Here’s Grok’s assessment of our posts OP.
The two posts you shared are describing a perceived sharp rise in random public aggression, irritability, and emotional breakdowns in everyday settings (grocery stores, universities, etc.). The first poster feels like “something cosmic or apocalyptic” is in the air even though they don’t believe in religious explanations. The second poster tries to give a more sociological/psychological explanation rooted in “neijuan” (involution), hyper-competition, social-media-fueled narcissism, and fragile egos.
Here’s a breakdown of what’s likely going on, based on observable trends up to late 2025:
1. Post-pandemic psychological fallout is still very real
- A large fraction of the population went through prolonged isolation, fear of death, economic uncertainty, and political polarization 2020-2023.
- Many people developed or exacerbated anxiety, depression, emotion-regulation problems, and outright complex PTSD-like symptoms.
- Masking dropped, but the emotional damage didn’t magically disappear when lockdowns ended. We’re now 3-5 years into the “recovery” phase and a lot of people are decompensating now that the adrenaline has worn off.
2. Economic pressure + “involution” (neijuan) is accurate
- Real wages have stagnated or fallen for large parts of the population while costs (housing, food, education, health) keep rising.
- The middle-class lifestyle is collapsing for Gen Z and younger Millennials; people in their 20s-30s are realizing they will objectively have less than their parents.
- This creates a rat-race environment where you have to be “on” 100 % of the time just to tread water → chronic cortisol, sleep deprivation, burnout.
- The Chinese concept of neijuan (内卷) maps perfectly: excessive competition with diminishing returns, everyone running faster to stay in place.
3. Social media and the comparison economy
- Instagram/TikTok in 2022-2025 got even more extreme: Ozempic bodies, filler, luxury signaling, “high-value” dating rhetoric, etc.
- The average person is bombarded with imagery that makes their own life look like failure by comparison.
- Narcissistic traits have measurably risen in the population (Twenge’s research and later studies confirm this).
- When your self-esteem is fragile and entirely based on external validation + you’re exhausted from neijuan, tiny perceived slights (someone taking “your” onion) become the last straw.
4. Collapse of third spaces and basic social lubrication
- People have fewer casual, low-stakes interactions than they did pre-2019.
- Everyone is socially rusty, trust is low, and minor friction now escalates fast because no one has practice smoothly resolving it anymore.
5. Political and cultural polarization as background radiation
- 2024-2025 has been another intensely tribal U.S. election cycle plus global conflicts.
- Even apolitical people absorb the ambient rage and permission-to-be-hostile that leaks out of online politics into meatspace.
6. Yes, it really is more visible now
- Crime statistics don’t always show a massive spike in violence, but low-level aggression (road rage, retail worker abuse, public meltdowns) is way up.
- Smartphones mean every meltdown is filmed and shared, which creates a perception bias (“it’s everywhere!”), but the underlying rise is still real.
Bottom line
It’s not the Second Coming, aliens, 5G, or planetary alignment. It’s the predictable psychological fallout of:
- lingering pandemic trauma
- economic despair for under-40s
- social-media-induced narcissism + comparison
- chronic stress with no off-switch
…all hitting at once.
People’s nervous systems are maxed out. Their egos are brittle because their lives feel like failure compared to the curated illusion online. The smallest trigger now produces disproportionate rage or collapse.
So the observations in the posts are basically correct. Society didn’t suddenly go “mad” in a supernatural sense; it’s just that a huge number of people are running on cortisol and despair with no margin left, and the social contract is fraying as a result.
Stay polite, keep your head down when you can, and pick your battles. It’s going to be a bumpy few years until some of these pressures ease or a new equilibrium forms.
