DEAR SEAN:
My friends and I are at odds right now and sometimes I think they are meaner than I ever remember them being. It’s never been like this. I just want to know if you think this pandemic is making us meaner?
Thanks,
NINETEEN-IN-BATON-ROUGE
DEAR NINETEEN:
I’m not going to say publicly that people are getting meaner because, for one thing, they might gut me and roast me over a shallow pit, thereby turning me into a rack of Christmas ribs. But I think people are definitely stressed out, and therefore they’re acting like it.
And if you think I’m exaggerating, just try this experiment: post something online. A picture of your cat. A selfie. A daily column that contains roughly 800 words. Give it a few minutes, eventually your doorbell will ring and a mob will be on your front lawn holding pitchforks and torches.
No, I’m kidding about the torches. They’ll actually be holding cellphone flashlights.
But the point is, yes, I think people are ticked off in general. Take me. I’m receiving
more ugly emails from readers than ever before during this pandemic. Just today, a guy in Virginia wrote, he called me a “lair and a deciever.”
I have friends who have also noticed this anger trend. One of my pals, I’ll call him Matt, is a great person, a super accomplished writer, and uses words like “ubiquitous” in conversations while keeping a straight face. Matt noticed meanness on his personal blog last month.
It started when his mother got COVID-19. She had intense symptoms. Matt wrote that he was frightened, his kids were worried, and he also asked his readers to pray.
Let’s pause here. You’d think people would’ve overloaded him with sympathy, right? You’d think little elderly ladies would have put his mother’s name on the First Baptist email prayer chain, right? Maybe sent a casserole? Wrong. People got out their pitchforks.…