes above face masks, toilet-paper panic, public health posters pasted up around town, red dots spreading on world maps, that whole thing where Australia was blanketed in smoke for weeks on end... 2020 has often felt like the first (and second) act of some dystopian disaster movie.
Between the looming spectre of a long U.S. election campaign and the ever-worsening climate crisis, 2020 was already shaping up to be a banner year for that knot in the pit of your stomach — even before a new and highly contagious virus saw a whole Chinese city, then the world, grind to a halt.
The mental health ramifications of social isolation, unemployment and underemployment, and literally having no idea what the world is going to look like in a few months or years are no joke. Everyone deserves to feel secure and content, and to have the support they need to maintain good mental health hygiene. But few of us have lived through something quite like this year before. Logging into all those video calls and making small talk — how are you doing? What’s new with you? — has felt absurd.
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Wry sort-of-jokes about the void and existential bleakness have been an internet tradition for years. Now, they belong to everybody. Even if we’re doing fine, we’re not doing fine. Nobody is fine. This is really fucking weird. Plenty of people — including those who have struggled with anxiety before 2020 did its thing — have found the global gloom perversely familiar, even comfortable.
And the thing about a crisis that touches literally everybody in some way is that we can access, if we choose to, a new capacity for empathy.
10. Saying "fuck this" to systemic racism and police brutality
People, for the most part, stayed inside when told to. We were bored, lonely, horny, scared, appalled — but people stayed home if they could. But then the recent killings of several unarmed Black people — George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, and sadly even more since them — renewed and reinvigorated the Black Lives Matter movement. People had been watching the news out of the U.S. for months, seeing the undeniable reports that Black and Latinx communities had been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, the petulant incompetence of an administration that repeatedly and calculatedly failed those communities, and the destructiveness of a deeply broken health system. And after months of social distancing, those who could do so safely took to the streets, and faced a police response that more than proved their point.
And yes, it’s possible that some protesters were motivated by desperation — for something, anything to happen, after months locked inside with little to do. Yes, more people than usual had way more free time than usual to join the demonstrations.
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But you don’t get people in 2000 American cities and towns out onto the streets, and more all over the world, out of boredom. You don’t get skyrocketing public approval for a national uprising against systemic racism out of boredom. Social and political battles fought for years aren’t transformed in the space of a few days because people have nothing better to do. They have more motivation to fight for each other. And perhaps it couldn’t have happened in any other year.
Anyway, it’s still somehow only June. But look how far we've come already. Even as things get better (please, please, please), hold onto what we've done together in even the bleakest moments.
