COVID Consciousness as a Subculture
The nostalgia freeze is a crisis of imagination. COVID consciousness is a way out.
Guest essay by UMNIA
UMNIA is a British-Sudanese artist working across film, music, and cultural criticism. She runs OBSCURAE, exploring “good futures” through culture.
Prefer listening? UMNIA reads her article below.
It’s 2026, and culture has frozen into nostalgia – the pop charts replicate the records of multiple of our youths (everything from the 60’s to the 90’s), Sequels and franchises dominate the box office, and some people still believe it’s safe outside without a respirator.
Some blame the nostalgia freeze on “losing hope for the future”, some blame the sped-up trend cycle. I think all these things are connected:
Our disillusionment with the future, and coziness in the past, comes from an economic recession no one wants to name, that was clearly triggered by the mass disabling and death event COVID brought forth, which itself is theorized to have been made more likely by climate change.
How can we break ourselves free and imagine a new future, now?
A creator I cannot remember on my FYP had a theory that perhaps niche Subcultures - potentially immune from wider market forces toward conformity - might hold the answer.
In a now-infamous TikTok, I cheekily signaled that perhaps this “immune niche subculture” had been under (or rather, over!) our noses the entire time. Without mentioning the community by name, everyone in the know knew, and those not in the community were so confused - so far back into conformity, perhaps? - that I had to make a follow up video explicitly spelling it out.
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As a COVID-Conscious cultural worker and creator myself, this link seems natural to me. Other culture creators like Abby Mahler, have spoken about the ways COVID has kept us stuck over the last few years. The world is refusing to grieve, or even acknowledge, the lost life, ability, time, opportunities, and freedoms we had before the ongoing pandemic made the world more hostile.
We should all know the historical patterns of fascism rising in times of uncertainty, but it was the wise sage Imani Barbarin who taught me it was the 1918 Pandemic that triggered the events of the 20th century we are mirroring today.
I think breaking this nostalgia requires at least two things - a vision of the future and a distinct culture that adorns it. The COVID-Conscious community has both in spades.
First, the COVID Conscious community’s vision for the future lives in the ever-present now – without denial.
We understand the present danger, not just of COVID but of the climate crisis, and how the prevalence of viruses that lower global immune response poses a real threat, right now, to the rights and freedoms of everyone around the world. This pragmatism allows for an actual future, not a fantasy future, to be brainstormed.
Second, COVID Conscious subculture is well defined. In sociological terms, a subculture is a distinct group within a larger culture, unified by shared values, norms, symbols, or practices that differ from those of the dominant group.
COVID Consciousness fits this definition: we have clear values and recognizable symbols, we have an aesthetic (we all know what a KN95 looks like, and the chains that one might use to adorn it!), we have fashion brands, we have shared resources, language and references, internal community debates (such as the nasal spray debacle of 2024/2025! Iykyk!), local “chapters” (Mask Blocs), and we even have influencers and “celebrities.” I know where I was when I read the Rolling Stone article, and realized I shared a community with Stevie Nicks. Great day for all of us.
It’s precisely those days of vindication that I see as the community builder for us: We all come together around a shared vision of the world, being affirmed by a news story or a video, and all reaffirm our commitment to protecting each other.
That’s what true subculture is – a type of loose family or community, united by unique markers and a collective identity. The community is strong and global, and it sees the present clearly.
While solutions aren’t always easy, we believe they exist—whether it’s masking, clean air, COVID-safe events, or free testing and vaccinations, our resolve remains: we’re not giving up on a good future.
That’s my take on nostalgia freeze—it’s about giving up on the future. Referencing the past is essential, but copying it reflexively is unproductive.
For me, the most rewarding part of this community has been the art. I started masking up around February of 2020 – my mother is a doctor, and an astute one at that. I’ve had the honor of burgeoning as an online creator during this time, and my audience has a deep core component of COVID Conscious folks who have gone through all the ups and downs with me - from my anger at the world’s indifference, to my realization that my anger wasn’t productive, to the regular efforts amongst me and my homegirls to help people understand just how chic the COVID Conscious lifestyle is.
The fact that this community spans drag kings, cartoonists and activists, musicians, rappers – I feel like we sit behind a looking glass, acknowledging each other, loving each other, looking out for one another, sitting in solidarity with each other - and the rest of the world has absolutely no clue. They know we’re here, but they can barely see us. They know something’s wrong, something’s at risk, and they’re scared. That feeling in the back of people’s heads, this hopelessness, is real. It’s the denial.
They should learn what the COVID Conscious community already knows: Acknowledging that risk and harm can actually liberate us.
I’m attempting to get through the looking glass by working on a COVID Conscious Documentary this year with my dear friend Jack O’Mahoney (the Sizzle Reel for which is being edited as we speak, and we’ll be going to funding/production partners in the spring!). We’re showing that there’s hope and liberation on the other side of a realistic risk assessment – and there’s no need to pick and choose safety based on the criteria set by capitalist forces.
The empowerment found in looking after each other is the empowerment of all good movements – there is no need, ever, to leave a single soul behind. Good movements sustain themselves with big imaginations for good now’s and good futures - and being part of the COVID Conscious Community, signaling my belonging to the group in any and every way I can, is my message to the world that
I don’t want to go back in time, I know we can do better, and that a good future is coming. We will make it so.
Music in this episode: “Nihilist (Part 2)” — UMNIA. Used with permission.
I was a stagehand for Stevie Nicks' concert in Denver in 2024 and she made all of her road crew AND the local stagehands wear masks the entire time we built her set, even when she wasn't present. It was my first event with this job, and I always mask, so I was delighted - but after the show was over the roadies said we could take our masks off because she was out of the building, and I was like yeah no that's not the point...
thanks for doing this work and to continue to advocate for masking! with love, an internet friend with Long COVID.