I’m planning a summer of post-vaccine hedonism... and the shame of Spotify Wrapped

NEXT year will be the year of hedonism for millennials. I know this because as of yesterday’s announcement, my twenty-something serious friends with serious jobs are acting like they’re 16 and Van-Tam is giving us fake IDs rather than a vaccine in spring; everyone’s dropping links to grimy nightclubs and all-inclusives to Ibiza in the group chat. Today a friend who works as a civil servant sheepishly confessed to me she shed a tear at the thought of being able to “sesh” at Bestival this summer. Not partying for nine months has left people with a dopamine deficit they need to relieve — and a cash surplus.

Not that we’ll need to spend much. A “heavy night” will probably consist of spritzer given our alcohol tolerance these days. Especially for me, given it would be my first drink in three years — in theory I’ve given up alcohol, but I’m desperate for a release to mark the end of lockdown. I know that the lesson of Covid is supposed to be along the lines of those swirly-lettered quotes which pepper my Instagram feed, that slowing down has been good for us and made us appreciate what we have. We’re supposed to have learnt that wild swimming is forever, but booze and sex are transitory pleasures. But if they’re transitory, surely all the more reason to pursue them while we can — we never know when we might lose them again to “seasonal Covid”.

So we’ll all be making some big life changes post-vaccine. I plan to go to more parties — it took one year being squirrelled away to Covid to realise I squirrelled away one too many years to work, and vague, long-term career objectives over immediate pleasures. But that’s nothing compared to some people — one of my old colleagues is planning to try drugs for the first time, lockdown made her regret all the things she’d never done. Young people viewed their lives as over for the last year so they’re celebrating coming back to life with cocaine instead of swimming with dolphins. And, of course, single Londoners will have a year’s worth of pent-up frustration. I can only imagine there’ll be some sort of collective climax in April (and hope chlamydia won’t be the new Covid). We’re on a ridiculous quest for hen do hedonism, desperately clutching at willy straws because we’re trying to get something we can’t have — a refund, two years’ worth of hedonism in compensation for the one we lost. To be honest though, we’ll probably settle for an exchange. As one friend who’s listened to Radio 2 since Covid says: “I just want to go back to Radio 1”.

SOCIAL media has become a group confessional. We’re bringing up repressed memories in the way you do in an AA circle, but in the form of screenshots from Spotify Wrapped — the music streaming platform’s summary of what we listened to this year. 2020 has been bleak, but knowing Celine Dion “helped you get through it all” is the digital equivalent of caressing our wounds with Maldon salt crystals. I can almost hear Spotify’s Silicon Valley programmers sniggering as they realise they’re far from the uncoolest people on Earth. I can only hope the trend for “wrapping” 2020 won’t extend to other platforms. I imagine a lot of guys would be scarred for life by a “Pornhub Wrapped”, but can you imagine Hinge telling you about the number of times you’ve been rejected this year, and Citymapper saying you barely left the house in 2020? Ignorance is bliss, and I’ll be using the incognito tab in 2021.