How did we get to this point. Why?

2020 is a year of unprecedented ruin in modern world history. COVID19 has been a world shaping event that showcases the frail nature of humanity and the underlying broken foundations of our society, politics, economy and indeed the corruption, selfishness and stupidity of humans in general. It goes without saying that COVID19 by a very large margin is the deciding factor in why this has been the worst year in recent memory but let us not forget the smaller pieces of bad, the little bits of ruin and bad things that came even before the world took the virus seriously and let us reflect on what else made 2020 such a shit year, aside from COVID19 itself, the causalities and details if you will of the global pandemic: in a pure random raw train of thought manner.

Bad things that have happened:

Aside from the virus itself, in no particular order, we got…forest fires burning shit up in Australia/California in the start of the year in Jan. Kobe Bryant and his daughter died in a helicopter crash, so sad, sadder still is that photos of the deceased were taken and leaked underground online, so bad and disrespectful. Passenger plane is accidentally shot down in Iran, killing mainly their own people. The killing of Iranian general by US airstrike that caused everyone to think that WW3 would be starting, everyone gone mad and trump be trigger happy just for press. Beirut explosion that looks like a mushroom cloud killing hundreds due to stupidity and negligence by the government cause they were too lazy to store explosive materials better, gov resigned cause they don’t/can’t deal with it, so bad. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle don’t want to be royal anymore because too much press, whatever. Hong Kong protests because crackdown on democratic movement, CCP fucking shit up with their communist bullshit. CCP has been very aggressive in 2020 in promoting Chinese nationalism on the mainland and encouraging acts of defiance and zero sum diplomacy games internationally with all countries, “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy; getting into all sorts of tomfoolery, economically bullying and blackmailing everyone, every company, and or organization that disagrees or goes against a pro China narrative for world dominance. Continual Xi Jinping propaganda trying to equate Chinese people = China = communist party being one and the same and exporting/projecting that mentality and image globally, which is very bad for all Chinese people abroad. Continued censorship in games and media due to China laws such as the word “Taiwan” has somehow become trigger words for mainland CPP fanatics online, causing them to harass and dox anyone that says anything critical of China. China feels like it’s preparing for war, increasing their military and hostilities with basically everyone, this is bad. COVID19 starts in Wuhan, China due to unsanitary wild animal markets and cross species transmission/mutation; doctor notified the authorities, they did nothing and silenced him, whistleblower doctor literally dies because of Covid, such a disgrace. Hardcore lockdown in Wuhan and surrounding areas for long time. CCP coverup of how bad Covid was, almost for certain downplaying the severity and amount of cases/deaths in an attempt to make it some kind of propaganda piece showing China in a good light with dealing with the virus. Covid spreads across the world undetected for weeks/possibly months before people begin to start taking it seriously and people begin to get seriously sick/start dying. Italy got hit pretty hard by the virus first, basically paving the way to all of western europe and the world, thousands dead. WHO finally declares a Global Pandemic in mid March, the first ever in the modern era after delaying to do so for weeks and months in advance, possibly due to pressure from China to downplay the severity of the virus and not make China look so bad, so bad, corrupt. Stock markets fall shortly after, leading to some of the largest declines in the economy since 2008, with continued decline in the following months to start a global recession. Italy starts the first ever country wide lock-down in order to stop the spread of the virus, setting the stage for what will happen to all countries in just a few short weeks. Air travel is completely ruined and vacationing to other countries or even within ones own country is no longer possible or encouraged. Tom Hanks getting covid and the NBA cancelling games triggered the sudden realness of Covid virus which until then felt for many something far away in China and in Europe. Trip to Japan in April had to be cancelled because Can gov placed it on a no-fly list due to pandemic since cases in Japan were on the rise. So sad (;_;). Everyone in the world’s travel plans were ruined. Pain in the ass to get refund from Air Canada and hotels because nothing like this has ever happened before. Long wait times and long calls, broken shit website totally incapable of servicing the mass cancellations. Air Canada forces $200 mandatory cancellation fee to air tickets, meaning that no matter what you will lose money when you cancel. Such bullshit. Airlines in Canada and elsewhere begin to issue “Travel Credits” instead of money refunds because they don’t want to give money back, such resistance and bullshit. Airline industry is basically completely ruined for the next five years, lays off thousands throughout the pandemic as travel has decreased to something like 95% of what is once was in previous years. Will not be surprised if many airlines will go bankrupt and or gov will have to bail them all out cause having something like Air Canada go bankrupt is inconceivable. Japan 2020 Olympics are cancelled and delayed to 2021, which is very sad and bad for Japan which have been looking forward to this for almost a decade. Japan PM Abe resigns due to health concerns and puts into another old timer that is resistant to change. UK leaves the EU formally, Brexit is officially a done deal but at probably the worst possible timing. Trump decides to pull funding to WHO because he thinks they are corrupt and pawns of China due to delaying action. Trump impeachment trials starts due to his involvement with the Russia scandal or whatever it is, nothing happens, totally corrupt and circus trial for nothing, complete bullshit farce by Republicans, waste of time and effort. In any normal year something like this would attract top headlines but because of the ruin of 2020 it feels like Trumps impeachment trial was just a afterthought compared to other events and social discord happening around the world and the united states. George Floyd, a black man is killed by police officers in a routine traffic stop in Minneapolis, causing widespread protests and temporary mass anarchy in black populated cities and populations throughout the united states and in other countries. The fact that there is video evidence of the “I Can’t Breathe” moment becomes a rallying cry to illustrate police brutality and systematic racism against blacks in America, which has existed for hundreds years and continues to exist today despite the government and propaganda claiming that racism doesn’t exist. George Floyd dominates the news headlines for about a month or two, a momentary blip in the endless news coverage about covid and it’s spread from all levels of government. Protests and large gatherings to protest killing super bad for covid spread, but people still gather and meet despite the risks, pretty bad. Increased discrimination against Asians/Chinese increases domestically in the early days of covid because of it’s perceived “Chinese Virus” labeling by Trump and others, bad. Grocery store rushes amid the days of early lock-down worldwide, lines stretches outside waiting to get into a local no frills or metro, go inside, no bread or essentials to be found. No toilet paper and cleaning supplies because everyone becomes insane and panic buying. Can’t get a haircut when you want it, any other non-essential services are a no no. Fucking everyone either has bad self cut covid cuts or grew their hair longer than normal. Price of PPE, masks and such skyrocket because all of a sudden they are the hottest essential new item, price gouge like madmen, selling online and selling for like 3000% increase asshole scammers. Increase in phone scams taking advantage of people’s fear of covid and lack of money. Lack of PPE for healthcare workers and nurses/doctors in hospitals, super bad, have to ration and save masks in the early days instead of throwing them out. Long term care homes become the main breeding ground and spread of the virus, lots of elderly die due to negligence, have to call in military to assist in the homes because they are for profit and pure corruption, don’t want to spend more money/hire more people/better facilities. Small businesses are ruined because of lock-down, no dinning in, only take out cause of covid. Many small businesses have to close because they can’t handle not operating normally, food places survive because of the rise in usage of uber eats and other delivery apps but get less money because they have to pay for the apps/deliver service fees, leading to a bulk increase of ALL take out food as a result. Frankie Tomato closes forever because it can’t handle covid times and owner just wants to throw in the towel, all buffets and all you can eat places are completely ruined for the foreseeable future unless they pivot and offer take out menus or delivery food. No celebrations in restaurants due to covid, all family gatherings are cancelled, birthdays are celebrated with takeout from the restaurant you might have gone to in normal times. All escape rooms and any business relying on social interaction/group activities is completely ruined and probably bankrupt shut down by now at the end of the year. Bullshit and unfair lock-down rules in Toronto/Ontario, causing a huge increase in customers to big box retailers like Walmart and Costco that sell all goods and foods, causing small business to rightfully say what the fuck, why are they allowed to open but not us. Schools are mostly or partially online learning now, leading to an entire generation of kids/children with shitty schooling, dumber kids, generation of shit 2 is born minus. Doug Ford pretends that he cares but his populous “Folks” shtick is getting old and while in the early days his administration did a good job on the messaging and implementation of the first lock-down, the second one they fucked it up badly with confusing messaging and looser rules despite it being much worse now than in the spring. Several days after the announcement of a global pandemic company issued to work from home for the foreseeable future, most people, including myself hoped it would get better by the end of summer or start of fall…this was not the case at all. Working from home since March, got pulled into bullshit covid awareness microsite project for urgent deployment as soon as possible, super quick turn around, very stressful. New team lead/boss hired in Jan got fired in late May after Victoria Day long weekend because big bosses realized she was shit and couldn’t do the work/did not like her solutions, was transferred to pick up where she left off the project instead, still on it now cause it’s complex shit and high importance, high stress period for like 2-3 weeks before getting shit in place. No daily social interaction with humans, all MS Teams calls daily. Didn’t take my laptop dock so can’t really use two screens, sad, should have taken more equipment. Black Panther actor, Chadwick Boseman dies of cancer, so sad after becoming a good role model for blacks and a great black super hero. More civil rights leaders dies. RBJ dies, triggering the rush of Trump’s Republican senate to appoint a new conservative leaning judge to the US supreme court, fucking so bad when they didn’t do the same and blocked Obama’s pick for supreme court judge saying that no judges should be picked on election years, complete and utter hypocrisy as they rammed a new one in two weeks before the American 2020 election. UK PM Boris Johnson got covid, basically almost died. Fucking Trump got Covid and acted like a clown in a circus and got the best medical treatment in the country; Trump recovers but double downs on his claim that Covid is not so bad, fueling and further promoting conspiracy theories and anti-mask/rebellious behavior while thousands die due to the virus. Trump says some shit about drinking bleach will cure Covid, some idiots listen to their God Emperor and die as a result, several more to other questionable drugs and remedies that he mentions. American 2020 election a complete shitshow, filled with corruption, lies, propaganda, fake news and projection from Trumps campaign. Trump tries to declare himself the victor even tho not all the votes have been counted, most uncounted are mail in ballots, which dis-proportionally favored Biden, tried to steal the election. Long days after election night where each state has to count all the mail in votes, very tense and uneasy few days without declaring a clear winner, didn’t’ sleep very well for that one week or so until they called Biden winner. Even after the November election, Trump continues to push lies that he won and that the election was stolen, completely unfounded and untrue, does not concede his loss, causing his supporters to rally and increase their insanity of blinded loyalty, causing further discord and fracture in an already divided American society where 70 million or so people still voted for Trump despite his failure at handling the covid19 pandemic and pure public corruption. Even when Biden is sworn in, America will remain deeply divided between party lines. New strain of Covid apparently a thing now that is far more contagious and spreadable than the initial virus. No public events, all sports events cancelled or forced to play in bubble or only in the US. No concerts. CNE cancelled for the first time since WW1. No Anime/fan conventions took place, all cancelled; AN, Fanexpo cancelled. AX in LA was cancelled. Not sure about the future of conventions even in 2021, looking doubtful to be honest and will probably be cancelled again too. Lots of anime were impacted initially by covid and had to be delayed for future seasons. All movie theaters are closed and only opened momentarily in the summer for a few movies. Malls are dead, hardly anyone except during the summer when things were not so bad and partially open; now, people just go to the mall to buy food from the food court as an excuse to go to the mail since most stores are still closed anyways. All high budget hollywood blockbusters were either delayed to 2021 or shipped to home streaming services such as the new James bond, Dune, wonder women. Movie and theater industry is ruined for the foreseeable future at least until late 2021 if not 2022, so sad. Saw Tenet in theaters in the summer, one of the few movies that decided to go for it anyways despite the pandemic. The movie was not one of Nolan’s best, kind of disappointing and a loss opportunity to be a great movie, in the end still nobody saw it except those chosen few, such as myself; it didn’t make any people feel better about going to the movies. Oscars, Korean movie “Parasite” won best picture and best foreign picture bringing into question if Hollywood has gone a bit too far in terms of bringing equality and equability as their principle means for existence. Grammy’s was full of shit because The Weeknd didn’t even get nominated for any award despite having the best song of the year “Blinded by the Light”; pure corruption and bullshit music industry fare. Raptors had a run but not really a chance in the playoff bubble, lost most of our talent, didn’t pick up any new big names, will be rebuilding for awhile. Same for Leafs/Bluejays, still shit; Austin Matthews got covid and I’m sure many others during the pandemic too. Price for housing is still increasing in Toronto and in GTA for stupid reasons, while condo and rent prices remains relatively high, although slowed down considerably. Moved to full time at my company from a contractor but my money is considerably less than what I made when I was on contract, kinda sad. Amazon use is at an all time high, Jeff Bezo is basically a God of money at this point but we can’t do anything about it cause of that sweet sweet free shipping that no one else wants to do. Worldwide shipping has slowed to a crawl, taking many times longer for goods to travel overseas and in the case for Japan, they have actually suspended shipping EMS in many places due to covid, only allowing Surface mail, meaning fucking transportation by boat which could take MONTHS for stuff to arrive. Alot of my figures I ordered in 2020 got delayed to 2021 due to covid. Due to rising tensions and aggressive nature of China in the past few years and specifically in 2020, alot of international companies are reconsidering having their business in China, causing many businesses like those in Japan to pull out and leave the market because of CCP bullshit hijinks for control. All amenities including the gym in my condo have been closed since March. Definitely gained some weight due to being at home for most the time and lack of activity. Haven’t taken the TTC since March. Despite all this free time at home, didn’t watch anymore stuff than what I normally would have watched for entertainment, especially anime, probably due to mobile games and the discovery of vtubers like Hololive taking most of my free watching time these days. Condo management fucking cut a square in my wall in early Feb to try to find a leak in the daycare on the ground level, fuck. Had a square hole in my wall for like almost 2 months. Took that long for them to fix cause covid just happened and everyone was scared. Fucking dryer broke. Had to call whirlpool to fix, had repair guys come fuck it up the first time and made it worse, in the end had to have guys come over and try to fix the shit 6 times before they gave up and finally gave me a replacement dyer. So bullshit waste of time. In federal Canadian politics, conservatives choose Erin oTooL for leader, probably the worst possible leader choice; if they picked Peter McKay they are more favorable to win a Federal election but with this Tool guy basically being a slightly louder puppet Sheer 2.0, looks like Trudeau will probably win again if they call an election, waste of time. Everybody at home, watching the same netflix shit, Tiger King documentary, leading to a general increase of degeneracy among the population and youth. Kanye West ran for president and actually got some several thousand votes; the folly of man is highlighted here. Mulan live action happened, aired on Disney+ due to covid, apparently it was shit, not surprising. Fail. Rise in anti-vax and conspiracy theory brewed to basically everything related to the pandemic, from stupid shit like 5G causing covid, vaccines with microchips in them to the extreme of people thinking Covid19 doesn’t exist and is all a hoax, incredible levels of crazy in our modern times. Anti-mask people, rise in aggression and inherent feeling of white people rebellion have awakened due to lock-downs and covid, leading to protests against mask wearing and other nonsense. Because of Covid, the nearby hotel near my condo was converted into a homeless shelter since there isn’t any paying guests anytime soon, resulting in “incidents” of drug dealing, locker theft, vandalism and hooliganism in my community such as makeshift kitchens, needles being left in the playground, camps and the standard beggars in the mini park and general poor behavior by the homeless, causing less people to take walks and doing physical activity outside in general. Fucking worst gacha pull year in FGO ever, I spent all my gems for Summer Servants and Skadi and Summer BB and only got 1 summer servant, Summer Ushi; FUCK; omg wtf; I ended up paying money to continue my folly and madness, I think I spent something like over 250ish dollars in FGO and still didn’t get anything I wanted. FUCK. New generation of consoles is released like PS5 and no one gives a shit because short supply and pandemic anyways. Cyberpunk 2077 is released unfinished and is a buggy disaster; huge disappointment, another tell tale sign that triple A gaming times are far to risky and may continue to dwindle in the future along with the rest of the console gaming industry as PC and mobile markets continue to grow and expand. Fall Guys and Among Us the the new hottest shit in youth and mainstream gaming. Warcraft III reforged ruins the entire game, Blizzard is ruined, a shadow of it’s former self. Zerolab games, the studio that made Skullgirls is ruined and closes down due to the owner/ceo’s poor comments in regards to George Floyd/racism and general asshole behavior/comments. Haven’t seen the Bros in a long time. Tower of God is lol, too many Korean try-hard anime shows. Adamson BBQ is ruined due to the owner sucking up that nice conspiracy theories and opening defying lock-down rules by allowing his BBQ restaurant to serve in door dining; so stupid and unnecessary. Ended up getting arrested and is scheduled to show up to a court hearing to something later this January, so dumb. All holidays ruined, nowhere to go, nothing to do, Halloween was ruined, Christmas was like the least festive ever, same for new years. At the time of writing an estimated 1.87 million people have died from Covid19 and total amount of cases approximately 86.4 million worldwide.

And yea, that’s all I can think of at the top of my head and from basic news sources. I know it’s not alot but you get the idea. People and historians will be writing books and studying this period of human history academically for decades to come. Movies will be written, fictional stories will be made, tv shows will be created set in 2020 and the years following it for generations. Society in general and culture may have changed drastically as a result of this year, who knows. Well then, aside from the wholesale ruin of our times, what good things happened this year?

Good things that have happened:

Got full time at Job, not having to renew contract every few months is great, get benefits, vacation days now (do nothing at home), dental coverage, drug plan etc, health benefit credits to spend (free money), feeling of job security at the expense of considerably less money (not so great ._. and it’s only really an illusion but..). Working from home is dope as fuck, I don’t have to waste like 2-2.5 hours each day getting up, walking to the bus stop, taking the ttc and commuting like a drone to get downtown to the office like a fool. Fucking just roll out of bed half an hour, sometimes 10 minutes before daily standup meeting with team online. Don’t have to spend 1.5-2hr getting back home from downtown once work is done; once work is done I just turn off my work laptop, shift my body horizontally on my couch and now I am in home mode, which lately for most days I am already in home mode anyways 80-90% of the time even during work hours because fuck it, no one is going to care as long as I get my shit done. Have worn t shirts and sweatpants for the entire year while working at home, far less laundry since I don’t need to wash business casual shirts. Haven’t ironed a shirt since March. Had the chance to play and finish 2 video games on my PS4, Final Fantasy VII Remake and Devil May Cry 5, both excellent experiences; first console games that I finished since a long time. Still haven’t picked back up Valkyria Chronicles 4 tho due to PTSD to me associating it with me getting laid off in 2019, unfortunately, maybe one day. Brought the new Vanillaware game, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim; haven’t played it yet but hopefully in 2021 I will get around to it. Still haven’t played alot of the games I brought in the past due to I dunno, I guess mobile games priorities. Didn’t pick up any new mobile gacha games, which is good; still doing good in Azurlane, getting all the boats, great new update and guild system. Epic Seven I login and do dailies, skip story 100%, good enough, pull for pretty girls, good enough. FGO still alive and well, keeping up with the latest story and it’s not bad, future is looking bright for FGO, typemoon plans to have it keep going for at least another 5 years or so which is great. Pulled Hokusai in early Jan which is great when the world was still ok. Typemoon finally announces the long waited Tsukihime remake visual novel with a great animation opening, hopefully paving the way to FGO collab and future new Typemoon content that is not Fate related. Grand Order Festival anime is announced, which is jokes since it’s been 10 years since the last joke anime, good shit. New anime season for Winter 2021 is looking to be very very good filled with great sequels and highly anticipated new shows. Got a few new figures and opened some old ones that I have had years prior, they are great. Did some home improvement, installed picture/magazine ledges where I can display nice things/anime books. Cook more food, eat more food at home (good and bad). Didn’t’ get Covid or at least didn’t think I have had covid yet. Haven’t gotten sick since the beginning of the year, maybe I had it already? Don’t know, I haven’t gotten a cold since like Dec/Jan so maybe? Showed the Bros my condo before the ruin of covid in Feb. Visited a Bros house in the summer when things weren’t so bad, good shit.  Despite ruin of pandemic, decent amount of anime this year, good for the mind. Despite the stock market crashing and the economy in a recession in the months following the announcement of a global pandemic, my investments and assets are doing pretty good now, bounced back and I think back to where they were before covid in returns? Fucking Tesla increased in price by 700times holy shit, wish I had put money directly into them. Bitcoin price reaches new all time high of like 32k, wish I had some still. Despite the shitshow and stress of the American 2020 election, everyone is at ease knowing that at least a competent and boring individual like Joe Biden will be the next president and the reality tv show of Trump will finally slowly subside. As of this writing, it looks like the Georgia runoff elections will have the Democrats winning both seats, meaning that they will control the American senate and all levels of government for the first time since 2010 (oh my god has it really been that long?) and actually start to make meaningful changes to America. Probably one of the most important good things is that multiple Covid19 vaccines have been developed already and have shown to be very successful, a miracle of medical science since vaccines normally take a long time to develop, new vaccine tech. Vaccine means that there is finally a light at the end of the tunnel and people just have to wait and be patient to eventually get their doses, good shit. Canadian fed gov did a good job with CERB at handing out 2k money to people in the early days of the pandemic which is great, all governments on all levels are united in some capacity, at least in the early days. People have come to realize the importance of healthcare workers and the medical system. People understand the importance of what it means to be an “essential worker” aka min wage jobs at a grocery store. People just started calling the virus COVID instead of COVID19 or in the early days, Coronavirus. Started to use on occasion food deliver apps, new cool experience that is very convenient although pricey. Working at home means lots of youtube and with it the immense and rapid rise of Vtubers and Hololive as a new entertainment medium for the anime weeb consumer. Coffin dance is still the best meme of the year even tho it started in Jan/Feb, perfect dance/song to represent the year. The Mandalorian S2 was awesome, paving the way for a future of Star Wars that you can hope to believe in and not fuck up like Disney did for the sequel movies. Discovered vtubers and Hololive shortly after work from home issued in like March, great fun anime Japanese streaming content, very entertaining and literally an endless amount of content produced daily/weekly. A whole new side industry of anime culture has arisen on youtube, the successors to Kizuna Ai and even further back, Miku Vocaloid stuff. So popular Hololive launched EN branch to immense success and explosive growth and popularity. The presence of vtubers and Hololive will be apparent in future conventions and weeb culture in general. I love it, fucking watch that shit for hours every day late into the night. Tried new BBQ place, Beach Hill Smokehouse because Adamson BBQ is ruined, shit is pretty good, overall better, nice discovery that came out of a need to not support an idiot assholes business. So yea, there are a few things looking up, so looks like things will get better in 2021! Looking good maybe! here’s hoping for a better future!

Goodbye 2020, you got us good. You delivered in the ruin, can you let up now for 2021?

*Watches news, sees Trump supporters attempting a violent mob coup in DC on the day where congress is officially supposed to make Biden’s win official.

Oh.

._.

Never-mind.

Looks like 2021 isn’t looking so great after all. Yeah, looks like we are in for another season of ruin…

In Dec they did an online survey at work asking employees how they were doing during the pandemic and about adapting to working at home, one of the questions was “If you had to use one word to describe this year, please write it”. It’s pretty obvious what I wrote in for that:

Ruined.

While the ruin have seem to subside for now, a new generation of ruin has already begun.