Culture

We Are All Extremely Online Now, And It’s Crowded On Here

As more of us turn to social distancing to 'flatten the curve' of COVID-19, the internet has become, more than ever, both gesture and lifeblood.

by Jared Richards  18 March 2020
coronavirus quarantine internet

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For twenty minutes on Monday, my internet dropped out.

Before I fixed it (aka turning the router on and off again and again to no avail before I then turned my computer on and off, solving it), I considered having to in time knock on my neighbour’s door, asking for a cup of WiFi in a time of COVID-19 crisis.

Or, better yet, somehow spring-boarding a campaign for everyone in my apartment block (or beyond) to open their networks, granting internet — and information from the outside world — to all.

It would mostly be a gesture, much like the block’s noticeboard message from someone offering to buy groceries for the vulnerable who can’t currently leave their apartment. Maybe it’ll be acted upon or taken up, but at the least, it’s a call-out in the pre-internet sense: a reminder that the block is filled with people.

Even if we don’t know each other, we are all here. As more of us turn to social distancing and staying indoors to ‘flatten the curve’ of COVID-19’s impact upon our health systems, the internet has become, more than ever, both gesture and lifeblood.

Leadership via mass movements (or lack-of) has taken place at a time when Scott Morrison and co. have seemingly been more preoccupied with the economy than public health.

Over the past fortnight, health officials and MPs have been seen shaking hands in direct contradiction to the government’s own COVID-19 messaging, and Morrison has not tested for the virus, despite coming into close contact with the Corona-positive Peter Dutton. It’s in keeping with the Coalition’s ‘she’ll be right’ attitude, brazenly displayed at the beginning of the summer bushfires, though Wednesday’s detailed health measures and Morrison directly calling hoarding “un-Australian” are a massive step forward.

With the lack of leadership, it’s no surprise we turn to Twitter threads or stir-crazy snacking on each and every article and graph that pops up.

Both #FlattenTheCurve and the uh, more aggressive if not distinctly local #StayTheFuckHome campaign encourage social distancing as the best actions individuals can take. The collective responsibility to isolate is a cruel irony, as its benefits are felt in absence only: in the disease-spreading that does not happen, saving people we do not see saved, or likely even know.

It also goes against how we’re told to fight — there’s a notion that “the only fear is to fear itself”, as if COVID-19 can be defeated by the bravery of still having brunch. For once, showing up isn’t support.

Just as with your dating life and ‘New Rules’, it’s best to follow Dua Lipa’s advice on ‘Don’t Start Now’: “Don’t show up/Don’t come out/Walk away, you know how.”

At times, across my own social media feeds at least, it’s resulted in outright shaming friends who post snaps at bars or parties. The frustration is palpable — but if you’re not tuned into the same channels, you’re outside the movement, and in business as usual. With little else at our disposal, clapbacks fight corona. It’s viral vs. viral.

Of course, fake information spreads too. ‘News’ is being shared on Facebook about killing COVID-19 with mouth wash, and social media is awash with screenshots of ‘text conversations‘ from someone’s relative who is ‘high up’ in public health or the government.

Then there’s figures like Alan Jones telling his older audience that the virus is nothing to worry about, or The Daily Telegraph adding in ‘cheeky’ lines about China manufacturing the virus for biological warfare, based off pure conjecture. For the record, it’s probably best to follow ABC broadcaster Dr. Norman Swan, who is fast emerging as Australia’s leading voice on COVID-19.

But the internet isn’t just a resource for fact. As in times of group mourning (an artist’s death, a national tragedy, an ecological crisis, a TV or celebrity cancellation), it is again a space to express fear, bewilderment, boredom and anger all at once — not always with purpose, but often with great communal release.

And, as social distancing rises and more of us rescind from public life, it’s a second world where we try to live out of separate lives, together. Where in the last few years the internet has felt increasingly divisive and inhospitable, an unfamiliar warmth is resonating through social media, one sprung out of global anxiety.

The World Wide Webs

In her 2019 book How To Do Nothing: Resisting The Attention, Jenny Odell calls the physical world “our last common reference point” in an age where everything, including facts about our climate, is partisan.

“You cannot opt out of awareness of physical reality,” she writes. “The fact that commenting on the weather is a cliché of small talk is actually a profound reminder of this, since the weather is one of the only things we each know any other person must pay attention to.”

Unlike our climate crisis, the reality of COVID-19 can’t really be ignored any more (while Alan Jones is trying, time will prove him wrong, unfortunately). It is felt across the world, affecting all regardless of our previous lines. It joins the weather as a reminder we are all physical.

Which, in a round-a-bout way, has had odd effects, as we see the barriers that prevent that unity or equality simply be removed. Governments and corporations across the globe have halted debt-collection, remove internet data caps and Republicans are spruiking ‘radical left’ ideas like a Universal Basic Income.

Odell, in her book, writes about realising her connection to a national park, but the words ring true here, too: “It’s a bit like falling in love — that terrifying realisation that your fate is linked to someone else’s, that you are no longer your own. But isn’t that closer to the truth anyway? Our fates are linked, to each other, to the places where we are, and everyone and everything that lives in them. How much more my responsibility feels when I think about it this way!”

We are seeing this online, as mutual aid thrives while governments struggle to move, either tied by regulation or concerned with economic matters.

Online organisers create shared Google Docs for local resources and information, while apps like Next Door evoke Neighbourhood Watch sans contact, and social media communities rally behind the vulnerable to provide financial, moral and material support, matching up those who need, for instance, someone to shop for them with a volunteer.

On a smaller level, group chats, Twitter bubbles and Skype messaging become all the more important, as people voice their concerns, chat, and find new ways to socialise, or check in with those who struggle with depression or other mental health issues.

Artists, meanwhile, try to entertain and fill the gaps in our lives left by cancelled events. Chris Martin, Ben Gibbard and drag queens live-stream live performances, while creatives run free meditations on Instagram.

Odell says our fates are linked, but so are more trivial things. We share boredom, laughter and, most of all, incredulousness at 2020 — a year that began with bushfires, moved on to potential nuclear war, and now, three months in, deals with a global pandemic.

It’s a shared sense of experience that should extend outwards. Long after COVID-19 is no longer what it is now, hopefully, that warmth does too, and we continue to care about the health and safety of those we don’t know.

As New Yorker writer Doreen St. Felix wrote on Twitter, “the pandemic may be the primal political event of a generation”. For now, kindness and help remain radical.

Busying Ourselves

Meanwhile, right now, those socially distancing are wondering what the fuck to do with their time.

At first, the possibilities are endless: there’s the canon of films, tv shows and books to catch up on; hobbies long-abandoned; Yoga YouTube challenges (I’m on day 3, fyi); novels to write, and TikTok challenges to master.

Spaces like Facebook Watch make these experiences less lonely, as people opt to stream movies and shows together, creating virtual couches. But busyness can only go so far to quell our natural anxieties, especially as projections begin to suggest our lives won’t begin return to ‘normal’ for months, at earliest.

It can create its own anxieties too. While it’s important to stay active and maintain life as much as we can, there’s also a pressure to make social distancing productive.

As work halts, entrepreneurs and digital creatives are promoting now as a time to take ‘stock’ and ‘recalibrate’ your brand or product — whether that be a business or yourself, the two usually combined.

Twitter is currently making fun of Tweets ‘reminding’ creatives that Shakespeare likely wrote King Lear while under quarantine during the plague. We don’t need to create great works of art right now; we just need to be there for each other.

And be there for ourselves, too. It can be hard to continually scroll at the best of times; now, it’s overwhelming.

Stepping back from news is hard while distancing — but we need to each manage it, lest we lose hours and days reading each incremental update. Self-care is essential: taking time to do nothing and process your thoughts is part of that, rather than constantly be distracted.

Odell’s book How To Do Nothing wasn’t written for a pandemic, but it might be incredibly well-suited to it. Instead of COVID-19, she tackles the ‘attention economy’. It’s a term that doesn’t just refer to social media but capitalism as a whole, this crushing need to constantly be productive, to establish and prove your worth.

Stepping outside of it is difficult, she writes, and many previous attempts (from separatist cults to Epicurius’ school in ancient Greece) have failed to achieve their lofty aims. She imagines something less hedonistic or selfish — not a shutting off from the world, but a refusal to live by its aims as best we can.

“To capitalist logic, which thrives on myopia and dissatisfaction,” she writes, “there may indeed be something dangerous about something as pedestrian as doing nothing: escaping laterally toward each other, we might just find that everything we wanted is already here.”

The internet is awfully crowded right now, as we all do little but stay inside. It’s not quite the nothing Odell imagined or by any means great circumstances, but there’s lots of lateral space on the Internet.

We have a chance to escape into each other — with distance, of course.

Jared Richards is Junkee’s Night Editor, and recently moved to Berlin where he knows next to no one. He will be Tweeting a lot for the foreseeable future.

This article is part of TAKE TIME, a Junkee column about culture.