What was fun?

It is Saturday night in mid-October , and I am at an outdoor comedy show in a public park hoping to rediscover the sensation I ’ d once understood as “ fun.
” What was fun ?
I can no longer remember .
A comedian makes a bad joke about ketamine , and a different comedian makes a better joke about puppy mills , and in the distance , I can hear the strains of several competing dance-pop DJs .
There seem to be a lot of people , or maybe it just looks that way , when everyone is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Am I having fun ?
I wonder .
Is this what fun is ?
I am no longer sure .
It ’ s like being the hatchling in Are You My Mother ?
, except I am confused not about the nature of maternity , but about the concept of fun .
“ Are you fun ?
” I wonder , staring at focaccia recipes on the internet .
Is Emily in Paris fun ?
Is a Zoom birthday party fun , is ordering a pizza fun , are jokes fun , is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fun ?
Seven months into the Covid-19 pandemic , I have lost track .
In the first weeks of the pandemic , if you weren ’ t sick , if your family wasn ’ t sick , if you were marginally but not essentially employed , if you were lucky , you could get through the day hopped up on the adrenaline of panic from the relative safety of your home .
All routines had been disrupted — schools were closed , offices were done , grocery stores were minefields , toilet paper @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but at least fear was a novelty .
Now nothing is new — even the news is not new , so much as it is escalating variations on the same ghoulish set of themes .
To be lucky , now , is to have all the days feel like all the other days .
“ At this point , ” Jennifer Senior wrote in the New York Times in early August , “ weren ’ t we expecting some form of relief , a resumption of something like life ?
” It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Something like life has resumed and suspended panic has mellowed into sustained malaise .
The streets are lined with outdoor restaurants ; there is entertainment in the parks .
Online , there are lectures and performances and readings and concerts ; on television , there are live sports .
In real life , several different people I know have gotten haircuts .
Is a haircut fun ?
There is surprisingly little research about the precise nature of fun , given how much we all apparently enjoy it .
There is robust and growing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pleasure , leisure , flow — but fun itself is rarely discussed as such , except in books for children .
There is Little Miss Fun and Fractions Fun and Squirrel ’ s Fun Day , about a squirrel trying to get his fellow forest creatures to break out of their ruts , and Is Everyone Ready for Fun ?
, which I have ascertained is about a small herd of enthusiastic cows .
I am ready for fun , I think , if only I could remember what it was .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ good — the release of endorphins into our system , ” writes game designer Raph Koster in A Theory of Fun For Game Design , one of the few texts to seriously address the question of what qualifies as fun ( for game design ) .
“ Fun is the act of mastering a problem mentally , ” he explains , suggesting that the fact we enjoy this process is an “ evolutionary advantage right next to opposable thumbs in terms of importance.
” The world is not a game , and a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the beginning , there was a perverse thrill in learning to adapt : Here is where you can still get dried beans ; this bodega still has hand sanitizer ; do you want to Zoom ?
But now we know all that , and nothing has changed , there is no new information , and no I don ’ t “ want to Zoom.
” Mastery right now is out of reach , because the problem — a contagious new virus and the corresponding cascade of nightmares it has wrought — can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and weathering an onslaught is the opposite of fun .
This , Michael Rucker tells me , is a problem .
Rucker is an organizational psychologist and author of the forthcoming book The Fun Habit , about the science of fun .
“ It ’ s clear that we thrive when we believe we have autonomy , ” he says , “ and that autonomy has been ripped out from underneath us , right ?
And if we don ’ t feel like we have a certain amount of control over any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Stress is very unfun .
His definition of fun is , in his own estimation , “ very loose ” : fun is “ any activity on the positive side of valence , ” he says , laying out what he calls the old-school theory of charting emotion .
The x-axis is “ valence , ” or “ hedonic tone ” — the tenor of how you ’ re feeling , positive to negative .
The y-axis is arousal , or the intensity of that feeling , from very low to very @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the entire right half of the matrix .
He loves heavy metal rock concerts , and his wife loves reading in solitude , and both of them are experiencing what Rucker would classify as fun .
“ What ’ s so awesome about fun , ” he explains , quite seriously , “ is that it ’ s unique to the individual , ” which may explain the dearth of literature about it .
“ Happiness has been boiled down to these survey instruments , where we can fill out bubbles on a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gurus of the world can tell us whether or not we ’ re happy .
But fun is meant to be owned by you.
” In theory , my pandemic experience has been full of pleasant low-arousal activities that I would have once considered fun .
I baked cakes and read books and streamed a lot of British murder content , and eventually , it all felt the same .
And at the same time , it began to dawn on me that the “ pause ” that had begun in March was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t that … what you did before ?
” my boyfriend asked , which is insulting but also not untrue .
But the difference is that it all used to be fun .
It is possible this is a symptom of low-grade depression , but on the other hand , it is also possible that I am right .
“ Everything you used to turn to that was fun for you is either not available , or it ’ s in such a different form that you ’ re still getting used @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a sociologist at the University of Northern Iowa .
“ And if you are having fun , how long is it before guilt sets in ?
” Those of us not in acute distress seemed desperate to find scraps of joy By April , those of us not in acute distress seemed desperate to find scraps of joy , judging by the number of SEO-optimized articles promising ideas about what to do for fun while in a prolonged state of isolation .
The problem with these articles is that nobody seems to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Restock your bar , ” suggested Thrillist ( “ 50 Fun Things You Can Do at Home Right Now in Quarantine ” ) , explaining that a fun activity might be ordering bottles of liquor to your home .
“ Get more sleep , ” offered CNN ( “ 50 fun things to do this fall ” ) , while Real Simple proposed it would be fun to “ trade in your sandals for a cute pair of boots ” ( “ 33 Fun Things You Can Still Do This Fall ( Even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Travel + Leisure wanted you to adopt a rigorous schedule of virtual tours of European castles .
Have you considered watching Netflix ?
What about a bubble bath ?
It was a valiant effort .
We were trying .
There was Zoom .
There was streaming — anything you used to do , there is a streamed equivalent — and when you ran out of things to stream , you could take basic acts of life maintenance and declare they were fun .
Acquiring seasonally appropriate footwear : fun !
“ Consumption , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at Virginia Wesleyan University , reminds me , “ is also a form of fun.
” That morning , I had ordered several canvas pouches for no reason .
Was it fun ?
Travis Tae Oh is a marketing professor at Yeshiva University who for the last five years has been studying fun , because nobody else seemed to have any satisfactory answers .
“ A lot of marketers want to position their brands as ‘ fun , ’ ” he found , but there was very little psychological research into what that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from other emotional or affective terms , ” he points out .
“ You never say you ‘ have sadness.
’ ” But we frame fun as coming from somewhere else , which gives it unique commercial potential .
It is packaged as an external product but is also an internal state .
You can , as everybody knows , go to an amusement park , which is designed explicitly for fun , but that doesn ’ t mean you ’ ll have any .
Oh ’ s theory rests on a simple-sounding @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fun , it ’ s coming from some sort of hedonically engaging experience that is also , in some sense , liberating.
” Fun , he points out , is a spectrum .
For the maximum 10/10 experience , though , you need to be both totally absorbed in the pleasure of the thing you ’ re doing , and “ released from some sort of prior psychological restriction ” — usually social obligation or your own self-discipline .
( This is the reason a forced office karaoke , while potentially amusing , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) I don ’ t know what my normal behaviors are at this point , but I am pretty sure I am not liberated from them It is hard , though , to be 10/10 absorbed in anything , even when there is not a pandemic , and you are not perpetually interrupted by a steady stream of apocalyptic news alerts , and you don ’ t have to brace yourself , every time the phone rings .
But it can be easier to lose yourself if you ’ re doing something new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the first time , or something slightly different from what you used to do , you tend to be more engaged , ” Oh says .
A sense that you ’ re connected to other people has a similar effect ; other people jolt you from the prison that is yourself .
It is the difference between watching a movie alone and watching a movie with rapt friends .
It almost justifies a Netflix watch party ( “ 12 fun ideas to keep you busy at home this summer ” ) .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fun boxes .
Unless you really put some muscle in ( take a bubble bath ? )
, nothing is conveniently novel , nothing is effortlessly social , and very little is spontaneous , which is another factor in Oh ’ s theory of fun .
All the usual hotbeds of happenstance — parties , coffee shops , public transportation — are limited , if they exist at all .
There is a reason that , in New York City , people have taken refuge in the antics of raccoons : Say what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is , at least , an element of chance .
The final prong of his fun framework is a sense of boundaries , and we don ’ t have many of those lately either .
Fun requires you to “ set aside a space or a time to let loose , ” he explains .
“ Most people are not just going to start dancing in the streets , but you have clubs .
There ’ s a bounded play area , where you can go in and you ’ re allowed to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ don ’ t know what my normal behaviors are at this point , but I am pretty sure I am not liberated from them .
In the last several months , whatever boundaries I ’ d had have collapsed .
My office is my sofa and weekends are weekdays and I am not efficient at work but I am never not slowly working .
I tell Oh I am worried I am supposed to find work fun , but Oh is extremely clear that I am not .
“ The term ‘ fun @ @ @ @ @ @ @ think it ’ s overused , ” he says .
Work , he tells me , could be meaningful , and it could be enjoyable , but “ work should not be fun.
” Fun is a release ; work , at least in the contemporary United States , is the thing you are releasing from .
The obvious solution to this is to impose some kind of spatial and temporal structure on my life .
“ You could set aside a space at home , if your home is large enough , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I guess that ’ s why people have those man caves or women ’ s … ” he trails off .
The word he is looking for is “ she-sheds.
” Space , having it or not having it , is of the many ways the pandemic has exacerbated existing class divisions .
“ Families who have multiple homes , or larger homes , have room to have a playroom , to have a movie room , to have different bedrooms for each child and places for them to do their schoolwork , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t have that space are living on top of each other , because one effect of social distancing is that , while we are largely separated from anyone we don ’ t live with , we rarely get a break from the people that we do .
“ There ’ s sort of a fun gap there.
” But having space and time is not enough .
Now even creating the conditions for potential fun demands internal discipline .
You are responsible for maintaining the sanctity of your dance corner .
You @ @ @ @ @ @ @ your life space , if not actually then emotionally .
You are supposed to single-handedly decide it ’ s time to close your email and take a virtual tour of the Amalfi Coast .
I had imposed boundaries on my life before mostly by changing company and shifting locations and making plans for pre-set times : now I am out to dinner , now I ’ m at a friend ’ s house , now I ’ m at a wedding , I ’ m on a trip , I ’ m eating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ supposed to set an alarm for 8 pm so you remember to tune into a Zoom book launch .
“ I ’ m at a reading , ” I told my boyfriend , who wanted to know , urgently , if the diced tomatoes in the refrigerator had gone bad .
But I wasn ’ t .
I was on the couch .
Though it previously existed , as a concept and a word , fun “ really became embedded in our lives in the 20th century , as it became commercialized and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” says Casey , and now , in 2020 , against our will , we have come back .
But what once was labor is now supposed to be leisure .
The reason there is a national shortage of canning jars is not that stores have abandoned jam , but rather that canning — like pickling , or gardening , or sourdough and sewing — is “ a safe and somewhat solitary activity that can preoccupy us , ” she suggests .
“ Which is partly what fun is about , right ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ drudgery ?
” The problem I am having in my own kitchen is that cottagecore diversions start feeling remarkably like labor very fast .
I liked domestic hobbies better when they were my personal quirk , and not the only option .
Until mid-March , I hadn ’ t realized how much of what I did was possible because I had the freedom and resources to get out of the house .
I would have said I didn ’ t do much , but in fact , I did things all the time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sat in coffee shops and browsed in bookstores and in drugstores and in stores selling “ home goods , ” and so much of what read to me as fun was in fact commercial leisure , which I ’ d depended on for formal permission not to work .
Leisure is not the same as fun , but it can be a kind of vessel for it .
Part of the joy of being on vacation is that it is a socially sanctioned opportunity to temporarily abandon your real life .
This is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ restaurant ( on a much smaller scale ) ; I can not attest to it personally , but this may also be the joy of golf .
If the pandemic has been hard on fun , it has eviscerated leisure .
The leisure industry , with its airlines and cruises and museums , its hotels and restaurants , its sports clubs and gyms , may not fully recover for years .
“ Leisure and work are usually paired together in a kind of binary couple , ” says Stalp .
Leisure is not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ definition unpaid , and also elective .
It is , as Casey puts it , “ what people choose to do , when they don ’ t have to do anything else.
” It is fun to go for walks , to see friends on outdoor benches , to stream movies , to make doughnuts ; what is not fun is me There is no perfect analogue to this moment — there are no perfect analogues to any moments — but the question of what to do with ourselves amid a global pandemic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
During the 1918 flu pandemic , people talked so much on the telephone that newspapers ran ads begging them to stop clogging the lines with “ idle and useless telephone conversations.
” In November 1918 , during the pandemic ’ s second wave , an article in the Los Angeles Times titled “ Watchu ’ Doin ’ With Yourself ?
” surveyed what Angelinos were doing with “ every place of public amusement , churches , schools and resorts tight shut by ’ flu orders.
” The answers are strikingly familiar : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( “ naturally , nobody wants to be the Germans ” ) but sometimes tennis ; teens were having picnics with too many people at them and “ holding hands ” in parks .
“ Books are popular , ” the paper observed , especially romances and histories , and music stores reported a “ great run on phonographs and player pianos , ” and some people had gotten into fortune telling , and others were having the “ time of their lives ” complaining about nonexistent symptoms , and when all of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ golf.
” None of this feels terribly illuminating .
I , too , am reading books and complaining , and while those are among my favorite things even in the best of circumstances , I can not lose myself in either .
The problem with my fun-free life is not a lack of fun-seeming activities .
The ability to “ have fun ” is not contingent on access to fun-adjacent institutions , which have and do exclude all kinds of people , who nonetheless , for centuries , have managed to have fun @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it could collapse forever ; fun would continue to exist .
It is fun to go for walks , to see friends on outdoor benches , to stream movies , to make doughnuts ; what is not fun is me .
What was once “ novel ” and “ spontaneous ” is now an exercise in planning — what is an equidistant park , is there a bathroom , will it rain ?
— and the effort of Zoom game night is more than I can give .
Instead of a release , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are so lucky , I keep thinking .
Why don ’ t you want to go apple picking ?
“ We ’ re getting a moment to pause , ” Stalp tells me .
“ We ’ re getting a moment to reconceptualize what fun can be.
” Maybe we will emerge from this slower and less task-oriented ; certainly , I have spent no other period of my life so attuned to the minutiae of the weather .
Alternatively , we will pick up as we were .
It ’ s hard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like when this is over , and harder to predict how we are going to feel : the acute awareness that a moment is historic is not the same as knowing how it ends .
If there is anything to take from history , it is reassurance : There will be fun again because there has always been fun before .
“ I think it ’ s part of being human , ” Casey tells me .
It is comforting to hear this .
I have felt less like myself , indeed less @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is appropriate : The conditions are terrible .
We ’ re being set up to fail .
But fun finds a way , it always has .
Its return will come .
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It is Saturday night in mid-October, and I am at an outdoor comedy show in a public park hoping to rediscover the sensation I’d once understood as “fun.” What was fun? I can no longer remember. A comedian makes a bad joke about ketamine, and a different comedian makes a better joke about puppy mills, and in the distance, I can hear the strains of several competing dance-pop DJs. There seem to be a lot of people, or maybe it just looks that way, when everyone is sitting at least 6 feet apart. Am I having fun? I wonder. Is this what fun is?
I am no longer sure. It’s like being the hatchling in Are You My Mother?, except I am confused not about the nature of maternity, but about the concept of fun. “Are you fun?” I wonder, staring at focaccia recipes on the internet. Is Emily in Paris fun? Is a Zoom birthday party fun, is ordering a pizza fun, are jokes fun, is wine fun? Have I ever experienced fun?
Seven months into the Covid-19 pandemic, I have lost track. In the first weeks of the pandemic, if you weren’t sick, if your family wasn’t sick, if you were marginally but not essentially employed, if you were lucky, you could get through the day hopped up on the adrenaline of panic from the relative safety of your home. All routines had been disrupted — schools were closed, offices were done, grocery stores were minefields, toilet paper was out — and everything was terrible, but at least fear was a novelty. Now nothing is new — even the news is not new, so much as it is escalating variations on the same ghoulish set of themes. To be lucky, now, is to have all the days feel like all the other days.
“At this point,” Jennifer Senior wrote in the New York Times in early August, “weren’t we expecting some form of relief, a resumption of something like life?” It is now the end of October. Something like life has resumed and suspended panic has mellowed into sustained malaise. The streets are lined with outdoor restaurants; there is entertainment in the parks. Online, there are lectures and performances and readings and concerts; on television, there are live sports. In real life, several different people I know have gotten haircuts. Is a haircut fun?
There is surprisingly little research about the precise nature of fun, given how much we all apparently enjoy it. There is robust and growing literature on overlapping topics — happiness, pleasure, leisure, flow — but fun itself is rarely discussed as such, except in books for children. There is Little Miss Fun and Fractions Fun and Squirrel’s Fun Day, about a squirrel trying to get his fellow forest creatures to break out of their ruts, and Is Everyone Ready for Fun?, which I have ascertained is about a small herd of enthusiastic cows. I am ready for fun, I think, if only I could remember what it is.
“Fun is all about our brains feeling good — the release of endorphins into our system,” writes game designer Raph Koster in A Theory of Fun for Game Design, one of the few texts to seriously address the question of what qualifies as fun (for game design). “Fun is the act of mastering a problem mentally,” he explains, suggesting that the fact we enjoy this process is an “evolutionary advantage right next to opposable thumbs in terms of importance.”
The world is not a game, and a global pandemic is not fun, but in the beginning, there was a perverse thrill in learning to adapt: Here is where you can still get dried beans; this bodega still has hand sanitizer; do you want to Zoom? But now we know all that, and nothing has changed, there is no new information, and no I don’t “want to Zoom.” Mastery right now is out of reach, because the problem — a contagious new virus and the corresponding cascade of nightmares it has wrought — can’t be mastered, only weathered, and weathering an onslaught is the opposite of fun.
This, Michael Rucker tells me, is a problem. Rucker is an organizational psychologist and author of the forthcoming book The Fun Habit, about the science of fun. “It’s clear that we thrive when we believe we have autonomy,” he says, “and that autonomy has been ripped out from underneath us, right? And if we don’t feel like we have a certain amount of control over any given situation, it causes us stress.” Stress is very unfun.
His definition of fun is, in his own estimation, “very loose”: Fun is “any activity on the positive side of valence,” he says, laying out what he calls the old-school theory of charting emotion. The x-axis is “valence,” or “hedonic tone” — the tenor of how you’re feeling, negative to positive. The y-axis is arousal, or the intensity of that feeling, from very low to very high.
For Rucker, fun is the entire right half of the matrix. He loves heavy metal rock concerts, and his wife loves reading in solitude, and both of them are experiencing what Rucker would classify as fun. “What’s so awesome about fun,” he explains, quite seriously, “is that it’s unique to the individual,” which may explain the dearth of literature about it. “Happiness has been boiled down to these survey instruments, where we can fill out bubbles on a Scantron, and then the positive psych gurus of the world can tell us whether or not we’re happy. But fun is meant to be owned by you.”
In theory, my pandemic experience has been full of pleasant low-arousal activities that I would have once considered fun. I baked cakes and read books and streamed a lot of British murder content, and eventually, it all felt the same. And at the same time, it began to dawn on me that the “pause” that had begun in March was in fact my life.
“Isn’t that … what you did before?” my boyfriend asked, which is insulting but also not untrue. But the difference is that it all used to be fun. It is possible this is a symptom of low-grade depression, but on the other hand, it is also possible that I am right. “Everything you used to turn to that was fun for you is either not available, or it’s in such a different form that you’re still getting used to it,” says Marybeth Stalp, a sociologist at the University of Northern Iowa. “And if you are having fun, how long is it before guilt sets in?”
Those of us not in acute distress seemed desperate to find scraps of joy
By April, those of us not in acute distress seemed desperate to find scraps of joy, judging by the number of SEO-optimized articles promising ideas about what to do for fun while in a prolonged state of isolation. The problem with these articles is that nobody seems to have any ideas at all. “Restock your bar,” suggested Thrillist (“50 Fun Things You Can Do at Home Right Now in Quarantine”), explaining that a fun activity might be ordering bottles of liquor to your home. “Get more sleep,” offered CNN (“50 fun things to do this fall”), while Real Simple proposed it would be fun to “trade in your sandals for a cute pair of boots” (“33 Fun Things You Can Still Do This Fall (Even During a Pandemic)”). Travel + Leisure wanted you to adopt a rigorous schedule of virtual tours of European castles. Have you considered watching Netflix? What about a bubble bath?
It was a valiant effort. We were trying. There was Zoom. There was streaming — anything you used to do, there is a streamed equivalent — and when you ran out of things to stream, you could take basic acts of life maintenance and declare they were fun. Acquiring seasonally appropriate footwear: fun!
“Consumption,” Kathleen Casey, a social historian at Virginia Wesleyan University, reminds me, “is also a form of fun.” That morning, I had ordered several canvas pouches for no reason. Was it fun?
Travis Tae Oh is a marketing professor at Yeshiva University who for the last five years has been studying fun, because nobody else seemed to have any satisfactory answers. “A lot of marketers want to position their brands as ‘fun,’” he found, but there was very little psychological research into what that meant.
“It’s different from other emotional or affective terms,” he points out. “You never say you ‘have sadness.’” But we frame fun as coming from somewhere else, which gives it unique commercial potential. It is packaged as an external product but is also an internal state. You can, as everybody knows, go to an amusement park, which is designed explicitly for fun, but that doesn’t mean you’ll have any.
Oh’s theory rests on a simple-sounding premise: “When people actually experience fun, it’s coming from some sort of hedonically engaging experience that is also, in some sense, liberating.” Fun, he points out, is a spectrum. For the maximum 10/10 experience, though, you need to be both totally absorbed in the pleasure of the thing you’re doing, and “released from some sort of prior psychological restriction” — usually social obligation or your own self-discipline. (This is the reason a forced office karaoke, while potentially amusing, will never truly qualify as fun.)
I don’t know what my normal behaviors are at this point, but I am pretty sure I am not liberated from them
It is hard, though, to be 10/10 absorbed in anything, even when there is not a pandemic, and you are not perpetually interrupted by a steady stream of apocalyptic news alerts, and you don’t have to brace yourself every time the phone rings. But it can be easier to lose yourself if you’re doing something new.
“When you do something for the first time, or something slightly different from what you used to do, you tend to be more engaged,” Oh says. A sense that you’re connected to other people has a similar effect; other people jolt you from the prison that is yourself. It is the difference between watching a movie alone and watching a movie with rapt friends. It almost justifies a Netflix watch party (“12 fun ideas to keep you busy at home this summer”).
The current situation checks approximately none of his fun boxes. Unless you really put some muscle in (take a bubble bath?), nothing is conveniently novel, nothing is effortlessly social, and very little is spontaneous, which is another factor in Oh’s theory of fun. All the usual hotbeds of happenstance — parties, coffee shops, public transportation — are limited, if they exist at all.
There is a reason that, in New York City, people have taken refuge in the antics of raccoons: Say what you want about raccoon behavior, there is, at least, an element of chance. The final prong of his fun framework is a sense of boundaries, and we don’t have many of those lately either. Fun requires you to “set aside a space or a time to let loose,” he explains. “Most people are not just going to start dancing in the streets, but you have clubs. There’s a bounded play area, where you can go in and you’re allowed to liberate from your normal behaviors.”
I don’t know what my normal behaviors are at this point, but I am pretty sure I am not liberated from them. In the last several months, whatever boundaries I’d had have collapsed. My office is my sofa and weekends are weekdays and I am not efficient at work but I am never not slowly working. I tell Oh I am worried I am supposed to find work fun, but Oh is extremely clear that I am not. “The term ‘fun’ has become so common that I think it’s overused,” he says. Work, he tells me, could be meaningful, and it could be enjoyable, but “work should not be fun.” Fun is a release; work, at least in the contemporary United States, is the thing you are releasing from.
The obvious solution to this is to impose some kind of spatial and temporal structure on my life. “You could set aside a space at home, if your home is large enough,” Oh suggests, half-heartedly. “I guess that’s why people have those man caves or women’s …” he trails off. The word he is looking for is “she-sheds.”
Space, having it or not having it, is one of the many ways the pandemic has exacerbated existing class divisions. “Families who have multiple homes, or larger homes, have room to have a playroom, to have a movie room, to have different bedrooms for each child and places for them to do their schoolwork,” Casey says. People who don’t have that space are living on top of each other, because one effect of social distancing is that, while we are largely separated from anyone we don’t live with, we rarely get a break from the people we do. “There’s sort of a fun gap there.”
But having space and time is not enough. Now even creating the conditions for potential fun demands internal discipline. You are responsible for maintaining the sanctity of your dance corner. You are supposed to separate your workspace from your life space, if not actually then emotionally. You are supposed to single-handedly decide it’s time to close your email and take a virtual tour of the Amalfi Coast.
I had imposed boundaries on my life before mostly by changing company and shifting locations and making plans for pre-set times: now I am out to dinner, now I’m at a friend’s house, now I’m at a wedding, I’m on a trip, I’m eating dim sum. Now, you are supposed to set an alarm for 8 pm so you remember to tune into a Zoom book launch. “I’m at a reading,” I told my boyfriend, who wanted to know, urgently, if the diced tomatoes in the refrigerator had gone bad. But I wasn’t. I was on the couch.
Though it previously existed, as a concept and a word, fun “really became embedded in our lives in the 20th century, as it became commercialized and increasingly took place outside the home,” says Casey, and now, in 2020, against our will, we have come back. But what once was labor is now supposed to be leisure.
The reason there is a national shortage of canning jars is not that stores have abandoned jam, but rather that canning — like pickling or gardening or sourdough or sewing — is “a safe and somewhat solitary activity that can preoccupy us,” she suggests. “Which is partly what fun is about, right? A sort of diversion from our usual drudgery?” The problem I am having in my own kitchen is that cottagecore diversions start feeling remarkably like labor very fast. I liked domestic hobbies better when they were my personal quirk, and not the only option.
Until mid-March, I hadn’t realized how much of what I did was possible because I had the freedom and resources to get out of the house. I would have said I didn’t do much, but in fact, I did things all the time. I went to the gym and sat in coffee shops and browsed in bookstores and in drugstores and in stores selling “home goods,” and so much of what read to me as fun was in fact commercial leisure, which I’d depended on for formal permission not to work.
Leisure is not the same as fun, but it can be a kind of vessel for it. Part of the joy of being on vacation is that it is a socially sanctioned opportunity to temporarily abandon your real life. This is also the joy of going to a restaurant (on a much smaller scale); I cannot attest to it personally, but this may also be the joy of golf. If the pandemic has been hard on fun, it has eviscerated leisure. The leisure industry, with its airlines and cruises and museums, its hotels and restaurants, its sports clubs and gyms, may not fully recover for years.
“Leisure and work are usually paired together in a kind of binary couple,” says Stalp. Leisure is not always fun, but it is by definition unpaid, and also elective. It is, as Casey puts it, “what people choose to do when they don’t have to do anything else.”
It is fun to go for walks, to see friends on outdoor benches, to stream movies, to make doughnuts; what is not fun is me
There is no perfect analogue to this moment — there are no perfect analogues to any moments — but the question of what to do with ourselves amid a global pandemic is one we’ve faced before.
During the 1918 flu pandemic, people talked so much on the telephone that newspapers ran ads begging them to stop clogging the lines with “idle and useless telephone conversations.” In November 1918, during the pandemic’s second wave, an article in the Los Angeles Times titled “Watchu’ Doin’ With Yourself?” surveyed what Angelinos were doing with “every place of public amusement, churches, schools and resorts tight shut by ’flu orders.”
The answers are strikingly familiar: children were playing outside, mostly war (“naturally, nobody wants to be the Germans”) but sometimes tennis; teens were having picnics with too many people at them and “holding hands” in parks. “Books are popular,” the paper observed, especially romances and histories, and music stores reported a “great run on phonographs and player pianos,” and some people had gotten into fortune telling, and others were having the “time of their lives” complaining about nonexistent symptoms, and when all of that failed, “there is always golf.”
None of this feels terribly illuminating. I, too, am reading books and complaining, and while those are among my favorite things even in the best of circumstances, I cannot lose myself in either.
The problem with my fun-free life is not a lack of fun-seeming activities. The ability to “have fun” is not contingent on access to fun-adjacent institutions, which have and do exclude all kinds of people who nonetheless, for centuries, have managed to have fun. The leisure industry as we know it could collapse forever; fun would continue to exist.
It is fun to go for walks, to see friends on outdoor benches, to stream movies, to make doughnuts; what is not fun is me. What was once “novel” and “spontaneous” is now an exercise in planning — what is an equidistant park, is there a bathroom, will it rain? — and the effort of Zoom game night is more than I can give. Instead of a release, fun is yet another obligation: You are so lucky, I keep thinking. Why don’t you want to go apple picking?
“We’re getting a moment to pause,” Stalp tells me. “We’re getting a moment to reconceptualize what fun can be.” Maybe we will emerge from this slower and less task-oriented; certainly, I have spent no other period of my life so attuned to the minutiae of the weather. Alternatively, we will pick up as we were. It’s hard to imagine what the world will look like when this is over, and harder to predict how we are going to feel: The acute awareness that a moment is historic is not the same as knowing how it ends.
If there is anything to take from history, it is reassurance: There will be fun again because there has always been fun before. “I think it’s part of being human,” Casey tells me. It is comforting to hear this. I have felt less like myself, indeed less human, without the fun. This is appropriate: The conditions are terrible. We’re being set up to fail. But fun finds a way, it always has. Its return will come.


vox--2020-10-26--#EndSARS isn’t just about police brutality. It’s about the future of Nigeria.

Tamunoteim Princewill didn ’ t expect to see a gun pointed at his face .
As his bus entered the Nigerian capital of Abuja in September 2019 , members of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad ( SARS ) — a federal police unit formed to thwart crime — signaled for it to pull over .
An officer demanded money before letting the vehicle pass the arbitrary checkpoint , a practice so common that bus drivers often carry extra cash on them , just in case .
But the driver refused to pay , claiming he had nothing to give .
Irate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the bus as some hopped on .
One SARS officer , looking for his unjust reward , found Princewill listening to music on his phone and snatched it out of his hand .
The 22-year-old complained , saying he ’ d done nothing wrong .
That ’ s when Princewill found himself staring down the barrel of a rifle , barked at to be quiet .
“ I ’ d seen guns at a distance , but for the first time it was right in my face , ” he told me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would ’ ve been gone , far away from home.
” After the officer rummaged through the phone , seemingly finding nothing to his liking , he chucked it over the side of the bridge .
Princewill tried to get off the bus to retrieve it , only to have more SARS members point their guns and command him back to his seat .
Ultimately , the police unit coaxed about $ 25 from the driver before letting the bus go on its way , with passengers — including Princewill — visibly shaken @ @ @ @ @ @ @ several months to forget and save enough to get a new phone , ” he said .
Still , he recognized , it could ’ ve gone so much worse .
“ Others have been less fortunate .
I know people who have been killed or robbed of so much more.
” It ’ s this perpetual , decades-long abuse of authority that has thousands of young Nigerians demanding that their government # EndSARS .
For weeks , they have filled the nation ’ s streets and social media with calls for greater @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more equitable society .
Despite having enough wealth to improve lives in Africa ’ s most populous country , the Nigerian state has neglected their needs , experts say , and in many cases made daily existence worse .
It ’ s why SARS has become the focal point of Nigerians ’ anger .
The unit ’ s officers don ’ t get paid a lot of money , whereas the country ’ s growing middle class is flush with cash for the taking .
SARS officers rob citizens of their possessions , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ superiors who benefit from such a scheme .
In the worst cases , as in the October video that launched the current uprising , SARS officers extrajudicially kill the very Nigerians they ’ ve sworn to protect .
Now , with global celebrities and US presidential candidates watching , Nigerians aim to do something about it .
“ What the protesters have done is they ’ ve shown the effectiveness of the silent majority to push for change , ” said Idayat Hassan , director of the Center for Democracy and Development ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Abuja .
“ A new political movement has emerged , whether the ruling class likes it or not , and a new generation of political leaders has been born.
” Standing in their way is President Muhammadu Buhari , who would rather quash the movement than listen to its demands .
In statement after statement , he ’ s expressed a desire for order instead of reform .
Last week , Nigerian security forces fired on demonstrators in the city of Lagos , killing at least 12 people .
“ What the government @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We can kill you and get away with it , ” said Matthew Page , a former US intelligence official focused on Nigeria .
The standoff , then , isn ’ t just about the future of a single police unit .
It ’ s a fight — fueled by a sense of indignation among the nation ’ s youth — for the future of the country .
“ Every generation in Nigeria has had a defining moment in their political consciousness , ” said Amaka Anku , who leads the Africa section @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ This is theirs.
” To understand the Nigerian public ’ s animosity toward SARS , you need to understand its rot .
Formed in 1984 , the semi-autonomous tactical police team aimed to curb a national upswell in robberies , kidnappings , carjackings , and more .
Officers , who roam around in plain clothes and unmarked cars , became particularly ubiquitous in the 1990s amid an uptick in those crimes .
And when Nigeria years later had a problem with internet fraudsters known as “ Yahoo boys , ” who used @ @ @ @ @ @ @ laptops , SARS targeted anyone who seemed to be richer than they should be .
Officers learned during this time that they could take people ’ s possessions and money with impunity , experts said .
Nigeria ’ s forces became one of the most corrupt in the world .
“ It ’ s run like a pyramid scheme : lower levels have to kick money up the hierarchy to keep their positions , ” said Page .
“ There ’ s a whole stream of corruption that runs from the bottom and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the public generally turned a blind eye to that behavior because they appreciated the harsh crackdown on criminals .
At the time , it was quite literally the price worth paying for security .
The crime rates of the 1990s dropped ( though not dramatically ) .
Economic growth rates rose , driven in part by a thriving technology sector that fueled an emerging middle class .
Information technology and telecommunications grew from about 1 percent of national GDP in 2001 to roughly 10 percent in 2018 , and it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a result , the number of young Nigerians — people under 24 years of age make up about 60 percent of the population — wearing Silicon Valley-style hoodies with cars and laptops grew , too .
SARS , though , had an inculcated culture of profiling and targeting those kinds of people .
The unit , experts said , broadly suspected youthful Nigerians with a middle-class living standard of obtaining it illicitly .
“ If SARS see you as a young person who is successful with a nice car , they will harass @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” an activist told BBC News two weeks ago .
That led to a shift in the public ’ s relations with the officers .
“ Now it ’ s my friends who are in the tech sector getting harassed and getting killed , ” Anku said , explaining the general sentiment now .
“ There ’ s more of a public consciousness ” about what ’ s going on .
And what ’ s going on is grim .
The human rights group Amnesty International found that SARS perpetrated “ at least @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and extra-judicial execution ” from January 2017 to May 2020 .
Not everyone has had negative encounters with the force , but “ everybody knows somebody who has had a bad experience with SARS , ” CDD ’ s Hassan told me .
It ’ s gotten so bad that experts and Nigerian citizens told me few actually want to call the police when something goes wrong .
In most cases , the police won ’ t take care of the situation .
What they might do , though , is shake you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ distrust is why activists started the # EndSARS campaign in 2017 , focusing their attention on one particularly egregious police unit to make a broader point .
Nigeria ’ s government repeatedly promised to disband SARS , but never followed through .
That inaction kept public anger toward SARS and the government at a simmer for three years .
But this month , it heated up to a raging boil .
# EndSARS goes from an online grievance to a worldwide phenomenon On October 3 , a video surfaced online allegedly showing a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ southern Nigeria .
Even though the person who tweeted the video had only about 800 followers at the time , their tweet got about 10,000 retweets .
Others simply linked to the video , but typed in # EndSARS .
Nigerians had had personal encounters with SARS and seen horrifying videos like this before , but the timing — in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement in the US — and sheer brutality of the images brought tons of attention to the video .
“ It kind of galvanized the people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the more people spoke out , the more everyone could align with the grievance.
” Five days later , the public ’ s grievances moved from the internet to Nigeria ’ s streets .
Thousands rallied in major urban areas , with some in Lagos — the African continent ’ s most populous city — holding signs demanding “ respect for human rights ” and “ a more equal society.
” It was less peaceful in the capital Abuja , as police dispersed a few dozen protesters with tear gas .
Soon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lent their support to the movement and called for SARS to be disbanded .
Among them was John Boyega , the British-Nigerian actor famous for starring in the last three Star Wars films , as well as popular Nigerian musicians Davido and Wizkid .
The online pressure and street demonstrations had an impact : On October 11 , Nigeria ’ s government said it would disband SARS “ WITH IMMEDIATE EFFECT.
” But there were two problems with that .
First , as Boyega ’ s tweet noted , Abuja had promised this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , since 2017 .
Second , none of the corrupt SARS officers would be fired .
They ’ d just be relocated to other divisions and teams within Nigeria ’ s federal police force .
Anger at the tepid changes only grew when the head of police on October 14 announced that SARS would no longer exist , but the Special Weapons and Tactics ( SWAT ) team would carry out its duties .
In other words , the mistreatment of Nigerian citizens by its police would continue , just by other officers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and protests have continued since , even in defiance of government-imposed curfews .
“ Nigerians want their daily experience with the police to tangibly change , ” said Page , now at the Chatham House think tank in the UK .
“ If the institutions don ’ t function properly , then what ’ s the point ” of those reforms ?
Especially if they don ’ t meet the actual requests of the movement .
# EndSARS leaders released their “ five demands ” of the government on October 11 , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ releasing activists from jail , prosecuting poor police conduct , evaluating and retraining officers , and increasing the salary for agents .
But if you ask Nigeria ’ s government , it ’ s already done enough .
It did pass the 2020 Police Act this year , which , among other things , promises a pay raise for officers .
That , in addition to replacing SARS with SWAT , should mollify the crowds , in the government ’ s view .
It explains why Buhari , Nigeria ’ s president , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to more demands , and more of a need to quash the protests .
Quickly .
Experts say Buhari is completely out of touch with the movement he ’ s up against .
He comes from the country ’ s north , a Muslim-majority region that ’ s heavily securitized due to its problems with terrorism .
But the protests are centered in the richer Christian-majority south and its big cities , which is why he has trouble understanding the plight of the people there .
“ Buhari is very narrow minded .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ a capacity to understand a lot beyond his narrow worldview , ” said the Eurasia Group ’ s Anku .
“ He doesn ’ t understand the frustration or the context.
” But it ’ s not just his mental inflexibility , Page said , it ’ s also how he leads .
“ This is much more about his imperious and monarchical style of ruling Nigeria , ” he told me .
“ He ’ s not one to listen to these kinds of complaints and find them valid ... he resents @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any of his cohort run the country.
” Buhari ’ s forceful response to the protests is a case in point .
On October 15 , Nigeria ’ s army put out a statement warning “ all subversive elements and troublemakers ” that the nation ’ s forces would “ defend the country and her democracy at all cost.
” The military “ is ready to fully support the civil authority in whatever capacity to maintain law and order and deal with any situation decisively , ” the statement said .
Security forces @ @ @ @ @ @ @ later .
Videos on social media appeared to show gunfire and wounded people at Lagos ’ s Lekki toll gate .
Reports indicate about 12 people died in the altercation , with many more hurt .
It ’ s to date the deadliest incident since the uprising .
The next day Buhari said he would seek justice for the victims and their families and that his administration would quickly adopt more police reforms .
Activists and experts , though , didn ’ t buy it .
Page told me that , as of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ looting and property destruction has happened at the direction of # EndSARS protesters .
But elites with ties to the government have likely sponsored gangs to wreak havoc , setting stores and cars on fire while posing as activists .
That would gave the government an excuse to crack down hard on the movement .
Buhari made that play quite explicit in a Thursday address to the nation .
“ I must warn those who have hijacked and misdirected the initial , genuine , and well-intended protest of some of our youths in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ excesses of some members of the now disbanded Special Anti-Robbery Squad , ” he said .
Because of the violence , “ I therefore call on our youths to discontinue protest.
” His words weren ’ t taken as a sign of willingness to compromise .
“ The tone and body language of the president in his speech was shockingly harsh , lacking in empathy , and condescending , ” Bolarinwa Durojaiye , a Nigerian technology entrepreneur who sides with the protesters , told me .
“ This administration clearly does not feel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : Despite condemnations from the United Nations and African Union , Buhari isn ’ t backing down .
With little chance of deposing Buhari with street protests alone , an uncomfortable question arises : Has # EndSARS failed ?
# EndSARS may be winding down , but it ’ s not going away In the course of reporting this story , I asked multiple factions within the # EndSARS movement for comment .
One , which I won ’ t name because they declined to comment on the record , explained that “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be taking [ some ] downtime.
” It ’ s pretty clear what the spokesperson was conveying : The government ’ s use of violence has made activists wary about pushing too hard right now .
It ’ s a sentiment the Feminist Coalition , one of the pro-movement groups , made evident in a Thursday statement .
“ The past two weeks have been tough for many Nigerians , most especially the last two days , ” they said .
“ Many lives have been lost and properties destroyed at the height @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the end to police brutality.
” They continued : “ Following the President ’ s address , we hereby encourage all young Nigerians to stay safe , stay home , and observe the mandated curfew in your state.
” Experts said they expect fewer scenes of packed streets in the days ahead .
That was always a possible outcome , noted the Eurasia Group ’ s Anku , since the calls for dismantling SARS didn ’ t spread to the entirety of the country .
They centered mostly in the south ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sudden phenomenon , ” she said .
“ It ’ s not enough of a movement.
” But what might happen , she added , is that # EndSARS could turn into an organized political force ahead of the 2023 presidential election .
With enough momentum , Nigeria ’ s youth could defeat a Buhari-aligned politician ( he can ’ t run for a third term ) with someone willing to improve the relationship between the government and its people .
“ It ’ s really not just a protest about SARS , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ It ’ s really about governance.
” It ’ s why experts believe both the government and activists may step back from a broader confrontation to regroup .
There ’ s a political fight to win , after all .
But the overlying issue — police brutality in Nigeria — still isn ’ t solved .
If another horrifying video surfaces or the police or military kill more people in the weeks ahead , “ that may reignite the now seething base of protesters , ” said Page .
And if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just be a political struggle over the next few years .
It could be a lethal one , too .
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Tamunoteim Princewill didn’t expect to see a gun pointed at his face.
As his bus entered the Nigerian capital of Abuja in September 2019, members of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) — a federal police unit formed to thwart crime — signaled for it to pull over. An officer demanded money before letting the vehicle pass the arbitrary checkpoint, a practice so common that bus drivers often carry extra cash on them, just in case.
But the driver refused to pay, claiming he had nothing to give. Irate, the officer and his colleagues banged on the bus as some hopped on. One SARS officer, looking for his unjust reward, found Princewill listening to music on his phone and snatched it out of his hand. The 22-year-old complained, saying he’d done nothing wrong.
That’s when Princewill found himself staring down the barrel of a rifle, barked at to be quiet. “I’d seen guns at a distance, but for the first time it was right in my face,” he told me. “A simple pull and I would’ve been gone, far away from home.”
After the officer rummaged through the phone, seemingly finding nothing to his liking, he chucked it over the side of the bridge. Princewill tried to get off the bus to retrieve it, only to have more SARS members point their guns and command him back to his seat.
Ultimately, the police unit coaxed about $25 from the driver before letting the bus go on its way, with passengers — including Princewill — visibly shaken but unharmed. “It took me several months to forget and save enough to get a new phone,” he said. Still, he recognized, it could’ve gone so much worse. “Others have been less fortunate. I know people who have been killed or robbed of so much more.”
It’s this perpetual, decades-long abuse of authority that has thousands of young Nigerians demanding that their government #EndSARS.
For weeks, they have filled the nation’s streets and social media with calls for greater accountability, better governance, and a more equitable society. Despite having enough wealth to improve lives in Africa’s most populous country, the Nigerian state has neglected their needs, experts say, and in many cases made daily existence worse.
It’s why SARS has become the focal point of Nigerians’ anger. The unit’s officers don’t get paid a lot of money, whereas the country’s growing middle class is flush with cash for the taking. SARS officers rob citizens of their possessions, lining their own pockets and enriching their superiors who benefit from such a scheme. In the worst cases, as in the October video that launched the current uprising, SARS officers extrajudicially kill the very Nigerians they’ve sworn to protect.
Now, with global celebrities and US presidential candidates watching, Nigerians aim to do something about it.
“What the protesters have done is they’ve shown the effectiveness of the silent majority to push for change,” said Idayat Hassan, director of the Center for Democracy and Development (CDD), a think tank in Abuja. “A new political movement has emerged, whether the ruling class likes it or not, and a new generation of political leaders has been born.”
Standing in their way is President Muhammadu Buhari, who would rather quash the movement than listen to its demands. In statement after statement, he’s expressed a desire for order instead of reform. Last week, Nigerian security forces fired on demonstrators in the city of Lagos, killing at least 12 people.
“What the government did is lay down a marker: We can kill you and get away with it,” said Matthew Page, a former US intelligence official focused on Nigeria.
The standoff, then, isn’t just about the future of a single police unit. It’s a fight — fueled by a sense of indignation among the nation’s youth — for the future of the country.
“Every generation in Nigeria has had a defining moment in their political consciousness,” said Amaka Anku, who leads the Africa section for the consulting firm Eurasia Group. “This is theirs.”
SARS stagnated as Nigeria developed
To understand the Nigerian public’s animosity toward SARS, you need to understand its rot.
Formed in 1984, the semi-autonomous tactical police team aimed to curb a national upswell in robberies, kidnappings, carjackings, and more. Officers, who roam around in plain clothes and unmarked cars, became particularly ubiquitous in the 1990s amid an uptick in those crimes. And when Nigeria years later had a problem with internet fraudsters known as “Yahoo boys,” who used their ill-gotten money to buy cars and laptops, SARS targeted anyone who seemed to be richer than they should be.
Officers learned during this time that they could take people’s possessions and money with impunity, experts said.
Nigeria’s forces became one of the most corrupt in the world. “It’s run like a pyramid scheme: Lower levels have to kick money up the hierarchy to keep their positions,” said Page. “There’s a whole stream of corruption that runs from the bottom and goes to the top.”
Even so, the public generally turned a blind eye to that behavior because they appreciated the harsh crackdown on criminals. At the time, it was quite literally the price worth paying for security.
But then Nigeria changed.
The crime rates of the 1990s dropped (though not dramatically). Economic growth rates rose, driven in part by a thriving technology sector that fueled an emerging middle class. Information technology and telecommunications grew from about 1 percent of national GDP in 2001 to roughly 10 percent in 2018, and it’s slightly higher than that now.
As a result, the number of young Nigerians — people under 24 years of age make up about 60 percent of the population — wearing Silicon Valley-style hoodies with cars and laptops grew, too.
SARS, though, had an inculcated culture of profiling and targeting those kinds of people. The unit, experts said, broadly suspected youthful Nigerians with a middle-class living standard of obtaining it illicitly. “If SARS see you as a young person who is successful with a nice car, they will harass you and extort money from you,” an activist told BBC News two weeks ago.
That led to a shift in the public’s relations with the officers. “Now it’s my friends who are in the tech sector getting harassed and getting killed,” Anku said, explaining the general sentiment now. “There’s more of a public consciousness” about what’s going on.
And what’s going on is grim. The human rights group Amnesty International found that SARS perpetrated “at least 82 cases of torture, ill treatment and extra-judicial execution” from January 2017 to May 2020. Not everyone has had negative encounters with the force, but “everybody knows somebody who has had a bad experience with SARS,” CDD’s Hassan told me.
It’s gotten so bad that experts and Nigerian citizens told me few actually want to call the police when something goes wrong. In most cases, the police won’t take care of the situation. What they might do, though, is shake you down for money.
That feeling of distrust is why activists started the #EndSARS campaign in 2017, focusing their attention on one particularly egregious police unit to make a broader point. Nigeria’s government repeatedly promised to disband SARS, but never followed through.
That inaction kept public anger toward SARS and the government at a simmer for three years. But this month, it heated to a raging boil.
#EndSARS goes from an online grievance to a worldwide phenomenon
On October 3, a video surfaced online allegedly showing a SARS officer shooting a young man in southern Nigeria. Even though the person who tweeted the video had only about 800 followers at the time, their tweet got about 10,000 retweets. Others simply linked to the video but typed in #EndSARS.
Nigerians had had personal encounters with SARS and seen horrifying videos like this before, but the timing — in the midst of mass Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the US — and sheer brutality of the images brought tons of attention to the video. “It kind of galvanized the people,” Hassan told me, “and the more people spoke out, the more everyone could align with the grievance.”
Five days later, the public’s grievances moved from the internet to Nigeria’s streets. Thousands rallied in major urban areas, with some in Lagos — the African continent’s most populous city — holding signs demanding “respect for human rights” and “a more equal society.” It was less peaceful in the capital Abuja, as police dispersed a few dozen protesters with tear gas.
Soon, celebrities, encouraged by activists online, lent their support to the movement and called for SARS to be disbanded. Among them was John Boyega, the British Nigerian actor famous for starring in the last three Star Wars films, as well as popular Nigerian musicians Davido and Wizkid.
Three years ago Nigeria’s police chief re-organised SARS after public condemnation about the violence that came with their operations. That change has done nothing for Nigerians and today many are still in danger. #EndSarsProtests — John Boyega (@JohnBoyega) October 9, 2020
My people need me .... #EndSarsNow — Davido (@davido) October 9, 2020
The online pressure and street demonstrations had an impact: On October 11, Nigeria’s government said it would disband SARS “WITH IMMEDIATE EFFECT.”
PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE: The Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) of the Nigeria Police Force @PoliceNG has been dissolved WITH IMMEDIATE EFFECT.
The Inspector General of Police will communicate further developments in this regard. — Presidency Nigeria (@NGRPresident) October 11, 2020
But there were two problems with that. First, as Boyega’s tweet noted, Abuja had promised this before — four times, in fact, since 2017. Second, none of the corrupt SARS officers would be fired. They’d just be relocated to other divisions and teams within Nigeria’s federal police force.
Anger at the tepid changes only grew when the head of police on October 14 announced that SARS would no longer exist, but the Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team would carry out its duties. In other words, the mistreatment of Nigerian citizens by its police would continue, just by other officers.
Demonstrators weren’t satisfied, and protests have continued since, even in defiance of government-imposed curfews. “Nigerians want their daily experience with the police to tangibly change,” said Page, now at the Chatham House think tank in the UK. “If the institutions don’t function properly, then what’s the point” of those reforms?
Especially if they don’t meet the actual requests of the movement. #EndSARS leaders released their “five demands” of the government on October 11, which include disbanding the unit, but also releasing activists from jail, prosecuting poor police conduct, evaluating and retraining officers, and increasing the salary for agents.
But if you ask Nigeria’s government, it’s already done enough. It did pass the 2020 Police Act this year, which, among other things, promises a pay raise for officers. That, in addition to replacing SARS with SWAT, should mollify the crowds, in the government’s view.
It explains why Buhari, Nigeria’s president, feels less of a need to cave to more demands and more of a need to quash the protests. Quickly.
“Law and order” versus #EndSARS
Experts say Buhari is completely out of touch with the movement he’s up against. He comes from the country’s north, a Muslim-majority region that’s heavily securitized due to its problems with terrorism. But the protests are centered in the richer Christian-majority south and its big cities, which is why he has trouble understanding the plight of the people there.
“Buhari is very narrow-minded. He’s not a guy with a capacity to understand a lot beyond his narrow worldview,” said the Eurasia Group’s Anku. “He doesn’t understand the frustration or the context.”
But it’s not just his mental inflexibility, Page said; it’s also how he leads. “This is much more about his imperious and monarchical style of ruling Nigeria,” he told me. “He’s not one to listen to these kinds of complaints and find them valid ... he resents that people are questioning how he or any of his cohort run the country.”
Buhari’s forceful response to the protests is a case in point. On October 15, Nigeria’s army put out a statement warning “all subversive elements and troublemakers” that the nation’s forces would “defend the country and her democracy at all cost.” The military “is ready to fully support the civil authority in whatever capacity to maintain law and order and deal with any situation decisively,” the statement said.
Security forces followed through on that threat five days later. Videos on social media appeared to show gunfire and wounded people at Lagos’s Lekki toll gate. Reports indicate about 12 people died in the altercation, with many more hurt. It’s to date the deadliest incident since the uprising.
The next day, Buhari said he would seek justice for the victims and their families and that his administration would quickly adopt more police reforms.
Activists and experts, though, didn’t buy it.
Page told me that, as of now, there’s no evidence looting and property destruction has happened at the direction of #EndSARS protesters. But elites with ties to the government have likely sponsored gangs to wreak havoc, setting stores and cars on fire while posing as activists.
That would give the government an excuse to crack down hard on the movement.
Buhari made that play quite explicit in a Thursday address to the nation. “I must warn those who have hijacked and misdirected the initial, genuine, and well-intended protest of some of our youths in parts of the country, against the excesses of some members of the now disbanded Special Anti-Robbery Squad,” he said. Because of the violence, “I therefore call on our youths to discontinue protest.”
His words weren’t taken as a sign of willingness to compromise. “The tone and body language of the president in his speech was shockingly harsh, lacking in empathy, and condescending,” Bolarinwa Durojaiye, a Nigerian technology entrepreneur who sides with the protesters, told me. “This administration clearly does not feel more accountable.”
He has a point: Despite condemnations from the United Nations and African Union, Buhari isn’t backing down.
With little chance of deposing Buhari with street protests alone, an uncomfortable question arises: Has #EndSARS failed?
#EndSARS may be winding down, but it’s not going away
In the course of reporting this story, I asked multiple factions within the #EndSARS movement for comment. One, which I won’t name because they declined to comment on the record, explained that “due to recent events, we will be taking [some] downtime.”
It’s pretty clear what the spokesperson was conveying: The government’s use of violence has made activists wary about pushing too hard right now.
It’s a sentiment the Feminist Coalition, one of the pro-movement groups, made evident in a Thursday statement. “The past two weeks have been tough for many Nigerians, most especially the last two days,” they said. “Many lives have been lost and properties destroyed at the height of what started as peaceful marches for the end to police brutality.”
They continued: “Following the President’s address, we hereby encourage all young Nigerians to stay safe, stay home, and observe the mandated curfew in your state.”
Experts said they expect fewer scenes of packed streets in the days ahead. That was always a possible outcome, noted the Eurasia Group’s Anku, since the calls for dismantling SARS didn’t spread to the entirety of the country. They centered mostly in the south’s large cities. “This is a southern phenomenon,” she said. “It’s not enough of a movement.”
But what might happen, she added, is that #EndSARS could turn into an organized political force ahead of the 2023 presidential election. With enough momentum, Nigeria’s youth could defeat a Buhari-aligned politician (he can’t run for a third term) with someone willing to improve the relationship between the government and its people.
“It’s really not just a protest about SARS,” CDD’s Hassan told me. “It’s really about governance.”
It’s why experts believe both the government and activists may step back from a broader confrontation to regroup. There’s a political fight to win, after all.
But the overlying issue — police brutality in Nigeria — still isn’t solved. If another horrifying video surfaces or the police or military kill more people in the weeks ahead, “that may reignite the now seething base of protesters,” said Page.
And if that happens, it won’t just be a political struggle over the next few years. It could be a lethal one, too.