When you are young, nobody warns you that the times you break up with your friends might be more regular and just as painful as when you break up with romantic partners. This is because we live in a society that prioritises romantic love over all other kinds, as reflected in our popular culture.
I have tried to write this article three times now and failed. Each time I think, am I going too far? Is someone going to shout at me if I write about this? But this is an issue that has gone on for far too long and appears as an accepted fact of life when attending a top university. It is something we need to acknowledge.
I imagine this is the kind of question that a journalist or reporter on the spectrum who has been in any way open about having autism has faced throughout their career, and I can understand why.
Everyone remembers where they were on Monday 23rd March 2020 – the transition into what became the ‘new normal’. Fewer, however, contemplated just how much it would profoundly shape everyday life. In my case, for the better.
After the global train wreck that was 2020, the promise of being able to manifest anything and everything seems to be alluring today’s young people more than ever before. While thousands preach its benefits, the recent explosion of the ‘Law of Attraction’ online often ignores the growing problems the practice seems to endorse – ranging from simple time-wasting to exploitative sales schemes.
Against my better judgement I bought into the “So long, 2020!” hype. Why not? 2020 sucked and, despite there being no evidence that it would be otherwise, it was nice to think 2021 wouldn’t.
Growing up in the ‘90s, girls were told we could be one of two things — a feminine Barbie-playing princess or a football-playing-sneaker-wearing tomboy. There was no middle ground. We were raised on a strong diet of American influenced pop-culture, which emphasised high school hierarchies, boy-girl relationship drama and the notion of equating ‘happily ever after’ to having a boyfriend
The unifying ability of music, to reach out and connect people across the word, allowing for individual expression while revealing a common reliance, has become especially vital as of late. As music is used as a way to deter reality, the differences in songs played by everyone within this hard time seem an interesting shorthand to get a glimpse into someone’s life.
In 2018, New York Times food reporter Julia Moskin wrote an article on ‘procrastibaking’: the process of baking something completely unnecessary in order to avoid doing any ‘actual’ work. Unknowingly, Moskin had described a phenomenon that would sweep the nation two years later when the world came to a grinding halt as a result of a largely unprecedented global pandemic.
Since and before Herodotus coined the word ‘history’, humanity has been infatuated with – and bound to – its roots. It could be said that the past is dead and only the present exists, but in reality, the present is the past in motion – a society cannot escape the circumstances of its creation.
