At least to everyone in our generation 2020 will likely go down as the worst year in our personal history.
Can't confirm. This may sound pretty cynical to anyone who has lost somebody to the pandemic. But luckily for me and my family at least, we haven't.
The main "sacrifice" for me last year was just my favourite annual event being cancelled for the first time ever (that being Eurovision). But in exchange for that, among many other benefits, I didn't have to attend some international conference that I really wasn't looking forward to - instead, I could attend it from the comfort of my own home, rather than flying across the Atlantic for a mere five days. If meetings are already one of the statistically most inefficient uses of time during the work day (especially regularly scheduled ones, which have to take place, but you spend more time discussing an issue than it would take to actually just solve it), then conferences seem to be even less efficient: A lot of logistical effort and high travel expenses for very minimal exchange of information, even less of which will be retained long-term.
On a similar note, what many probably saw as an infringement on their freedom of mobility, I saw as the freedom to work from home, rather than having to go to the office every morning.
That also saves you several hours a week, by not having to waste time on the way both to and back from work in the car, on the bus or train, etc. And that additional time then frees you up to do other things. Freedom is a matter of perspective.
One man's nightmare is another man's dream.
For extroverts, who need regular social input from others in order not to "starve" emotionally, lockdowns must be a living hell.
For introverts, who find interactions with others draining and need their time alone to recover, it was the first time there was an external "rational" justification for that.
All of a sudden, it was the extrovert who needed an "excuse" to secretly meet others - not the introvert who had to come up with an excuse not to meet others.
For extroverts, social-distancing rules feel like tyranny.
For introverts, the "normal" state of the world is the tyranny of the many.Since extroverts tend to be better organised - guess what, people who like to be in groups have an easier time forming a collective voice - they are the ones making a lot of the social "rules":
They will be the ones to plan social events, whether within the family or at work, and "force" everyone to participate, either by legal or social pressure.
In one regard, the powers are reversed though: The extrovert needs social input, the introvert does not. So the extrovert is dependent on the introvert, but not vice versa.
Unfortunately for the introverts, this will often result in the extroverts forcing them to participate in their social events - because for extroverts, there can never be enough people at the party.
Whereas many introverts will frequently question the purpose of the social gathering to begin with.
The pandemic has seen a sudden surge in libertarian voices, people who are suddenly all concerned with the infringement on the freedom to meet others - even among YouTubers. Those actually tend to be introverts, though - not that surprising, given that we're talking about people who spend their day talking to a camera by themselves, from within their own homes. YouTubers and other people with online businesses were already doing home office before it was "cool".
So I found it somewhat ironic to see all these YouTube voices suddenly supposedly "caring" about "their" freedoms being infringed upon when they barely ever used them before.
But of course, there's the saying "you don't know what you've got until you lose it" (coincidentally, I also happen to know this one from Bryan Adams again). Speaking of music, indeed I remember a meme going around on a music production channel (Spectre Sound Studios), a meme that had been made by some self-professed nerd, reading something along the lines of "I already spend all day alone at home in front of my computer screen anyway - except when the government tells me to. Now I won't!"
In some sense, lockdowns and social distancing allowed the introverts to get their "revenge" on the extroverts 
, in terms of "now you know what it feels like if society thinks your 'social desires' don't matter" - whether that social desire is "more social input" or "less social input". But that's only an image I'm using here - I have no interest in anyone actually getting their "comeuppance" for any of this, because personality traits are neither inherently wrong nor anyone's fault.
Whereas many extroverts seem to have a hard time understanding the introvert perspective at a fundamental level - they just tend to confuse us for shy or socially anxious people, i.e. a weakness that's supposed to be overcome, rather than just a different preference of a lifestyle - I am fully aware that extroverts genuinely have this need for social input, that personality traits are very stable across the human lifespan, and that they therefore can't simply suppress that need, even if there are environmental factors like a pandemic that might make it wise to do so for a while.
After all, I obviously also still know what enjoyable social interactions feel like - they're just not as inherently rewarding to me, and therefore not as addictive to me either, as they will probably be for an extrovert. Thus, I still know what they're "missing", and then just need to infer they must miss it much more than I will ever do.
And so, whenever it comes to "overreach" in terms of lockdowns, measures that seem hardly commensurate - for example, I've just heard New Zealand went back into lockdown over a single COVID case?
- then I can understand how also introverted YouTubers tend to rally on the "back to more freedoms" side. Even if not for their own sake - but simply because we don't want other people who we know have this greater need for social input to be "starved" of that. I'm pretty sure a lot of introverts enjoy the "peace and quiet" that came with the pandemic - but that doesn't mean we want our lifestyle enforced at extroverts' expense.
Sadly, I'm not sure the extroverts will return the favour once things go entirely "back to normal" - again, not because of malice, but probably because of a genuine lack of understanding for the introvert state of mind. In an ideal world, freedom / liberty would mean that the extroverts can live their preferred lifestyle in parallel to introverts living theirs. But as I said, for one there's the asymmetry of the extrovert needing the introvert more than the other way round; and second,
there is the quick transition from "everybody can" to "everybody must":A few decades ago, for example, flights were still much more expensive, and thus much more of a rarity. The downside of that is: It's a privilege for the few.
Then that thing becomes available to the masses, so everybody has access to it. But once everybody is using something, there is pressure to use it.
This is how we get from "everybody can" to "everybody must": Now flights, including intercontinental ones, are so cheap that you will be expected to make use of them, and even if it's just for work purposes. Same with cars.
Or, on a purely social rather than technological level: From the 1970s, when at least here in Germany, women still needed their husband's approval in order to be allowed to work, we quickly moved from "all women
can work" to "all women
must work": Now most couples have no choice but to both contribute to the household income, because a single income rarely ever suffices anymore to provide for an entire family.
If something becomes "self-evident" like that to most people in a society, that is a double-edged sword - because they will no longer have an understanding for any deviations from the "new normal".
So when things go back to normal and "everyone can" meet again, I expect that to quickly relapse into "everyone must meet again":The extroverts will be running the show again, we will not just go back to having the necessary types of face-to-face conversations and personal exchanges that couldn't take place during the pandemic, but also go back to all the additional fancy but "pointless" social events that highly extroverted people like to force onto their friends and co-workers on top of that.
But usually, when a behavioural change has been around for several weeks or months, at least some of it manages to stick around. It's like adopting a new routine, like a diet or workout:
Home office has become more widely accepted, some employers are already thinking of "exploiting" this from a purely material perspective and save on office rent (I don't mind, sounds like a win-win situation to me
), everyone is familiar enough with the technical use of Zoom, MS Teams etc. to quickly discuss something in a spontaneous online meeting, rather than feeling the need to always gather everyone in physical presence just to get everyone updated, etc.
For some particularly libertarian voices, this idea of "some of the COVID measures sticking around after the pandemic" seems to be a threat. They like to compare this to the increases in airport security after 9/11 that never really went away again. For me, meanwhile, if some of the things that were set up during the pandemic (home office, online meetings etc.) stick around at least in part, that just sounds like a compromise between the introverts' and the extroverts' preferred lifestyle - rather than one type of personality getting to enforce their lifestyle on the others.
