covid-19

The oldest millennials are about to be 40 and the media is still somehow telling the entire generation to 'grow the eff up'—a tall order in the midst of constant ecological, financial and health crises. Not to mention war, unemployment, non-existent job security, housing market collapse, student debt, and on and on and on. Yesterday, journalist Jennifer Rosner got dragged by Twitter after the Chicago Tribune plugged her op-ed piece about millennials. When you read the article itself however, it becomes clear that the Chicago Tribune's tweet was a bit misleading. The post that riled up thousands of millennials read, 'writer Jennifer Rosner predicts COVID-19 lockdowns will force easy-breezy millennials to grow up.' In the actual op-ed, Rosner covers her ass by framing the various criticisms of millennials as her boomer dad's opinions. She simply suggests that the pandemic may have something to do with her fellow millennials suddenly embracing a more suburban sort of life that her father's generation might approve of. In any case, the Tribune's tweet was more than enough to hit a nerve. We've collected some of the spiciest roasts from before the controversial tweet got deleted. 

While we like to share instances of good people doing good things for society, we really can't ignore the fact that there are still some seriously terrible people out there. The r/iamatotalpieceofshit subreddit's name really says it all: it's a destination where people share examples of awful humans that deserve to be publicly shamed for their terrible behavior. From anti-maskers to animal abusers, these people will probably go down in history for their shitty ways. 

If you're someone who gets satisfaction out of seeing slightly misguided or straight up rude people get owned by the reasonable and informed, we've got a load of screenshots from r/murderedbywords that capture these rare moments. Lately there's been an influx of misinformation spreading about the new Covid-19 vaccines. Of course, it's always a good idea to scrutinize anything you're putting into your body, but some people seem to just make stuff up on the fly and tweet about it like it's proven fact. Well thankfully, there are professionals out there who are always ready to school the ignorant.

Is one's life just a series of random and chaotic events, or are there underlying patterns that determine the things that happen to us? In the late 1050s, Meteorologist Edward Lorenz was skeptical of linear statistical models of meteorology and pioneered weather and climate predictability through his discovery of deterministic chaos—the theory that though chaotic systems appear to be random, they contain underlying patterns and feedback loops which can be used to explain evidently unpredictable outcomes in weather. And so a small, seemingly inconsequential change to initial conditions can lead to significantly different results. In his 1963 paper entitled Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow, Lorenz claims that "two states differing by imperceptible amounts may eventually evolve into two considerably different states...If, then, there is any error whatever in observing the present state—and in any real system such errors seem inevitable—an acceptable prediction of an instantaneous state in the distant future may well be impossible...In view of the inevitable inaccuracy and incompleteness of weather observations, precise very-long-range forecasting would seem to be nonexistent." Although Lorenz's deterministic chaos theory was focused on connecting cause and effect in weather to the general instability of Earth's atmosphere, the 'butterfly effect' metaphor has been used in different areas, such as quantum mechanics and (oftentimes incorrectly) in fiction. In Ray Bradbury's 1952 short story A Sound of Thunder, where time travel is a mundane reality and wealthy tourists can travel back in time to hunt dinosaurs for sport, one character is warned by his 'Time Safari' guides not to interfere with events from the past more than necessary, since small causes can snowball into catastrophic effects over time. At one point the character accidentally falls in the forest, but doesn't think much of it. When he returns to the present, he notices significant differences in the reality he once knew and eventually discovers a butterfly crushed under his shoe. The death of one butterfly millions of years ago had caused a catastrophic rift in time. Though this is a pretty outrageous interpretation of chaos theory, it's easy to go down a rabbit hole of wondering what other outcomes might have happened if seemingly minuscule changes to our own past life events were possible. In hindsight, it's easy to appreciate those random decisions that help us avoid disaster, but the implication that every decision you make potentially has a life or death outcome can drive anyone crazy.

We've got a bunch of examples of times people 'dodged a bullet' by making small decisions based on a feeling, or sometimes nothing at all. One person recounts the time they randomly decided to cancel a flight, which happened to be Malaysia Airlines flight 370. What at the time seemed like a mundane decision turned out to be a life-saving one. Not all of these anecdotes describe such dire mortal events—most of these stories are about the sort of times when you feel like you initially missed out on something good, but later realize you avoided an incredibly undesirable situation, like a job for a company that eventually goes out of business, or a date who ends up revealing themselves to be a psycho. You gotta wonder—were these people just lucky, or are there underlying patterns at play?

Disasters like the COVID-19 outbreak are supposed to bring people together, and highlight generosity and community. Unfortunately, recent events have not only highlighted people who get greedy in the face of a pandemic, but also people who just think they deserve the world. These choosy beggars should feel ashamed of themselves. But let's be real, they probably don't.

As we all know, medical doctors, nurses and pretty much every kind of healthcare professional out there have had a stressful 15 months of pandemic to deal with on top of normal day-to-day illnesses and accidents. The average healthcare worker doesn't get nearly enough sleep, but that doesn't mean they can't enjoy a relatable meme or two in between crises. Whether you're an anxious 4th year med student, or an overworked nurse working a graveyard shift, may these medical memes provide a bit of humorous distraction. You deserve it. 

Johnson & Johnson might be left out of that vaccine team to save the summer after all. Federal health officials paused distribution of the J&J vaccine today due to six reported rare blood clot cases in the U.S.  Most people are taking this news seriously, but of course in the world of memes, pretty much everything is fair game on the internet. Twitter immediately started personifying the vaccines in memes and pitting Pfizer & Moderna against J&J as if they were the cool mean girls in high school bullying the 'loser.' Scroll along for a collection of highlights from the spicy J&J Twitter meme frenzy. 

Hello, internet friends. We're back with another big batch of the best clever tweets from the past couple weeks. It's hard to keep up with Twitter sometimes, especially when you've got things to do and places to be. Who the hell has time to scroll through Twitter all day to sift through all the BS for the good stuff? Well, we do! Lucky for you, we've collected the funny Twitter gems so that you don't have to waste any time on the dreaded bird app. You're welcome. 

It's no secret that any given social network can quickly become toxic, because wherever there are human beings, there are idiots with unfathomable blind confidence in the bullsh*t they spout. r/insanepeoplefacebook is a pretty cursed subreddit where you can find and endless supply of flat-earthers, anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, and bigots caught in the wild posting their nonsense and commenting when no one asked. If you're in a mood to feel worse about humanity, we've got a bunch of cringey posts for you from the worst of social media.

Ever since vaccinations became available for pretty much every age and risk group, it seems like some people are not willing to stop their preachy Covid-shaming. Twitter is one place where this is super obvious. At this point in the pandemic, we're all well aware of Covid-19's myriad risks, as well as the risks of not taking it seriously. But if the CDC is saying that vaccinated people can travel - why are so many Twitter users insisting that they stay home? Whatever the reason, the preachy tweets have started a meme. And we're enjoying it way more than its self-important inspiration. 

The meme riffs off of a tweet from American sociologist Crystal Fleming, who reminded her followers, "Please don't think being fully vaxxed is a license to go buck wild this summer. With that mentality, we'll never get out of this mess. Delayed gratification, y'all. Yes, things will gradually improve but if we're lucky, getting vaxxed now might save the summer of 2022.." Instead of focusing on the pandemic, the meme mixes the "fully vaxxed" part with references from popular books, movies, and tv shows.. And pretty much all of Twitter is getting in on it. We've put together some of our favorite referential tidbits (I mean, Wandavision, come on), but you can find a daunting albeit entertaining selection using that handy dandy Twitter search tool. They may not be the funniest tweets in the world, but they sure beat "experts" and their virtue signaling.

The internet is probably 90% composed of people saying dumb sh*t in the comments. And you know what? The real world isn't much different. In the time of Covid, it seems like stupidity is thriving more than ever. Yep, 2020 has birthed an army of covidiots, and they are very online. In this gallery, we're showcasing an impressive array of pure dumb—a bunch of these are just harmless moments of lapses in judgement, but others are straight up facepalm-inducing cringe.

As younger people abandon Facebook for Instagram and TikTok, it seems like we're more aware of all the crazies that frequent the social networking site. Some of the best places to find unhinged and ignorant people are mommy/parenting groups. There's an overwhelming number of Covid-19 nonbelievers, people who do extremely weird sh*t with breast milk, and of course - lots of talk of essential oils. If the children are our future, and they're being raised by these people, we might be more screwed than we thought. 

Picture this: It's several months into the global pandemic and the governor has decided to allow indoor dining again. You're considered one of the 'lucky ones' because you got to keep your minimum wage job as a server in a restaurant, and although taking to-go orders only has been pretty chill, the mountain of bills that looms over you everyday has you really missing those tips. Strangely, customers don't feel the need to tip if it's take-out, but they'll call you a hero as if you volunteer to be an 'essential worker' and don't actually have rent to pay. Although you've got a lot of qualms about serving customers again, you feel like you don't really have a choice. You reassure yourself that your customers will be respectful and follow social distancing rules. Maybe they'll even leave a decent tip—you're working in the middle of a health crisis, after all. You don't have the benefit of working safely from home, and any decent person will understand the risk you're taking, right? Oh how naive you are.

Your first customers arrive on the day of reopening and to your dismay, it's a group of ten and they're already drunk, masks hanging down under their noses. They immediately ignore the social distancing policy notices posted on every surface of the restaurant and start pushing tables together. They ignore your pleas to respect your coworkers and other patrons. Your manager doesn't help you. You're pissed off. After hours of rudeness and belligerence, finally the assh*le table asks for the bill. They spend another half hour drunkenly squabbling over the check before demanding that you split it ten ways. You somehow muster up the last bit of civility deep within you and smile through the rage. Finally, they leave. It's the moment you've been dreading. Again, you try and reassure yourself—surely they tipped at least 15%. They ordered bottomless margaritas. They stayed for five hours. Surely they tipped...You pick up the pile of checks and examine the first one. Nothing. Then the next. Nope. Your stomach drops as you get to the last check and read the word 'zero' scrawled onto the tip line. Dejected and exhausted, you look at the clock. Five more hours of your shift to go. The next group walks in.

Whether this scenario feels familiar or not, it's important for everyone to understand just how shitty it is to be a server sometimes, especially during a plague. Not only does treating service industry workers like literal garbage make their lives a living hell, it poisons the soul of the evil-doer. Treat workers with respect and don't forget to tip—it's not that damn hard. Alternatively, if being a jerk is the only thing you know how to do and you truly believe that treating people like dirt is a valid personality trait, you can simply stay at home. The restaurant industry doesn't need mean customers in order to thrive. We've collected some frustrating experiences that servers shared on r/TalesFromYourServer. Hopefully these stories will either humble people who frequently dine out or give solace to those who hate their jobs.