When Life Goes All 2020 On You

We Have a New Word to Describe Everything Bad

I can point to several specific years of my past that I’d just as soon erase. There was 1991, the year I got laid off from a job. There was 2005, the year my basement flooded three times. There was 1985, the year Jefferson Starship released “We Built This City.”

But rarely is there a year that humanity can site as an existential calamity. 2020 has created an acute collective trauma that has a strong chance of becoming chronic — a global pandemic that has killed more than half a million people and sickened millions, racial upheaval we haven’t seen since the 1960s, soaring unemployment, and nations led by amoral, narcissistic autocrats.

Social scientists define collective trauma as “a cataclysmic event that shatters the basic fabric of society,” as experimental psychologist Gilad Hirschberger describes it. It evolves into a collective memory and leads us to redefine who we are.

Certainly, COVID-19 stands as that catastrophic backdrop of our time. But how will the hallmarks of 2020 —fear, illness, death, isolation, outrage — sink into the planetary psyche in the future? I won’t get into prognostications about how people will make sense out of this year, other than to propose that we’ll have a new way of describing anything that tanks or just plain sucks. 2020 is destined to become a multipurpose term — an adjective, a verb, or a common noun — 1to describe despair, rage, pain, disaster. Here are some quotes you may hear after we’re through this crisis-drenched period.

“My job was going great until the new boss came in and 2020ed it.”

“We had a great relationship, but then he went all 2020 on me and got really controlling.”

“I’ve been feeling so 2020 since my wife left me.”

“The first season of that series was excellent, but they got a new show runner who 2020ed it to death.”

“I usually like lasagna, but this was so 2020 it made me gag.”

“I drank way too much last night, and woke up with the worst 2020 of my life.”

“I’m gonna have to put off retirement. My 401K took a major 2020 last quarter.”

“Damn it! The neighbor’s dog just took a huge 2020 on my lawn.”

“What was she thinking?! She looks absolutely 2020 in that outfit.”

“Hey asshole, go 2020 yourself!”

I caution that this may change if the horrors of the last 20 years — terrorism, endless war, xenophobia, Donald Trump, “The Emoji Movie” — continue for years to come. Should that be the case, you may someday hear someone tell you to “go 21st Century yourself!”