A year ago the COVID came, or more accurately, the reaction to it.

Now, it sounds like one of those English folk songs we were subjected to back in the 1960s. At the time, the concern was starting to spread wildly. You recall when lockdowns happened, indoor dining was restricted, and bars closed. Salons, too, which made men and women who are supposed to look well-groomed appear…less so. Broadcasting from their homes.

It was shortly after I saw my first stubbled Anchor on the flatscreen that I realized things were changing radically. There was no consensus on how long it would all go on. “Flattening the curve” was the one we recall generally. It was supposed to last a couple weeks.

Ten months later they have decided to open everything up again. I try to remember the imposition of house arrest at the whim of a governor is good policy. I do understand public health issues and concerns, having done one long ago at Health and Human Services with no less a luminary than Dr. Tony Fauci. But this is not an examination of how the pandemic was handled. It is about what it has changed in really significant ways.

There has been occasional commentary on the media about the ubiquitous nature of high-quality digital cameras as components of mobile phones. There is a lot of spectacular imagery around of people doing incredible things. Some of them are good, many of them are disturbing. And “ubiquitous” is only way to describe the human integration with digital communications. So, an assumption from this part of the Swamp is that anything you say or do may well have a permanent record.
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I should try for more precision. Much of this change had already happened. We are only noticing the dimensions of it in a time of emergency. So, grooming was first. Jack Dorsey at Twitter exemplifies his commitment to the cutting edge of whatever it is by sporting that remarkable beard. It is long and scraggly and declarative in length. So that is part of how people adapt their external appearance to show unity in purpose. I won’t do the mask issue, since most of us wear one when required. But it is a factor is displaying commitment to a cause.

I used to work Information Operations in the last years of my time in uniform. As such, I had at least a rudimentary understanding of messaging, what it is, how to deliver it, and how to assess how effective it was. It is fun to track out here in our world. The messages themselves are interesting, but that has always been the case in human interactions. What has changed is speed and intensity. The digitalization of our society has narrowed the focus, the content and heightened impact.

The cool part is watching how it works. The Democrats have been superb in their coordination and content. It is delivered through most major media, which now are amalgamated in the messaging. The Republicans were either used to it, or just slow on the uptake, and have a wing that has gone around it to the extent they can. The logical alternate path was to fill the empty spaces of the internet. The messaging tone is markedly different than what would meet suitability standards for broadcast, regardless of political orientation.

So, I thought this would be an adventure in people watching in mildly constrained circumstances. It is not. It is something that changes societies. That, in turn, illuminates the impact of massive generational change. This has been a marvelous crisis. I have a much better idea about why our parents thought we were crazy.

Copyright 2021 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com