There was a time in the not so distant past where Covid-19 and Coronavirus weren’t even words. The pandemic, lockdowns and viral escape mutants were the imagination of script writers for dystopian movies. These were the “Before Times,” a nostalgic expression referring to the way things used to be. A time when you could travel on a plane without wearing a mask and be served a meal. A time when you didn’t have to stand “six feet apart” from the person in front of you at the grocery checkout. It was a time when people could freely go to bars, pubs, parties and sporting events without having to worry about catching the ‘Rona and thinking about contact tracing.
Dictionary.com defines Before Times as follows:
Before Times is generally used in discussions that contrast the lasting and far-reaching effects (especially negative effects) of the pandemic to the way things were before it. It’s typically used in a way that’s intended to be at least somewhat (darkly) humorous, perhaps likening the world after the start of the pandemic to a postapocalyptic dystopia.
Example: I’ve been in my house hiding from Covid for so long that I can’t even remember what it was like in the Before Times.
The term Before Times was popularized by the COVID-19 pandemic. It was used in reference to the prepandemic world from the very beginning of the pandemic in early 2020, but its origins are unrelated -and much earlier. The initial spread of the phrase and variations of it is often attributed to the science fiction TV show Star Trek, which used a version of the term in a 1966 episode [Miri]. In the episode, a group of children use the term before time to refer to life before a plague killed most of their planet’s population.
“Before Times” has appeared in a few online news articles. A recent piece written for Fortune magazine that discusses remote working says “while coming into work at all is tepidly popular, coming in on Fridays borders on the unthinkable…the flexibility of our remote-work era might have made the Before Times summer Friday perk redundant, mused Fortune’s Trey Williams. ‘When your boss isn’t sitting in the same room as you, who’s to know if you start happy hour a little earlier on a Friday?” he wrote'” (Thier).
As recently as July 29, 2022 the term appeared in the online SFist newsletter: “If you had told me in the Before Times that San Francisco hotels would be clamoring to let homeless people crash in their rooms on someone else’s dime, I would have asked where I could score some of that Grandpappy Kush you’ve been smoking” (Kukura).
YouTube channel Stuck in the Middle produced a video in October 2021 discussing CNN’s use of the term Before Times. Make of it what you will.
Social Media Trends as of July 24, 2022
Facebook #beforetimes: people are posting about this
Instagram #beforetimes: 7,941 posts
TikTok #beforetimes: 1.8 million views
Google Trends: “before times” appeared in late December 2019 and the search popularity increased after lockdown began in March 2020.
Sources:
“Before Times.” Dictionary.com. March 3, 2022. URL: https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/the-before-times/#:~:text=Before%20Times%20is%20an%20informal,as%20in%20the%20Before%20Times..
Kukura, Joe. “As Shelter-In-Place Hotel Program Winds Down, Residents and Managers Look Back on Whether it Actually Worked.” SFist.com. July 29, 2022. URL: https://sfist.com/2022/07/29/as-shelter-in-place-hotel-program-winds-down-residents-and-managers-look-back-on-whether-it-actually-worked/.
Stuck in the Middle channel. “CNN Uses Phrase “Before Times” with no explanation or definition.” YouTube. October 11, 2021. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORqWYfozXZ4.
Thier, Jane. “It’s Friday: The day you’re not in the office and probably never will be again.” Fortune.com. July 15, 2022. URL: https://fortune.com/2022/07/15/empty-office-fridays-nearly-extinct-remote-work/.