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‘Cave Syndrome’ Keeps the Vaccinated in Social Isolation
After being diagnosed with COVID in November 2020, Andrea King Collier doubted the antibodies that she had developed in response to the illness would protect her from a second infection and was determined to be
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Need to Dust Off Your Social Skills?
As we move through the spring of The Great Vaccination, many of us are feeling cautious optimism, and also its flip side: creeping dread. Maybe you have a sense of ambivalence about how to interact with
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You’re Gonna Miss Zoom When It’s Gone
If there’s a villain of the pandemic, other than COVID-19, it’s probably Zoom. The videochatting platform is making people tired, it’s making people awkward, and it’s making people sick of their own faces. Zoom is such a shoddy substitute for
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Are We Heading for a Post-Pandemic ‘Roaring 2020s,’ With Parties and Excess?
This has been a year of extreme social deprivation. But the pandemic — like all pandemics before it — eventually will end. Then what? Will we easily transition from isolation back into the real world?
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When Should You End a Conversation? Probably Sooner Than You Think
While studying for his master’s degree at the University of Oxford, Adam Mastroianni confronted a fear common to many party goers: Would he get stuck in a conversation with no polite way out? Then, Mastroianni
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The Pandemic Has Erased Entire Categories of Friendship
… American culture does not have many words to describe different levels or types of friendship, but for our purposes, sociology does provide a useful concept: weak ties. The term was coined in 1973 by the Stanford
