New forms of socializing?

New forms of socializing?  

Given the ambience of quarantine and social distancing, many have asked what the social effects of this would be.  At this point I’m not talking about the macro social effects in terms of governance, fear of “Others”, economic effects, etc. but more simply about how social life is continuing or morphing under quarantine.

Of course this will look very different in different sites and even neighborhoods, so we’ll only pass on what is happening here.

From the very first (or maybe second?) night of the quarantine, on Saturday March 14^th, text messages were passed around saying to stand at your window or balcony and clap in solidarity with doctors, nurses and health care workers at 10pm.  This was massively echoed all over the country.  By the next night, the time was changed to 8pm, and it has continued and increased every night since the quarantine began 3 and a half weeks ago and counting. 

A few days into the solidarity clapping at 8 pm, other meetups at the balcony started, some of them just one day events, some of them continuous, some caught on and others had little echo.  These include the idea of playing a musical instrument at noon by the balcony, the ringing of all church bells at noon (rekindling the tradition of the Angelus), and what we could call a sort of spontaneous disco.  In our flat, the windows that look toward the interior patio (towards other neighbors in the same building and adjacent buildings of the block) are blasted with music by another neighbours that picks old favorites that people sing and dance along to for 20-30 minutes before the clapping.  A little while later on the other side of our flat, by the windows that look out on the street, other neighbors down the street are also blasting music for neighbours.  In fact, unofficially an old song form the 70’s “Resistiré” (“I will resist”- originally not in the political sense) has become an anthem of the quarantine.  Other songs like “I’m so excited” are a daily feature –even if a bit tongue in cheek.  Macarena, Abba, Queen, and similar ones are regular features.  Some neighbors will strobe household disco lights, flags, or simply bed sheets to liven things up as well.  Occasionally there are also banners and signs hung up (such as “healthcare workers: You are our heroes!”)

These dates at the window are the one regular point of contact between neighbours.  We ‘ve actually gotten to know people we hadn’t met before. After clapping, some neighbors within the building will chat for a while (sometime close to 20 minutes) sharing news (personal, national and international), telling stories or just joking around.  It has forced us to chat more with quite a few of our neighbours whom we were cordial with but simply had no real reasons or excuse to engage in further conversation.

Other appointments include attempted protests.  When the king of Spain addressed the entire country during the first week of confinement, people agreed to do a “cacerolada” (the banging pots and pans protest made famous from Argentina and Chile) to coincide with the king’s address.  Though not as massive as the clapping, we could here banging from quite a few balconies.  

But here another challenge in social life under quarantine became evident.  The second week of confinement, there was another call to do a “cacerolada” (bang pots).  We actually heard the banging before we got the call, then we got a message that this one was to demand the royal family put its money (public money) into the health system rather than for its own use.  The next day though, we read in the newspaper that this same cacerolada (at least in several other cities) was to protests the government’s management of the health crisis…so which was it?

Part of what was happening here was the dilemma of deciphering information from a bombardment of texts and new stories.  While always a challenge, under quarantine, the idea of a “society of the spectacle” and or “simulacra” take on new meaning.  And yet, an extra twist is how new, messages, rumors, and affects, spread or start via WhatsApp messages, texts, Facebook, etc.  In the case of Spain WhatsApp is predominant.  During the first week of confinement, besides checking in on people or getting info for online school materials, a barrage of texts began to collapse our phones. It was as if people tried to replace contact and even chitchat with texts.  But aside from conversation and material about the confinement, one also began to see new stories, including audio and video recordings of different “news" or from different “authorities”:  one circulating with a video of a doctors giving advice (but not from an official channel); another with an audio of a neighborhood policeman warning about people scamming others by faking being health personnel, another audio by a doctor from another city purporting something else….how many of these were genuine? Can you trust them because several of your contact had, or just because they say they are a doctor?  Given how quickly these spread and can be made, should we be more suspicious of media than usual?  i.e. the conditions for writing good journalistic stories re harder, such than whether quality mainstream or alternative press, it is likely that a good amount of info is at the very least tentative if not partly inaccurate.

The contacts barrage of stories (whether via news sites or via forwarded texts) was one we had to begin to tune out form, or leave it for certain times of day.  But it made us think,  ‘fake new’ began to take on a whole new meaning.  How easy it is to inform but also confuse people in this situation.  How could or would this be exploited in the future?  What sorts of social possibilities were being opened or closed by this crazed pace of intense stories and warning of uncertain origin and authority?

A relevant (and kind of fun) link reflecting some of this post's themes here: 
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/balcony-window-rooftop-music