The Science™: Covid Inspired Digital Solutions vs. Loneliness

So 'the Science™' claims, with researchers blowing 150K on a study that had no results (publications) other than a fawning legacy media piece that contradicts the project's premises

We’ll continue our exploration of the next phase of the Covid-the-disease psy-op, and once more, we’ll turn our eyes on Austria, once known in these pages as Covidistan due to the sheer and utter madness that engulfed my home country.

While we’ve explored the netherworld of presentism—as represented by museum collections of artefacts related to Covid—the other day, today I shall present you with another car accident of news™ item that reveals yet another aspect of the Covid scam.

The re-branding of a sizeable chunk of these mandates and measures as something that is, for all intents and purposes, uniformly ‘good™’: the phase shift to digital-only forms of human-to-human interaction.

‘Strangely™’ in line with the current pro-Big Tech shift so visible in the United States (which is, of course, criticised by legacy media as an ‘oligarchic takeover’, mainly because the other side is doing it now), today’s puff piece by Austrian state broadcaster ORF is…well, quite something.

(As always, translation, emphases, and [snark] mine.)

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Against Loneliness: Digital Creativeness And the Pandemic

The pandemic has shown how important digital technologies are for social contact [what a misleading opening; virtually all research indicates the opposite is true; also: did the Pandemic™ do that?]. There has been a lot of creativity, especially in rural areas, as a new research project shows: brass bands digitised their sheet music, for example, and Goldhauben groups set up online embroidery courses.

Via science.ORF.at, 3 Feb. 2025 [source]

Especially in rural areas, it can be difficult to avoid feelings of loneliness when social contact is extremely limited [well, that’s also the fault of those ‘deplorables™’ who live there, isn’t it?]. This makes it all the more important that digitalisation should be ‘more broadly conceived’—even outside the cities, writes Uli Meyer from the Institute of Sociology at the University of Linz.

For a project funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF, he surveyes various civic associations with very different age structures. The number of creative digital solutions that the surveyed groups came up with surprised the scientific team [oh would you look at that: the Science™ had presuppositions about reality that were contradicted by, well, empirical observation—more on that project below]. Even 80-year-olds proved to be quite adept at using online tools.

Digital Music Scores and Online Knitting Groups

Sports clubs watched football matches together via Zoom meetings or organised training competitions online [we did some remote piano and singing lessons with the children: they f****** hated it, although they like playing the piano and singing]. Brass bands digitised their sheet music and a youth group converted a scavenger hunt app to prepare for confirmation [personal opinion here: it would have been way better if these people in rural areas would have ignored the mandates and carried on with their regular outdoor activities, which is also indicative of legacy media re-writing the history of this aspect of the Covid scam].

Several Goldhauben [a richly embroidered traditional headwear in Upper Austria; see here] groups, which uphold an Upper Austrian tradition and began as a craft network of women, have proven that every age group can handle digital solutions [see, you must simply opt-in, much like with the ongoing hard push to digitise all health records right now]. ‘Many members are still actively involved at the age of 80’, notes co-author Michaela Griesbeck. Together, they make and repair the golden headdresses that are part of traditional costume culture. ‘During the pandemic, Goldhauben groups organised online embroidery sessions, for example, and all the women were able to cope with the digital solutions’, says Griesbeck [which is highly misleading because just because someone is ‘able to cope with’ whatever doesn’t necessarily mean he or she prefers the digital solution over normal interactions].

Hardly Any Subsequent Use [of digital solutions: q.e.d.]

According to the researchers, the common assumption that many people—especially older people—lack technical expertise proved to be wrong [I would suggest that his is a widely-held, if erroneous assumption among academics, if my 15+ years of experience in higher ed is any indication]. But socialising cannot be replaced with such solutions [this one sentence, basically, destroys the entire ‘research™’ and confirms what I mentioned in the preceding paragraph: if people have a choice between analogue vs. digital interactions, they all opt for the former (except for extenuating circumstances and a few retards)]. Only a few of the digital platforms would therefore still be used after the pandemic. ‘Many tools simply failed to meet people’s needs,’ says Meyer [see what I mean? What a wonderful waste of public funds on something I could have explained to these researchers without spending that much money…]. No online solution can replace a personal conversation with a priest, for example. What still exists, however, are tools that make administrative tasks, such as providing notes or managing members, easier [q.e.d.; also: WTF has become of academia?].

In contrast, debt counselling and violence counselling, which organisations such as [the Christian charity] Caritas have switched to online counselling during the pandemic, have had very good experiences. ‘This has been well received and will remain so because the anonymity factor is important in social counselling,’ emphasises Griesbeck. ‘Now those affected can get support anonymously from home.’ [well, I’m never claiming there aren’t any benefits from digitisation, but they are certainly very specific, isn’t it?

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A ‘New Perspective on Digitalisation’

At this juncture, I feel like the short legacy media item doesn’t do this moronic waste of taxpayer money very important research project justice, hence I elected to provide a few more choice quotes from the Austrian Science Fund’s appraisal of the concluded project (source).

Believe it or not, sociologists Uli Meyer and Michaela Griesbeck actually received 150,423 Euros, according to their project data—and they did two ‘talks or presentation’, a ‘formal working group or panel’, and a one-time ‘participation in an activity, workshop or similar’. You read this correctly—not a single publication came out of these 150K ‘research funds’ disbursed for the period from 1 March 2022 through 31 July 2023.

In fact, while the ‘project website’ as given by the FWF is merely Uli Meyer’s faculty profile, we note that there is confirmation for no publication to have come out of these 18 months worth 150K euros.

‘If you want to understand society in the 21st century, you have to understand the interaction between technology and society’, says sociologist of technology Uli Meyer from the Johannes Kepler University Linz [of course, this brilliant statement would not, and could never, apply to earlier iterations of civilisation]. He researches what technology does to our society and our lives [i.e., everything and nothing]...when it comes to participation and digitalisation, Meyer found that while there is a lot of knowledge about cities and political participation in particular, there is a lack of research projects in rural areas, which are structured very differently, and on social cohesion [which is, presumably, why he didn’t publish any of his findings, right?]…

Great Response from the Public

The great interest in this new perspective was evident right from the start. In the search for interview partners on the topic of digital initiatives and digital solutions, the team wrote to all rural communities in Upper Austria at the start of the project. Mayors, Caritas, rural youth, associations such as the Goldhauben, brass bands, choirs, and sports clubs were among those who responded. ‘The response was great, people enjoyed talking to us. We saw an impressive variety of digital solutions that were used to keep club life alive and enable contact between members’, reports communication scientist [sic] Michaela Griesbeck from the JKU [note that her faculty profile doesn’t even list any publications at-all]…

When the project started in 2022, the coronavirus pandemic played a key role, as many rural initiatives were unable to hold face-to-face meetings for a long time [note the gaslighting: they were ‘unable’ to do so, even though this was mandated by the gov’t]: ‘One way to understand everyday processes is to look at disruptions to everyday life’, says Meyer. ‘We therefore took the disruption caused by the pandemic as a starting point to explore what solutions the associations had come up with to stay in touch when face-to-face meetings were severely restricted. And we asked ourselves: which aspects of these solutions worked and which have endured beyond the pandemic?’

And this, dear readers, is where the proverbial rubber hits the road:

Digital Tools Lack Latency

Despite the variety of digital solutions, surprisingly [sic] few remain that will continue to use [digital tools] after the pandemic. The frequently voiced explanation that many people, especially older people, may lack technical expertise proved to be wrong. Uli Meyer and his team researched the causes: ‘Clubs have an obvious function, such as making music together, singing together or, in the case of the Goldhauben, embroidering together. Sociologist Robert Merton calls this the manifest function. However, there is also a latent function, which is the community within the association, but it is not so visible.’ [pity the poor scientists who must now find a way to study human-human interactions]

A visit to a conference of Protestant clergymen, where a tool for coordinating volunteers was presented, showed just how much community counts. Afterwards, a pastor critically commented that volunteering is not about efficiency, and that volunteers would rather prefer a personal phone call with the pastor, as this allows them to stay in contact and feel valued [no shit analyses going on here]. Meyer sees this as confirmation [and now please read, carefully, how the intrepid scientist™ explains that the entire premise of his project was wrong without admitting so]: ‘The latent function of personal cohesion was usually not taken into account when designing digital solutions [translation: it’s the fault of digital engineers, we’re merely noticing this]. Many tools simply failed to meet people’s needs [translation: if given a choice = not being coerced via Covid mandates, people prefer analogue exchange]. What has remained and continues to be used are tools with administrative, i.e., manifest, tasks, such as providing notes or managing members.’ [i.e., everything that isn’t technically relevant]

Bottom Lines

Isn’t it awesome what you can spend 150K ‘research money’ on, learn something that totally contradicts the underlying premise of one’s research™, and still bullshit everyone into celebrating this?

I mean, the entire premise was this:

Digital communication and coordination tools can inspire new systems of local social support, attract new volunteers for community work, change the way members of rural communities interact and thus mitigate social disintegration, and restore social cohesion in rural communities.

And, lo and behold, once no coercion was involved, people thought, well, we don’t really want to keep doing this social media BS.

It is quite true that an awful lot of research ideas fail, which is also how science and the scientific method work: it’s a process, and whatever empirical observation doesn’t fit the underlying premise is—a failed hypothesis at-best.

Note that how great the chasm between the project’s ‘findings™’, such as they are, and the legacy media piece are: the 150K literally failed to address any of these issues, yet the piece is celebratory.

Speaking, finally, of the ‘findings™’, there are no publications, hence all there is—are the words reproduced above. There is simply no way to know if what these two intrepid scholars are saying is, factually, true.

But I’m sure these 150K over 18 months were spent very well, isn’t it?

Here, we do get unbelievable amounts of gaslighting, very much in line with the phase shift of the Covid op, and I fear that there will be many more comparable BS being put out in this ‘anniversary spring’.