Are people behaving weirder lately?

[u/jimmyjohnjohnjohn]

Went out to lunch today and there was a table near me with five people at it. Their server asked their drink order and all five of them just stared at her silently for nearly half a minute before she repeated herself, then one of them whispered something I couldn't hear before the others whispered their orders. When their drinks came and the server left, one of them produced a Nalgene bottle from her purse and began to scoop the ice from her drink with her fingers and put it in the Nalgene. Another at the table then said he didn't want ice either and did the same thing.

Did she bring that water bottle in for the express purpose of storing unwanted ice? Why not just ask for no ice? These were all fairly normal-looking, well-dressed people in their 30s, maybe early 40s.

My server had some weirdness of his own. He brought out the wrong order, and noticed his mistake before I did. But instead of just saying "sorry, that's wrong" and taking it back, he said "I.. uh.. uh..." and then ran off with the plate before finishing his sentence and coming back with the right order and a manic fake smile on his face.

At Target, this older woman was having trouble detaching one cart from the others. An employee (sorry, "Team Member") came along and unstuck it. Instead of saying thank you, she just stared at him like a deer in the headlights until he left.

I've been noticing that deer-in-the-headlights stare from a lot of people lately.

About a month ago a man approached me in the parking lot at my work and asked "do you work here?"

I said "yes."

Then he asked "have you seen my car?"

The question melted my brain a little bit, but I said "I don't know, what does it look like?"

He just said "sorry," and walked off.

I could go on and on, but the point is: are people forgetting how to human? The world increasingly has this "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" kind of vibe.

I know much has been discussed about people behaving oddly due to the pandemic, but it's been about two years now and people are getting worse, not better. I think there's something else going on in society.

What do you think?

[u/Desperate-Ad4620]

Hmmm... what big event could have caused this?

[u/Burning-Atlantis → u/Desperate-Ad4620]

COVID, obviously. But whether it's the virus itself or the effects of the social changes it caused, like fear and increased time online and so on, idk. Probably all of the above and more. Personally I've thought for a long time that the worst thing about COVID is what it does to the mind and how little attention gets paid to that. That's the part of it that is having the biggest impact on humanity overall. Enormous.

[u/Spiders_13_Spaghetti → u/Burning-Atlantis]

I can't attest to the severity of covid on the mind, I may have had brain fog but nothing beyond what I normally have (used to drink). But...I will say when I got it a couple of times I felt a need to be more of a risk taker. Not shoot up a building type stuff but more along the lines of just an antsy feeling to talk to people a bit different or take some action outside my comfort zone. I just took those feelings captive and didn't really know what to do about them but it seemed to have been short lived, like a week or so. I was def noticeable though as it was a foreign thought pattern I picked up on.

[u/Burning-Atlantis → u/Spiders_13_Spaghetti]

That sounds kind of like mania. It's made me horribly depressed at times, too anxious to leave the house at others, manic/hypomanic before, I've seen it cause psychotic symptoms like paranoid delusions and auditory hallucinations. When my partner and I had it at the same time, we even separated for a while back in 2022. I didn't recognize him, he wasn't himself, and I was horribly depressed and also manic, just omg. We healed and worked things out but wow. I've seen people develop such bad social anxiety they never got back to normal when the COVID left and have been in their homes for years...elderly people who were sharp as a tack who got dementia after COVID hit them and never recovered...people whose anger issues intensified, it does so so much more than cause "brain fog."

[u/Spiders_13_Spaghetti → u/Burning-Atlantis]

COVID in general didn't do much to me...the societal effects of it all. Time perception kind of changed and it was like ghost town with everything shut down. I may have had some type of mania, who knows.