Items
topic_interest is exactly
awkward
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2020-03-13
Lackluster ambience
I have been a fan of professional wrestling for years. It is a bit like watching a soap opera with elite athletes doing the occasional insane acrobatic stunt. While it may not technically be a sport, it can be very entertaining. Part of that entertainment is a raucous crowd cheering for their favorite wrestler or booing the antagonist. It is also when someone pulls off an Olympic level move and the crowd explodes. Now, there is no crowd. Due to COVID-19 the wrestlers no longer play to a live audience. To bring back some of the ambience missing from their absence, WWE (and some other forms of live entertainment) have instituted workarounds like digital fans on screens and fake crowd noise. Before that though, there was nothing. Just a complete absence of fans. Their silence was deafening and the events awkward. This is a recording of one such event, Smackdown, March 13, 2020. Two wrestlers, a referee, and three announcers all performing a play to no audience. There is a marked difference. WWE announcers are known for being loquacious, but in this their banter has an almost desperate edge to cover up the missing element of the fans. And not just the announcers. The referee and the wrestlers seem to be talking both more and louder. Even with all that there is still a very noticeable missing element of ambience. It is interesting to me how much they have to try to cover up the sound of silence. -
2020-09-29
the handshake in jeprody
The story I wanted to tell was about something that is so common and frequent that it became extremely awkward and strange for me. This thing was the hand shake. Before covid hand shaking was a norm and everybody did it. It was the universal way to greet people in a polite and also professional way if you're working. But as Covid-19 came into the picture this norm would become altered and even disappear all together possibly. 2020 was going great until a virus in china was discovered and people started to die very fast shortly after. No one knew this mystery virus until a test came out that it was a very dangerous and deadly virus capable of killing people in days. The virus was only found in China but soon spread around the world. I live in america and as soon as this virus hit thing changed. The first thing was to wear a mask 24-7 when in public. Another thing that started to change that no one realized was the common handshake.due to the virus people became more scared to interact with people. This caused people to change their social behavior. One such example was when I was out with my family and friends. We were all going to meet some people and when we arrived I did not realize I went to shake the person's hand. As soon as i did that the person came back with sorry i don't want to shake hands. Then I went to another person and they were different. They were fine but did elbow bump instead of a conventional handshake. This change is greeting people became awkward for me because I had to read the person and if they wanted to handshake or do something else. There were times were i would think they were all right and then they weren't and the greeting looked like some twister baird with my hand flailing around stupidly with no motive. I became embarrassed and didn't shake or greet anyone after that incident. After this event I realized that the handshake kinda just disappeared and people did not want or even think of handshakes. covid-19 changed the social que for meeting someone to glancing at them and saying hi and that it. I can't imagine how awkward this is for businesses. From this experience I realized the hand shake might disappear altogether after covid or be much less the norm. Covid has had the power to restructure how we greet people and socialize by minimizing our interaction with others at just a glance. I hope the hand shake survives but if not the world will be very different without the handshake because it was such a norm in society for lots of years.