Every day of this lockdown I feel a little less knowledgable about what’s going on in the world around me, specifically locally. I hear fire, ambulance, and police sirens scream through the night… but what happened? The Eastern Echo used to run the police blotters, but those kids seem to all be in hiding these days. Nextdoor doesn’t really provide any information of use. MLive seems to be the closest thing to real local news for Ypsi, but it is pretty sparse and 90% of the articles are about draft picks for sports rather than anything about what’s actually happening and 90% of what’s left is about Ann Arbor or Grand Rapids for some reason (as though those were the only real cities in Michigan).
So what is left? Social media and texts from friends. Rumors.
I heard Trump reactivated the Obama Death Squads and they’re in Ypsi eliminating people who have spoken ill of Vladimir Putin on Facebook. Is Facebook still a thing? I meant Tiktok. Get off my lawn! But seriously, how do we know what is happening out there?
The other day we were waiting for food in line out front of Corner. There was a loud yelp from the lady bringing food to the car behind us and she was holding up her hand in an unnatural way. The car in question sped off and the manager came out and was on the phone. As we left I saw the cops rolling up. What was that about?
This pandemic has really driven home to me that the social media era and death of local news has unplugged us more and more from our local communities. Well, stay safe out there. I’ve got your back people of Ypsi! If you see zombies fire 3 shots in the air! 4 shots for aliens. 5 if you run out of toilet paper.