Yeah, but those meals take four hours each.
Americans Are Excessively Eating, Drinking, Smoking Pot, Playing Video Games And Watching Porn While Quarantined
Since you’re at home under quarantine and surfing social media out of boredom, you have probably come across this coronavirus hustle-porn tweet or something similar:
If you don’t come out of this quarantine with either:
1.) a new skill
2.) starting what you’ve been putting off like a new business
3.) more knowledge
You didn’t ever lack the time, you lacked the discipline
Whether the tweet was meant to be motivational or self-serving, the message is a tone-deaf directive to the millions of Americans who are desperately trying to cope with their new challenging reality.
Ten million people have filed for unemployment over the last couple of weeks of March. It's predicted by the Federal Reserve Bank that nearly 50 million people will lose their jobs by the summertime. People are frantically worrying that they will be unable to make their rent or mortgage payments. Some fear that they may lose their jobs. Parents are stressing over how to work at home, while educating and keeping their children busy now that the schools are closed.
If you have the luxury to not worry about finances and don’t have any pressing issues to immediately sort out, it is then reasonable to allocate a portion of time toward productive endeavors. At a time like this, it's unhelpful to chastise people who are just trying to hang on and make it through the day.
Conducting research on the activities of people self-quarantined at home shows interesting insights into the behavior of Americans. Most people are not heeding the hustle-porn huckster’s advice; they are choosing to decompress instead.
It looks like Americans are collectively channeling their inner-slacker attitude. People are consuming more alcohol, smoking weed, playing video games, eating a lot of junk food, binge-watching Netflix and adult films more than ever before.
In a quirky irony that highlights the craziness of the times, liquor stores are open as they’re deemed “essential.” According to Nielsen, a nearly 100-year-old marketing research and ratings firm, studies show that “alcohol sales were up 55% in the week ending March 21.” Nielsen also found that amount of spirits sold—such as tequila, gin and pre-mixed cocktails— skyrocketed 75% compared to March 2019. Wine sales rose 66%, beer sales popped 42% and online alcohol sales grew by an astounding 243% from last year at this time.
According to investment advice site Motley Fool, “During the first few weeks of the month, cannabis sales were soaring and spiked around the middle of the month as fears heightened that people would be confined to their homes in an effort to fight the coronavirus pandemic.” Marijuana sales are high in a number of states where it's legal.
Illinois marijuana dispensaries, which have remained open, sold almost $36 million worth of legal weed in March. This happened during a time period in which the state shut almost all other stores and ordered people to remain indoors. The Los Angeles Times reported that “amid coronavirus siege, California cannabis sales soared.”
Pornhub, if you can’t tell by its name, is a popular online adult film site visited by roughly 120 million viewers every day. Now that Americans are self-quarantining at home, Pornhub has seen a large rise in traffic—up 11.6%.
According to Today, “Many Americans may find their bodies flabbier and less healthy when they finally emerge from the Great Quarantine of 2020.” Bloomberg reported that less people are consuming healthy foods and “are loading up on shelf-stable items from canned meat and soup to pretzels and Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, as they comply with orders to stay home.” Studies show an increase in the consumption of potato chips, Oreos, Spam, burgers, pretzels and other comfort foods. Psychology Today refers to the weight that will be gained as the "quarantine 15."
During the week of March 16, U.S. consumers streamed 156.1 billion minutes of content. That was twice as much as last year at this time. Almost 30% of streaming was Netflix programming—including a lot of Tiger King—and 20% was YouTube viewership.
Due to school closures, kids and young adults—from elementary school to college—find themselves home. As you can imagine, video games are the go-to diversion and a way to play online and still socialize with friends. To capture the amount of time spent gaming, digital magazine Mic claims, “So many people are gaming in quarantine, servers are struggling to keep up.”
It will be interesting to see what happens as the weeks and months pass by and we’re still on lockdown. Could this trend of eating, drinking, smoking weed and watching television and porn continue? Or will we take the man on Twitter’s advice and try to do something constructive?
We’ve already seen some people become so bored that they’ve accomplished some brilliant, wonderful, daring, quirky and lovely things.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2020/04/06/americans-are-excessively-eating-drinking-smoking-pot-playing-video-games-and-watching-porn-while-quarantined/#749a42c8404e
