The Socially Awkward and the Awkwardly Social

a Pandemic Panic

by  Thiago Elmo

The pandemic is upon us again, as it’s made its third arrival in modern times.   And as in the last two times, the contagion went viral as soon as it made a landing.   It shattered the very typical notions of life as they have always been known and celebrated.   The extraordinary became the new normal, and normal retreated to the shadows of times long elapsed.

Panic mode has been set in motion, and the effort to recall it shall carry no meaning, as the panic button has been pushed, and the action can never be undone.   The very basis of what we have built as the bulwark of a stable and secure society buttressed against the notions of instability and fear of demise has been laid to waste.   And everyday two eventualities dominate everyone’s concerns: demise and the preservation of life.

Enter the ultra-rich class, the awkwardly and conspicuously social, who, along with their minions—having over the decades and centuries been handily successful in defeating any and all adversarial threats to the magnitude of their wealth and that of their overlords, the reach of their power, and the supremacy of their unduly accumulated influence—were left to scramble for an escape exit.   They planned to flee the situation of contagion-inflicted country for getaways as far away and exclusive as their mighty monies could buy.

They have always exhibited a peculiar social connection to the country that can be better described as “awkwardly social”—a connection that originates and is based upon one sole objective and seeks a single end result: to maintain milking the rest of the population, the consumer class, to keep growing their profits.   This on-again-off-again, awkwardly social contract with the country at large reveals the truth about their real fealty as not being to the country but rather to the sole purpose of maximizing profits.

In the absence of any scientific breakthroughs pertaining to the development of a reliable vaccine, even the totality of the enormous wealth of the awkwardly social class failed to secure a magic bullet for themselves to triumph over this infinitesimal adversary.   From this comes their flight to remote and secluded havens while leaving behind the rest of the masses who must scramble even for the most basic necessities of life, such as food to feed their families and cleaning supplies to safeguard them against the contagion.

Meanwhile the majority, or the ne’er-do-well class, had long cemented its own legacy of social awkwardness.   For the rest of us, the pathogen has not only obliterated our fragile sense of safety and security, but it is proceeding to shatter, once and for all, the remainder of our social interactions and relations within the society at large.

Prior to the onset of the contagion, there were certainly millions of individuals amongst us that could be clinically diagnosed with a full spectrum of mental health ills.   But once this crisis is over, the entire nation might be diagnosed collectively with PTSD.

From the point of departure, we as a nation, and more broadly our entire civilization and culture, have been socially awkward in terms of our societal interaction since time immemorial.   We tend to say things and act in ways but not genuinely mean them.   Hypocrisy seems to run in our veins.   This tendency seems to have seeped in and has contributed to the modern popular culture.   The social trauma toll of this pathogen will only exacerbate our underlying socially inept conditions and could drive many of us to the brink.

Self-quarantining and panic over every aspect of daily life will not only re-enforce and exacerbate our underlying conditions of panic-buying and social awkwardness but also will add yet another detrimental new layer that will tend to self-detach inwardly.   The end result is a ginormous and immensely conflicted world of hypocrisy, insincerity, dissonance, discord, and disingenuousness, sustained by the swelling ranks of the socially awkward class and the growing financial assets of the awkwardly social elites.

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