Somehow, the coronavirus--a genuine global crisis--has ramped up concerns about the most trivial matters of tone or how one comes across.
And everyone is getting it wrong: grocery-shopping too frequently ("weekly or every other week is best," the Cleveland Clinic advises) or buying too much at a time, as defined by judgmental onlookers who might not have considered the number of relatives their fellow customers are shopping for.
It's a faux pas to advise using this time productively (some of us have family responsibilities!), but so too is humblebragging one's low-key approach to the shutdown (some of us have to hustle, even at a time like this!). Even the question of whether to participate in the sudden trend of sourdough bread-making, as The Washington Post reported, "led to some eye-rolling and backlash, followed by backlash to the backlash."
What looked like a cheap and accessible pastime was, in fact, flaunting spare time (and flour), not to mention the cultural capital implied by trying to re-create $8 artisan breads. Or something.
Why is the pandemic such a scoldfest?
The simple answer is that it's about controlling what seems controllable. None of us can stop random strangers from throwing dinner parties, but it's quite easy to photograph anything that could be however loosely defined as a crowd at a beach (inspiring the inevitable question: What was the photographer doing there in the first place?) Those truly ignoring or oblivious to social distancing (having private gatherings) are often not in plain view, so the people who end up getting yelled at are roommates taking a walk together.
There's also something comforting about a retreat into pre-pandemic culture wars and lifestyle preoccupations. It's scary to be sitting in your apartment wondering whether, after thinking that you've been doing everything right, you might catch a fatal virus from your building's laundry room or ventilation system. Calling out bad delivery-tippers for stinginess, though; this is a familiar realm.
But the biggest factor driving the scolding is that in an unprecedented situation, everything and everyone is tone-deaf. There is no way to exist unobtrusively at a moment when you might be killing your neighbors if you leave the house, but you also need groceries every so often and perhaps would rather your dog not use your apartment as a toilet.
Instructions from authority figures fail to coalesce into anything coherent. Are you supposed to go outside for exercise if you maintain social distancing, or is that just asking to be in one of those photos of covidiots who recklessly went to a park during a plague?
It's also possible to err by following the rules too well. Consider the emergency room doctor in a working-class New York City neighborhood hit hard by the virus, who told the New Yorker, "After my shift, I went for a run in Central Park, and I see these two women out in, like, full hazmat suits, basically, and gloves, screaming at people to keep six feet away while they're power walking. And I'm thinking, You know what, you're not the ones who are at risk.'" It's good form to be aware of the situation, but gauche to appear to put its impact on you at the center.
I have trouble blaming the doctor for his reaction, but I also have trouble blaming the bubble-wrapped Manhattanites (who, for all we know, were trying to protect others from their own germs). Insensitivity is inevitable, as petty complaints about the small joys now unavailable (meeting friends for coffee, getting a manicure), which can be readily admitted to friends and strangers, converge with more serious health and financial concerns less likely to be discussed openly on social media.
It's fine to miss frivolous things about Before, so long as there's a disclaimer about their frivolity, and maybe also tack on a mention of how "normal" times also could be terrible.
Many roll their eyes at brands marketing their products for these uncertain times or trying to get a financially strapped populace to invest in pandemic loungewear. How rude of companies to try to sell us stuff at a time like this, or how crass of them to mention (or, for that matter, how oblivious not to mention) this new plague while doing so! How tacky of writers to frame their queries to literary agents with mentions of it.
And yet what choice does anyone have who doesn't happen to be an essential worker, but for whom work remains essential? It's tone-deaf to appear to be profiting from the crisis, but necessary to stay afloat despite it.
Everyone for whom it could be worse may be tempted to reflect aloud on their relative good fortune. It feels beneficial, but is it? Does the person with less even want to hear that you're aware you have more? I'm not sure who's helped by deep public dives into one's privilege by those solemn acknowledgments from those who've fled cities, the reminders (reminding who?) that not everyone has that option.
Privilege during the coronavirus pandemic is often precarious. Consider how, early in the crisis, the idea was that young healthy adults should socially distance not out of self-interest but for the good of the elderly and fragile. Then came report after terrifying report of fit 30-somethings struggling to breathe.
The privilege calculus has been upended. How bearable your living situation is during a shutdown relates to privilege, but not entirely. Someone living in a small expensive city apartment is having a very different quarantine than they would in a modest suburban house with a yard.
Then there's the tricky question of financial stability. The mantra of privilege acknowledgment assumes wealth to be a constant--or at least that cultural capital or class privilege is so important that even if someone happens to be broke, they will, if posh-seeming, be just fine.
I think of the #ShareMyCheck movement, which asks recipients of the stimulus checks (that is, people who, by definition, are not the nation's wealthiest) to pledge to donate the money to those who actually need help. "People who can survive on their salaries or savings," the site instructs, "do not need a stimulus check."
Maybe. But a salary disappears if there's a layoff, and savings tend to be finite. Especially for people who make less than the income caps for the checks.
For all but a handful, the most that can be smugly or guiltily acknowledged is relative comfort. That 34 percent of upper-income respondents to a Pew Research Center survey said they'd use most of their stimulus money on bills or other essentials, compared to 71 percent of lower income and 49 percent of middle income respondents, respectively, indicates that times are dire even for many who are--for now--well-off.
In a severe economic downturn, a job (or industry) that feels safe today may not tomorrow. Anyone whose income depends on restaurants, airlines, hotels or stores is or may soon be struggling. Academia faces hiring freezes and its own furloughs, not to mention the nagging question of whether students will still pay up for a college experience where in-person fraternizing is impossible.
It's reassuring to imagine that etiquette could save us, to think there may be some level of privilege at which this moment would be not just less atrocious, but enjoyable. In acknowledging your privilege, you express gratitude, but you also engage in the magical thinking of pronouncing that you're fine in some eternal sense, and not just until disaster strikes.
Perhaps it would be more productive, after all, to build solidarity from a focus on the shared (although not equally) bad luck of this entire situation.
Maltz Bovy is the author of The Perils of Privilege.
Editorial on 05/24/2020