I think you are missing my point. Actually, ever since the pandemic, I prefer WFH/remote work. I mean, I actually did like working in an office for reasons, but there's no doubt about it: I am an introvert.

But being an introvert didn't fix anything else. I had to constantly cycle through masks, got harassed by random strangers when going to the store, had my medical appointments delayed for several months, people I knew were dying, there were shortages of basically everything, and the news cycle was full of panic and anger. And the pre-existing problems with the Internet somehow got even worse.

Maybe it's because I live in a rural area, but life here really was great. The impact of the pandemic was really confined to prices increasing. Nobody really got that sick in my community. We all sort of just spent WAAAAYYYY more time with each other.

As long as we avoided the news.

> I had to constantly cycle through masks

I'll grant they were a pain. I don't miss them. They didn't make my life miserable, though.

> got harassed by random strangers when going to the store

Why? Not my experience at all (unless you were refusing to wear a mask).

> had my medical appointments delayed for several months

I can see that being a major problem if you have medical conditions.

> people I knew were dying

Same here. It definitely sucked, but I didn't get depressed by it. I think it comes down to expectations in life. If you go through life thinking "people in their 30s aren't supposed to die", then yes, I can see it being depressing. If you go through life with "one can die any time - be it from disease or a car accident", then a pandemic isn't much of a shock.

To give a different perspective: Long before the pandemic, people I knew died in places like Palestine and Iraq due to conflicts. Yet the whole world lived a happy life despite it. Is this all that different?

And go back a century or more, and people around you dying from disease was the norm (think tuberculosis, etc). That didn't prevent people from having a happy life, and did not make them depressed. It's not (primarily) the circumstances that lead to the depression, but the narrative one has around them.

> there were shortages of basically everything

I got lucky. We happened to accidentally buy an extra set of Clorox wipes just prior to the pandemic. We were going to return them and then the pandemic hit. I was never short.

Hand sanitizer shortages sucked. We certainly conserved our use, and were fortunate never to run out.

As for everything else, I didn't deal with any serious shortages. Somehow always found paper towels, bathroom rolls, soap, etc. And things like cars/appliance shortages - these are not meaningful quality of life things for me.

> and the news cycle was full of panic and anger

If this caused you depression, I say this with the utmost sincerity: I hope you learned the lesson not to waste much time with the news. I was a news junkie for many years, and had cured myself of it years before the pandemic hit (and thankfully never jumped on the social media bandwagon). Video news is the worst, and has almost no redeeming value. You can get much, much more from text sources.

At the end of the day, it wasn't the pandemic but the news media that caused you problems.

> And the pre-existing problems with the Internet somehow got even worse.

I guess I'm fortunate in that my Internet never had problems.

The other obvious difference between you and me: You seem to have experience with remote work prior to the pandemic, so your baseline was clearly different. For people like me, the pandemic was the cause of my appreciating remote work.

BTW, I'm not claiming it was great for the majority. Merely pointing out that for many - albeit a minority - it was an improvement on life.

Being able to go for walks on days of nice weather in nice neighborhoods during work hours can be a major improvement on one's mood.

As an introvert who fell quickly into depression at the start of the pandemic, I'm having a very difficult time seeing this comment as anything but gaslighting.

EDIT: Instead of trying to persuade you that the pandemic was a bad thing, I'll just say that perhaps your wonderful work-from home experience was different than a lot of other people.

> Instead of trying to persuade you that the pandemic was a bad thing

Never said it wasn't. I lost people I know to COVID.

> I'll just say that perhaps your wonderful work-from home experience was different than a lot of other people.

I'm not denying that either.

I think you're misreading my comment as saying "For the majority of introverts, it was better than before". I am not asserting any such thing. I am saying that for some, it was better.

You just need to scan HN comments from that time period to find plenty of people who enjoyed their work from home experience during the pandemic.

BTW, I refused to work from home prior to the pandemic. At times I made it a condition of employment that I leave my laptop at work when I went home. So this is definitely not coming from a guy who always liked working from home. When I had to, though, I found the experience to be far superior than commuting every day and dealing with nosy managers.