Jimmy Failla: Coronavirus — To help beat this, drop 'Me society’ and join 'We society' on social media
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Growing up as a chubby kid with a terrible haircut, social distancing came naturally for me. You don’t need Dr. Anthony Fauci to keep people six feet away when you’re a guy with a mullet who looks like he’s in his third trimester. But even if there were a pandemic, my generation would’ve had a much easier time adhering to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines because we were raised in a far more selfless era.
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Not so today, where social media has calibrated all of us for peak self-absorption. Ours is a society that’s encouraged to share the most minute details of its lives in order to score the digital dopamine known as likes. For that reason, it should come as no surprise that a bunch of spring breakers won’t get off a beach in Miami.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}As ridiculous as it may seem to you or me, it’s hard to think about the greater good when you’ve grown up in a world where everything is about you. Yeah, we’re all narcissists in our own way, but nobody handed us a trophy when our soccer team lost 9-1.
And therein lies the challenge in defeating the coronavirus: We must transition from a “ME” society to a “WE” society quicker than you can post your next Tiger King meme. Because while we all get to be the president of a smartphone nation that’s perfectly curated to our personal preferences, there’s a virus out there in the real world that can care less what a picture of your lasagna looks like. (To be clear, I absolutely care. But the virus doesn’t.)
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Much the same as we did in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, now is a time to put EVERYTHING aside in the name of defeating a common enemy that poses an existential threat to all of us. A time to draw on the lessons from the heroes who ran into the World Trade Center with no regard for who people voted for in the last election.
I get that some of you may not like President Trump and others aren’t inviting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to your next Zoom cocktail party but the reality is, as they go, we go. Here in New York, us Yankees fans absolutely hated Roger Clemens when he was a member of the Boston Red Sox. But one day we got out of bed and he was pitching for our team. None of us were going to start rooting against the Yankees and let’s face it, none of us are going to root against team humanity — because we’re all on it.
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It’s a time to acknowledge that the superficial wars we’ve waged on social media the past few years mean nothing in the overall scheme of things. Remember when we all fought because an actor bought his pretend wife a Peloton exercise bike for Christmas? I’d go back to that societal conundrum quicker than you can tell me if “The Dress” is black and blue or white and gold. Because to beat this thing, it’s going to require a spirit of togetherness we haven’t seen since Ellen Degeneres sat with George W. Bush at a Cowboys game. The horror!
More than anything now is a time for perspective. Young people. I get that some of you don’t like staying home but think of it this way. Your grandparents had to go to WAR to help this country. You have to sit on the couch and watch Netflix. You’re not being asked to SAVE Private Ryan, you’re being asked to WATCH Private Ryan. YOU can do it. And history will show that WE considered you a hero.
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