At the few socially distanced gatherings I’ve been too, as well as when running into people in the streets, there’s been a lack of the usual nuance and care that I typically expect. That’s mainly expressed through less careful filtering, either of direct content or indirect content. E.g. evidence of marital strife that would normally be papered over more effectively might come out. Words are chosen less carefully causing unintended meaning to leak out. What might normally be a ‘we’ turns into ‘me’ and ‘her’.

An example from this weekend, I ran into a colleague in town who is having a hard time - his roommate moved back East in May and the core parts of his social group are either immunocompromised or left the area shortly before his current absent roommate moved in. He was having trouble masking how anxious he was. There were untimely interjections. He mentioned wishing he could talk to people who didn’t work for our company - it’s a company town and no one our age/socioeconomic class (that’s an ugly thought but I won’t go down that rabbit hole) works anywhere else. I would expect him to be more nuanced in expressing the idea of hating small talk with people that work at our company, given we were actively making small talk and I work at said company.

Maybe serious is a stretch, but I’m seeing the typical CS/engineer social deficits expressed in people who are in sales/management roles and in people who previously were more capable. It probably wouldn’t stand out in San Francisco or a tech school campus, but in my current circumstances it certainly does.

This isn’t a judgment of anyone involved - everyone I’ve talked about I love to death. As a socially awkward person myself, I tend to love and appreciate other socially awkward people. They just might run into challenges when the stakes are higher.