There Will Be 2 Types of Post-pandemic Socializers

[littlemissmartypants]

One group will say yes as often as it can. The other won’t be able to forget how nice it is to sit at home on the couch.

JOE PINSKER
10:37 AM ET

A post-pandemic discussion question: You get home from work on a Friday night and change into sweatpants. It’s been an exhausting week. A text message comes in. Your good friend wants to know if you’d like to meet up last minute for a drink, which is something that’s safe to do again. You’d love to catch up, but you’re pretty tired. Do you go?

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On the one hand, people will be freshly aware that they shouldn’t take the ability to attend social gatherings for granted. On the other, they also will have experienced, albeit involuntarily, the occasional pleasures of having fewer social commitments. Introverts and extroverts alike may feel torn between taking advantage of their regained freedom and preserving some of the quiet of pandemic life, but many people will end up in one of two distinct camps.

The first is one we can call Team Yes. “Post-pandemic, I don’t intend to wait if I want to try a restaurant or go to an event,” Ilona Westfall, a 38-year-old freelance writer in Lakewood, Ohio, told me. “I plan on saying yes more. Yes to parties, yes to concerts, yes to beach hangouts with my friends.”

After more than a year of not having much to say yes to, it would be hard not to feel that sort of urgency. But nationwide, this reaction will likely be tempered by a newfound taste for a lower-key life. Per a report

https://theharrispoll.com/the-great-awakening/

released by the Harris Poll in March, three-quarters of survey respondents said they learned during the pandemic that they “preferred smaller social gatherings at home or at [a] friend’s place over going out to bars or restaurants.” A similar proportion predicted that in the post-pandemic world, they would miss “the comfort of [their] home while socializing.”

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More at the link.

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/04/post-pandemic-socializers-two-types/618678/

❤ pants