I Know What You Did During COVID-19 (2020: That Was The Year That Was)

[indigohex3]

It's early December, and you know what that means? That's right, its an open and frank discussion on 2020. You can discuss the events of the 2020 Summer Olympics and Paralympics (which will now be held in 2021), Eurovision 2020 (cancelled), and anything that happened in 2020 (which was pretty much nothing except a certain virus taking hold on the world).

Seriously, 2020 will be remembered as the year of a pandemic in which most of us were subjected to lockdown (including here in Melbourne, in which we had a lockdown of over 100 days during the second wave of coronavirus) and many parts of the world may experience worse as they enter winter and may go back into lockdown. In many parts of the world, New Year fireworks has been cancelled (including here in Melbourne, which normally attracts upwards of 400,000 people and is often crowded at Docklands at around 22:00, so I will be watching the Sydney fireworks live on television). We had 820 deaths from coronavirus here in Victoria, including one a few days ago, but we have largely defeated the second wave, but I am concerned about a third wave in 2021 (even though it is now summer here).

This year, a lot of us made discoveries such as Zoom, which I am now pretty much an expert at, having done homework club and attended various webinars via Zoom. I done online courses and I am currently writing a book on Australia's foreign relations with North East Asia (which is my interest). I also have been studying a language (Korean) during lockdown, but I going to focus on that next year (my new year's resolution). I also studied online, and I also did a blog on the forums of my lockdown diary, but fortunately, Melbourne is no longer in lockdown, and I will be going to several Christmas parties in the next couple of weeks.

Various celebrities has died in 2020, including Diego Maradona, Helen Reddy, David Prose and Alex Trebek among others.

So, what was 2020 for you?

 

[LuxrayOfTheWild]

Words can't even begin to describe how horrendous 2020 was. It makes 2016 look like a great year, and many were in agreement that 2016 was a horrible year.

For me personally, its been an awful year. In February my grandmother died, just 5 months after my grandfather died. While we were mourning still, we decided we would still go on the vacation we planned. I was finally going to get to see the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, but just one week before our vacation, COVID-19 had to ruin everything. It robbed me of the vacation. While Animal Crossing: New Horizons made lockdown somewhat less stressful, it still frustrated me that I couldn't see my friends and some family members, I couldn't go to the local restaurants I love to visit weekly, and I was robbed of the vacation I've been looking forward to for a year. Hardly anything good happened through the year. Our house renovations our grandma left us money for in her will even caused so much stress because the person who did it screwed us over by leaving projects half finished or doing poorly on them before he stopped coming to do work, while getting the full payment.

This pandemic though has been the sole source of all of the frustrating parts of this year, and a source of suffering for so many people that never should have had to. Nobody should ever have to live through something so horrible. Families having to lose their loved ones to this evil virus, remote learning for school, small businesses struggling due to lockdowns, and nothing but pure frustration because of all these anti-maskers and such making it difficult to combat this horrible virus that has no right to exist.

It was especially frustrating when it comes to entertainment because COVID-19 also caused delays for many of the movies I was looking forward to, namely Black Widow and The Eternals. At least we got Sonic the Hedgehog though, which was surprisingly good. It also had an effect on video gaming. While Sony and Microsoft seem like they had good years, the pandemic likely delayed a few Nintendo games, but then again, we hardly knew about anything because Nintendo kept us in the dark for most of the year and refused to hold an actual major Nintendo Direct and opted to suddenly just shadow drop stuff instead with no warning. Sure they had those partner showcases, but they offered nothing for first party games. Sure we had Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Age of Calamity, but this year has been pretty mediocre for Nintendo, considering this year has largely just been ports/remasters with like very few new first party games. Its not that ports are bad, its just when that's the majority of the content you release, its kinda disappointing because if you're like me, you want more new gaming experiences than ones you've already had.

This year not only stung because of the pandemic and the amount of suffering its caused, but we lost A LOT of famous people, and many of them were quite shocking. From what I can remember, we've lost Chadwick Boseman, Kobe Bryant, Alex Trebek, Sean Connery, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, John Lewis, Eddie Van Halen, Regis Philbin, Jerry Stiller, and Fred Willard. It feels like this year we've had more celebrity/iconic public figure deaths that really stung compared to other years.

Also, this year has been extremely stressful if you live in the US, due to the 2020 election. Ironically, it ended up being the only redeeming quality of this year because we finally got to tell Donald Trump "YOU'RE FIRED!" as we denied him a second term.

Hoping 2021 will be a better year. It already looks like it has potential knowing we will likely have COVID-19 vaccines rolling out and we can finally say goodbye and good riddance to that racist orange clown. Seriously, fuck 2020. Worst year ever.

 

[Fan of Jarrus]

I was going on holiday this year, but Covid 19 cancelled it.

But a good thing about this year was SWSH DLC.

 

[indigohex3]

This pandemic though has been the sole source of all of the frustrating parts of this year, and a source of suffering for so many people that never should have had to. Nobody should ever have to live through something so horrible. Families having to lose their loved ones to this evil virus, remote learning for school, small businesses struggling due to lockdowns, and nothing but pure frustration because of all these anti-maskers and such making it difficult to combat this horrible virus that has no right to exist.

It was especially frustrating when it comes to entertainment because COVID-19 also caused delays for many of the movies I was looking forward to, namely Black Widow and The Eternals. At least we got Sonic the Hedgehog though, which was surprisingly good. It also had an effect on video gaming. While Sony and Microsoft seem like they had good years, the pandemic likely delayed a few Nintendo games, but then again, we hardly knew about anything because Nintendo kept us in the dark for most of the year and refused to hold an actual major Nintendo Direct and opted to suddenly just shadow drop stuff instead with no warning. Sure they had those partner showcases, but they offered nothing for first party games. Sure we had Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Age of Calamity, but this year has been pretty mediocre for Nintendo, considering this year has largely just been ports/remasters with like very few new first party games. Its not that ports are bad, its just when that's the majority of the content you release, its kinda disappointing because if you're like me, you want more new gaming experiences than ones you've already had.

Firstly, I agree with you. At the homework club I volunteer at, we had to use Zoom because it was considered high risk to do it in person because the student were from different schools. People have lost loved ones to this virus, and these anti-maskers who claimed that they had rights to not wear a mask because of the Universal Convention on Human Rights, even though it was established by the United Nations and many of these anti-maskers are opposed to the United Nations. I feel that the anti-maskers caused the most trouble this year, and a lot of these conspiracy theorists were disgusting, as they were claiming that it was a hoax (because Trump said it before blaming China for it) while many families around the world had lost loved ones to this virus. Even though there is hope through a vaccine, I am still concerned that it may not be a silver bullet as many people would think it would be all over, but coronavirus could mutate, and that is what I am worried about.

With films, I saw Donald Trump's favourite film Parasite, which was very good (did Trump actually see the film?). I was looking forward to Peninsula, which was the sequel to Train to Busan, but sadly we were in lockdown here in Victoria so couldn't see it, but I did watch Train to Busan on SBS World Movies a few months ago.

One of the biggest concerns for me in 2020 was the deteriorating relations between Australia and China, which sadly got worse in recent weeks, as you may know what a tweet by someone from the Foreign Ministry in China. I think that the tweet that caused outrage in Australia was promoted heavily by the Australian government (led by Scott Morrison, or as we call him, Scotty from Marketing) to distract the Australian people from cuts to JobSeeker and JobKeeper (which is being cut in a few weeks, causing more heartache for the poor, while Mathias Cormann is running for the secretary-general of the OECD via use of a taxpayers funded jet that costs AUD$4000/hour, when he could've used Zoom for way less), higher university fees (especially for the arts, social sciences and humanities), RoboDebts, the war crimes Australian soldiers committed in Afghanistan, that 4 Corners episode on the private lives of members of the government (while the same politicians promote morality to the Australian people), human rights abuses carried out against First Nations people here in Australia and asylum seekers, $20 billion fixing a mess that the government created with the National Broadband Network, $30 million on buying land owned by major donors to the Liberal Party, etc. Hopefully, relations between Australia and China (and Asia as a whole) will improve in 2021.

And while 2020 has been a god awful year, there has been one bright spot, and that was Donald Trump losing the US Presidential Elections in November, but sadly, Trump is throwing tantrums over the loss. He is currently issuing pardons for people, and he planning to pardon his children, son-in-law and his personal lawyer. What about issuing pardons for the falsely imprisoned like Julian Assange, whistleblowers or the many people who have been locked up for relatively minor offences such as jaywalking? They need the pardons more than his family and personal lawyer.

2020 has been a real dick, even worse than 2016. I watch The Last Leg (which airs here in Australia on ABC), and they are doing their annual "Dick of the Year" and I nominated coronavirus, but there is a lot of votes going for Dominic Cummings, and even 2020 itself (2016 won in 2016, and last year, it was won by Boris "Johnson" Johnson, and past winners of this "prestigious award" includes Nigel Farage, Donald Trump and Jacob Rees-Mogg).

 

[toastghost]

idk man, this year made me feel depressed and unmotivated to do anything so i spent basically all my time in my room away from my family.

i'd say it was pretty bad.
the love live nijigasaki anime came out, so i've been occupying my time with that. ayumu pls redeem yourself

 

[RC821]

Good news is that the vaccines are coming.

I was watching the recent Sentai season (which is one of the good things to come out from 2020 alongside with the SwSh DLC and the Schitt's Creek finale which I would remember because it is one of my favorite shows). But man, 2020 is such a dumpster fire year because COVID-19, possibly the risk of a war, deaths of my fave celebrities (such as Kobe Bryant), the killing of George Floyd, cancellation of events, etc.

 

[indigohex3]

I agree, the DLCs were good. And last Sunday night, Sammy J did his Fire Dumpster Spectacular (his best sketches of 2020), in which God was judging 2020 (played by Sammy J) with Ruth Bader Ginsberg representing 2020 in the court case. Bad sadly, we did say goodbye to people like Kobe Bryant, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Jeremmy Bulloch (who played Boba Fett in Star Wars who died overnight) and Grant Imahara among others.

As you may be aware, I often cite TV Tonight for deaths in 2020 (such as Grant Imahara who died earlier this year), and I found a YouTube video through TV Tonight in which there was a light-hearted review of 2020 by Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton (in case you don't know who they are, and I am looking at you non-Australians, they are like Australia's answer to Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel). Spoiler alert: David was very savage on 2020.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJHUxHQxI9A