2020 Retrospective - Thoughts and daydreams about the ill-fated start of the decade

[Clockwork_PurBle]

2020 was really shaping up to be my year. Really, it was. Then March happened and I no longer had campus and community activities I was involved in, had to finish junior college in my bedroom, and didn't even get to walk at graduation (which was important to me as a first-gen). Whole lot of nothing. I transferred to a uni and it really hasn't been all that fun, to be honest. I have no purpose.

I am now constantly questioning every life decision I've made so far. It doesn't feel right to spend my scholarship money on tuition right now because God knows I'm not getting my money's worth, but what happens if I withdraw? I'm a junior, not a freshman, so it's a bigger thing to do so. Do I just withdraw and try to go back when this is over? But what if this never ends? What if I do go back but I'm a 27 year old among 19 year olds? I already feel isolated within my generation enough as it is, it would be more hellish to be with a literal different, younger generation. I've always felt more at home with Boomers.

But I'm not completely dooming. I've also come to the conclusion, before 2020, that there is only so much you can control about the world you live in and your future. There is no sense is constantly worrying, dooming, and living in fear. Doing so makes everything harder. Prepare for emergencies, prepare for what may come, but don't overdo it because you really never know and you lose focus on the now.

If I go ahead and get my BFA but overpaid even more so, then I did. If I withdraw and save my scholarships with plans to go back after this is over but never do, then I did. If I go back at 28 to be in a classroom with 18 year olds, then OK I guess. If I have to drop out of college to use my money to support my family in a trailer park because of Corn Pop tax rates, then I have to.

 

[Odnovo]

2020 was really shaping up to be my year. Really, it was. Then March happened and I no longer had campus and community activities I was involved in, had to finish junior college in my bedroom, and didn't even get to walk at graduation (which was important to me as a first-gen). Whole lot of nothing. I transferred to a uni and it really hasn't been all that fun, to be honest. I have no purpose.

I am now constantly questioning every life decision I've made so far. It doesn't feel right to spend my scholarship money on tuition right now because God knows I'm not getting my money's worth, but what happens if I withdraw? I'm a junior, not a freshman, so it's a bigger thing to do so. Do I just withdraw and try to go back when this is over? But what if this never ends? What if I do go back but I'm a 27 year old among 19 year olds? I already feel isolated within my generation enough as it is, it would be more hellish to be with a literal different, younger generation. I've always felt more at home with Boomers.

But I'm not completely dooming. I've also come to the conclusion, before 2020, that there is only so much you can control about the world you live in and your future. There is no sense is constantly worrying, dooming, and living in fear. Doing so makes everything harder. Prepare for emergencies, prepare for what may come, but don't overdo it because you really never know and you lose focus on the now.

If I go ahead and get my BFA but overpaid even more so, then I did. If I withdraw and save my scholarships with plans to go back after this is over but never do, then I did. If I go back at 28 to be in a classroom with 18 year olds, then OK I guess. If I have to drop out of college to use my money to support my family in a trailer park because of Corn Pop tax rates, then I have to.

To be honest, I would pull myself out of there for now. The first two years of your college education are usually just packed with bullshit electives and intro courses, and the content of those classes are neither typically important or mutable and as such it would be safe to put your education on pause for now as you try to make a contingency plan/support your family/concern yourself with more pressing needs. You are correct to assume that the education that you would get would be bullshit and not worth your money, so it is best to try to find something else to do/a job until things hopefully smooth over (maybe never) and college might finally be worth your time and money again.

 

[The Nothingness]

My faith in humanity really took a dive thanks to 2020. It was the perfect storm of the China virus, the BLM riots, and the bullshit that was the US election. I have not felt this disheartened since my naive view of the world was shattered on September 11th, 2001 (and the excuse for that was I was a child). It infuriates me how so many Americans have threw their freedoms away at the drop of a hat. It infuriates me how basic tenets for this country, truth and justice, have been corrupted.

I guess the only plus is that I have not completely snapped at family and friends.

 

[brentkanaris]

I thought it was a pretty nice year. Corona has been great. It made classes go offline, so I was able to put even less effort into lecturing than I've ever done before. I started consulting (scamming retarded companies) on the side which has allowed my salary to pretty much eclipse all my wage cuck peers from high school and undergrad. I also made a ton off options after the market crashed during the beggining of the virus. I got married and it was before Corona, so the only huge negative of the "pandemic" was avoided.

The election has caused lots of juicy drama and while I preferred Trump due to all the seethe he produces from the left, making fun of my rightoid friends was a breath of fresh air. I was getting a bit bored having to constantly shit on my leftoid friends for the past four years.

The only time I ever wear a mask is when I'm inside of stores, which is fairly rare. If you can't meet up with friends, you're a pathetic loser that has no friends. It's really not hard to be social during these lockdowns. I honestly don't see how any respectable person didn't enjoy this year.

I envy your position. But really 2020 was meh. Life kept chugging along for me. At least I gotten time to plan and prepare for the next year.

 

[Drag-on Knight 91873]

My faith in humanity really took a dive thanks to 2020. It was the perfect storm of the China virus, the BLM riots, and the bullshit that was the US election. I have not felt this disheartened since my naive view of the world was shattered on September 11th, 2001 (and the excuse for that was I was a child). It infuriates me how so many Americans have threw their freedoms away at the drop of a hat. It infuriates me how basic tenets for this country, truth and justice, have been corrupted.

I guess the only plus is that I have not completely snapped at family and friends.

I'd say it's worse than 9/11. Sure, the Patriot Act was passed, but for the average person, you were encouraged to consoom and live a free life. You could even question long-standing traditions such as no-homo marriage, illicit drugs, and religion. People didn't even hate Islam all that much. Though I will admit our culture is now paying the price for mindlessly destroying these taboos, but we had the choice. Now, Da Science cannot be questioned even when objective observations go contrary to their dogma, we now live with different laws for different people, and we have to wear a mask to conduct commerce.

Life was so much simpler when you could punch fuckwits for acting like fuckwits.

 

[VIVIIXI]

As a couple of previous posters said, this was hopefully the darkest before the dawn (as opposed to a couple of minutes before midnight). I suspect that things will get more bleak, though I could (and hope to) be wrong.

There's this funny thing about how dawn is associated with hope, which is fine and dandy. You just have to bear in mind that hope is a very subjective thing. Pinko-tankies have hope for their vision of Utopia as sure as traditionalists do. Everyone thinks the world will be better when it acts according to their vision of how it should be, and in that regard sometimes one man's dawn is another man's dusk.

One of the key things to remember about hope is that it depends on wanting something you think would be better than what you have.

Perhaps a dawn is coming.

But for whom?

 

[ditto]

Perhaps a dawn is coming.

But for whom?

Bugmen, unfortunately.

 

[The Last Stand]

2020 was really shaping up to be my year. Really, it was. Then March happened and I no longer had campus and community activities I was involved in, had to finish junior college in my bedroom, and didn't even get to walk at graduation (which was important to me as a first-gen). Whole lot of nothing. I transferred to a uni and it really hasn't been all that fun, to be honest. I have no purpose.

I am now constantly questioning every life decision I've made so far. It doesn't feel right to spend my scholarship money on tuition right now because God knows I'm not getting my money's worth, but what happens if I withdraw? I'm a junior, not a freshman, so it's a bigger thing to do so. Do I just withdraw and try to go back when this is over? But what if this never ends? What if I do go back but I'm a 27 year old among 19 year olds? I already feel isolated within my generation enough as it is, it would be more hellish to be with a literal different, younger generation. I've always felt more at home with Boomers.

But I'm not completely dooming. I've also come to the conclusion, before 2020, that there is only so much you can control about the world you live in and your future. There is no sense is constantly worrying, dooming, and living in fear. Doing so makes everything harder. Prepare for emergencies, prepare for what may come, but don't overdo it because you really never know and you lose focus on the now.

If I go ahead and get my BFA but overpaid even more so, then I did. If I withdraw and save my scholarships with plans to go back after this is over but never do, then I did. If I go back at 28 to be in a classroom with 18 year olds, then OK I guess. If I have to drop out of college to use my money to support my family in a trailer park because of Corn Pop tax rates, then I have to.

On the subject of college, Corona was a blessing in disguise for me. My major then wasn't working out, so when school shut down, I switched after some thinking.

My faith in humanity really took a dive thanks to 2020. It was the perfect storm of the China virus, the BLM riots, and the bullshit that was the US election. I have not felt this disheartened since my naive view of the world was shattered on September 11th, 2001 (and the excuse for that was I was a child).

Not even because of the lockdowns, but BLM and the media made me more cynical.

Everybody was pushing that Biden would fix America after Trump. It was all over the place.

When George Floyd happened, one city burned. Then, more cities. Then, more cases like George Floyd happened. It spiralled out of control. They started harassing people, businesses, schools. Which turned violent with immunity.

The freedom part, I slightly disagree. A pandemic doesn't care about your rights or what day it is. You would get sick regardless. I understand taking precautions with a case like this. Masks, washing your hands, social distancing.

But, the people in charge overblown it into a mandate. While allowing such protests like BLM to happen but you can't go out to eat.

Politics has taken an ugly turn since Trump was elected, but worsen in 2020.

 

[VIPPER?]

Utter waste of a year, and the zoomers/bugmen/whatever you want to call them probably want the next one to be just like it.

 

[Dom Cruise]

The George Floyd riots kind of felt like the hate that's been building up on the left wing over the last several years coming to a head, remember that viral video from 2016 of the guy yelling "You're a fucking WHITE MALE!" with such venom and disdain? That's exactly the attitude I'm talking about.

Hopefully the riots was it's peak and it'll calm down from there.

I'd say it's worse than 9/11. Sure, the Patriot Act was passed, but for the average person, you were encouraged to consoom and live a free life. You could even question long-standing traditions such as no-homo marriage, illicit drugs, and religion. People didn't even hate Islam all that much. Though I will admit our culture is now paying the price for mindlessly destroying these taboos, but we had the choice. Now, Da Science cannot be questioned even when objective observations go contrary to their dogma, we now live with different laws for different people, and we have to wear a mask to conduct commerce.

Life was so much simpler when you could punch fuckwits for acting like fuckwits.

In some ways it's worse than 9/11, in some ways it isn't.

9/11 was an act carried out by our fellow man, not a virus, so in some ways that made it more upsetting, 9/11 also totally came out of the blue, it's hard to overstate how incredibly surreal it was to wake up one morning and find the world forever changed, 9/11 also came at the end of an era of relative peace and prosperity for the US, which made it all the more jarring, Corona is coming at the end of years of one big shit sandwich, which makes it feel more par for the course.

But pound for pound it is worse than 9/11 because it's affected everyone and everything, if you didn't live in NYC 9/11 did not actually impact your life much, this on the other hand has, it's just so much larger in scale.

It sucks to think it didn't even take 20 years for somehting even worse than 9/11 to occur, what the fuck is wrong with the 21st century?

 

[Cheese-Loving Citizen]

2020 was eh. I was already an introverted shut-in working from home, so Corona didn't do much. I guess the worst thing to happen was the Election. It really goes to show that you can't escape politics nowadays when nearly everyone you know is waiting anxiously for the results and can't stop flinging shit at each other because they're on opposite sides of the fence. It's tiring.

Here's hoping 2021 goes better. Or at the very least be extremely boring.

 

[McAfee'sCorpse]

Welp, Now that BLM is back to its hidey-hole and not returning for another 4 years, I would like to point out the America is on a path to destruction. Protesters burning down businesses and beating white people, and Hollywood trying to appeal to every race a gender. Encouraging diversity while excluding white people, even though almost all of Hollywood is white people. I'm sick of game journalists, feminists, blm, antifa so on, and so on. If worse comes to worse, I'll move to Canada. America really is a shit storm and its on a downwards spiral.

Edit: Apparently Canada's worse, so guess i'll die.

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

awful. was going on a vacation with my mates but that got cancelled thanks to covid. the first few month was interesting beacuse we had no idea what we were dealing with and getting a month long vacation from work was nice. it all went too shit when Floyd had his overdose and people went out destroying businesses that already had setbacks from the lockdown and things like mask and social distinct somehow got forgotten. than we had government officials letting the riots happen beacuse they wanted to make trump look bad and trump, being a little bitch didint do anything about it beacuse he was more concerned about the black vote than saving his nation (didint do much since you FUCKING lost anyway to a god damn senile pedophile with a son suffering from hookers and blow addiction)

but the worst part was not covid in out itself. it is the fucking normalfags who have gotten brainwashed to believe everything the news and the politicians say and if you dear, question what you have been told, you are a conspiracy theorist. people getting harassed, beaten up, doxed and even finned for not wearing a mask, having you business open or trying to gather. its all just so crazy to me how much has changed form last year. its like im living in a different reality and i cant see it getting any better for awhile. coivd will now always be there as an excuse to control the masses and government control just getting worse. and than we have the banks that will blacklist business and even regular people when they do something they dont like and people dont seem to care.

atleast the show tiger king was good. guess he wont get that patron now that trump is gone huh?

 

[Windows XP Home Edition]

I was doing OK between March to May when it came to the lockdown and getting my university work. It was quite productive for me and I got quite a bit done. I also improvised my Spanish and learnt a bit of French and Portuguese. It became really difficult in November when everything was getting shut down and all online. I couldn't concentrate at all and my sleeping schedule was messed up.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

wow What a horribly insane dumpster fire of a year pushed on us by scummy assholes who are dragging this cyberpunk dystopia (further) into a hell of hivemind bugmen technophiles.

Especially with this nothingburger "pandemic" scare circus of "social distancing", endless "temporary" closures, mandatory muzzles "face masks" - covering the face used to only be imposed on Muslim women - and the rest of this damned "New Normal".

Hopefully someday things can get better - if such is even possible.

(As I said in other thread, 2020 made me somewhat of a misanthrope.)

 

[Vyse Inglebard]

My personal life was just fine this year. It's just that all of that feels dampered by the normalization of lunacy, lying, and gaslighting in society.

Same for me. More below.

If worse comes to worse, I'll move to Canada.

You know Canada's even worse, right?

than we had government officials letting the riots happen beacuse they wanted to make trump look bad and trump, being a little bitch didint do anything about it beacuse he was more concerned about the black vote than saving his nation (didint do much since you FUCKING lost anyway to a god damn senile pedophile with a son suffering from hookers and blow addiction)

Two problems with your statement:

1. WTF was Trump SUPPOSED to do? You know damn well that if he sent in the National Guard, the media/Dem politicians would be like "SEE?! DRUMPF REALLY IS A FACIST DICTATOR! ELECT BIDEN TO STOP HIS REIGN OF TERROR!!!!" It was a trap, and Trump knew it. In other words it was a damned if you do/damned if you don't situation.

2. Trump didn't "lose". He was cheated out of the election, and the Uniparty didn't do a damn thing about it because it got their guy into office.

As for how 2020 went for me, it was half and half. On the one hand, all of the crazy aforementioned shit went down this year, and has decreased my faith in humanity by tenfold. On the other, I landed a relatively high-paying job in my field, and am slowly but surely building my credit so I can buy a place of my own. I finally joined you guys after 4 years of lurking, and I also got a drawing tablet (the Huion Kamvas 13) for Christmas, and I plan on sharpening my skills in digital art. So yeah, I'm definitely counting my blessings.

However, for those who aren't in as comfortable a position as I am, I have this to say: Hang in there. The situation might seem hopeless right now, but I choose to believe that things will get better. It might not be immediate, but it will, as long as you just keep going. Y'all are loved, and appreciated, and I wish nothing but the best for you all. Happy New Year, Kiwis

 

[Rich Evans Apologist]

I can parse out my life from the broader picture, so unlike most people who look at pretty shitty world events and descend into hyperventilating and doomposting despite their own circumstances - I can recognize things being shitty and being alright in the same vein.

I'm a lucky sort that kept a steady, non-trumpbux paycheck through the year and despite the hiccup of suddenly being unable to hit up my usual haunts, the latter half of the year wound up being fairly productive. I'm still annoyed that the gyms aren't open, but eh. The circumstances of the pandemic made me pick up a good range of skills and hobbies that I previously had no real use for, and the drive to fill my time with something meaningful meant more time poured into good habits.

And at the same time, while the world was falling apart to people who just started paying attention to it, I didn't have much trouble reading into the details of various countries, economies, and governments all tremendously fucking up and proving themselves utterly inept and being unconcerned about it. Human history is one long string of "things are bad," and they depend on you using a specific blend of nostalgia and ignorance to think otherwise; with that in mind, things are shitty as normal, just more visibly so. The unipolar power structure again slips to a bipolar one, and the hegemon's response is to shit its pants in various ways. People who barely sailed past high-school history proclaim the end of days in a chorus. It's a year that is an integer.

But it was nice to find a spot to blather on incessantly about how retarded the people of this planet tend to be, on a lark because I happened to remember that I never actually followed up with Chris's self-mutilating "transition."

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Human history is one long string of "things are bad,"

The human species is such a flawed design.

"Image of God" my ass.

 

[Pickle Dick]

Personally, 2020 hasn't been all that bad for me. Sure, everything in the world has become monotonous and sterile due to COVID and the craziness that resulted in it, but I still used this year to my advantage.

For one, I finally got a computer that is far better than the one I've been using since the end of the Obama administration. I've also took this year to discover the things I am really interested in, culminating in my late discovery and appreciation of vaporwave/synthwave that's largely reflected in my current avatar/banner. Finally, the year really reignited my interests in lolcows (something that sort of began in the latter half of 2019), and it comforts me to see how much lunacy and come out of people like Moviebob, CWC, etc.

Hopefully 2021 will turn out to be a much better year for the world, but I am a very optimistic fellow for what its worth.

 

[Syaoran Li]

All I can say about 2020 now is this..

Goodbye and good riddance!

On the personal end of things, it wasn't too bad at first but COVID-19, the BLM coup, and the election scared the fuck out of me.

Hopefully 2021 won't be as bad but I'm not expecting too much to be honest.

The only thing I can do for 2021 is to focus on is my life and what I can do directly in the here and now.