By "internet retreat" I initially thought, "I'm going to sit in a room and binge YouTube deepfakes." I was mildly horrified!
But yes, I agree. I really hope that this wave pushes people to get back outside and meet more people in the community. It's really hard to say what will happen though!
We just need that in order to lower the current rates of depression/anxiety, imo, or else the situation will only get worse.
Even in terms of work, I’m suddenly put off by purely digital things. I want to interface with the real world, hardware, build systems that humans need. I’m very interested in AI, but it’s not a problem I’m solving and I suppose I don’t really want to compete with it or interface with it more than on an opt-in basis.