ABSTRACT
This chapter chronicles the author’s own lockdown in New York City, beginning with the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 and ending in May 2020, when the pandemic was still ongoing. Through embodied reflections, the chapter communicates the unsettling affective experience of mass quarantine, highlighting also the media’s function of distraction for those having to cope with uncertainly and boredom. By engaging with theories by Martin Heidegger, Giorgio Agamben, and Gilles Deleuze, the essay looks at the role of popular culture Netflix shows during the lockdown, such as The Circle (2018–present), a British reality competition show, in which players, each in their separate apartment, communicate only through social media apps; and Love is Blind (2020–present), an American dating reality series where couples cannot see each other before the engagement.
