Talk:New normal

Complaint
This article really needs some different perspective. The term "new normal" is used to justify a dramatic shift in socioeconomic power, and is most often used to deflect criticisms and make a fatalistic plea for acceptance of such power shifts in an "end of history" sense. Those using the term are typically aligned with interests that, unlike the vast majority of a given population, benefit from "trough" conditions in a business cycle. In other words, it's a latter-day synonym for "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.51.122.18 (talk • contribs) 14:57, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Rewrite and retitle? Or split?
I'm somewhat surprised that, so far, updates to this page due to the COVID-19 pandemic have been relatively few. But it seems that most of the article content is specifically about the events of 2007-12. We need to either rework this article to redress the balance, or split it out.

There are essentially three topics:
 * 1) The generic concept of a 'new normal' as a state to which things settle following a major event, when this differs from the state of things before the event started.
 * 2) The financial conditions following the 2007-12 financial crisis and global recession.
 * 3) The state to which things will settle once the COVID-19 pandemic is over.

The current title seems to be appropriate only to topic 2. Firstly, the disambiguator "(business)" doesn't make sense to the other topics, since both would cover society and other areas, not just business. Secondly, I can only guess that "New Normal", as opposed to "new normal", is a name coined by the media as meaning specifically this. A quick Google search tells me that, at least in relation to topic 3, it isn't a proper noun. And it obviously isn't a proper noun in relation to topic 1. (See also the Wiktionary definition.)

The current article is mostly about 2 with a bit of 3 thrown in. We could split out the info about 1 and 3 into a separate article. Or we could rewrite this to cover all three topics without giving undue weight to any one of them.

Thinking about it now, I think the best idea is if we can rewrite this to be primarily about topic 1, with sections about 2 and 3. I think simply New normal, which is currently a redirect, would be the best title. What do other people think to this idea? — Smjg (talk) 21:07, 25 May 2020 (UTC)


 * will the title "New normal (term)" work? JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 11:23, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Not sure about this. I'm not sure I like "(term)" as a disambiguator personally.  Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be any other meaning to disambiguate it from - none of the other meanings listed at New Normal are of "new normal" written in lowercase.  We don't put articles at disambiguating titles when there are no other Wikipedia articles to disambiguate from.  For example, the article Boris Johnson isn't at Boris Johnson (politician) because there's no other Boris Johnson who has a Wikipedia article from whom he needs to be distinguished.  If we put it at the title New normal (term) then it would soon get moved to New normal, so we might as well move it straight to New normal ITFP. — Smjg (talk) 13:34, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
 * maybe, since in our country (the Philippines) the term "new normal" is imcreasingly used by media agencies here, whether GMA News, ABS-CBN News, Manila Bulletin etc.. I don't know in other countries, but I could notice CNN and Channel NewsAsia's use of the term with reference to the aftereffects of the pandemic situation. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 13:43, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 11 July 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: move New normal (Economic) → New normal only. --  JHunterJ (talk) 12:54, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

– Since the term "new normal" has an increasing use to mean a significant change during and/or after COVID-19 pandemic,  the article is becoming WP:PRIMARYTOPIC when talking about "new normal". Because of this, a lengthy discussion has been done regarding its rewrite and/or rename. I decided to WP:BOLDly rewrite this article according to the Wiktionary definition. Now, I am requesting to remove this incorrect "(business)" disambiguator, since it is an idiomatic term rather than just a business term.
 * New normal (Economic) → New normal
 * New Normal → New Normal (disambiguation)

– Soumya-8974 talk contribs subpages 05:39, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Support 1st as its likely primary per WP:DIFFCAPS but oppose 2nd for the same reason, see Friendly fire/Friendly Fire for example so people typing the capital "N" could well be looking for a proper noun, see views[|New_Normal_(Homeland)|New_Normal_Music|The_New_Normal_(TV_series)|The_New_Normal_(album)|The_New_Normal_(book)] and they will still have the 1st link to get to this article anyway. The DAB page should remain at the upper case base name without the "(disambiguation)" in the title. If this isn't moved the "economic" should be lower cased, namely New normal (economic) (or maybe New normal (economics)?) or just moved back to New normal (business).  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 17:24, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Support move to "new normal". I created this article several years ago when the term was primarily business related in the wake of the financial crisis. It's now applied to the fall out from COVID and fall outs from anything else, really. It should reflect the applicability of the term by ditching any ambiguity with brackets. No Swan So Fine (talk) 23:05, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Support for this capitalization, but the article needs work. The phrase was around before the late-2000s financial crisis. BD2412  T 23:39, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Support per suggestion but it needs to rewrite the whole article because many phase around before late 2000s financial crisis. 36.77.94.109 (talk) 00:12, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Support first suggestion per nom.  Mar4d  ( talk ) 11:35, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Support 1st to resolve unnecessary disambiguation for that capitalisation. Oppose 2nd as no primary topic at that capitalisation. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 15:46, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Support first and oppose second per Crouch, Swale. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 16:54, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Support first and oppose second per Crouch, Swale and the above discussion. Furthermore, it's true that the current title is miscapitalised, but neither "New normal (business)" nor "New normal (economic)" would be appropriate now.  "New normal" is the only appropriate title I can think of for this to be moved to. — Smjg (talk) 09:21, 16 July 2020 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

During vs after
"During the COVID-19 pandemic, the term new normal has an increasing use to refer the changes of human behavior changes during or after this pandemic."

From the lead: "A new normal is a state to which an economy, society, etc. settles following a crisis." This fits with the normal meaning of "normal". Maybe changes during the pandemic are relevant insofar as these changes are likely to play a part in shaping the society we come out of it into. But these changes themselves are not the new normal. To use the phrase "new normal" to describe things going on during the pandemic is, in my mind, nonsense, but it does appear that the phrase gets used to this effect. But regardless of how it gets used in practice, I say we need to distinguish carefully between the two concepts.

The title of the referenced article is "The 'new normal' after coronavirus". Having managed to bypass the geographical restriction via the W3C validator, I can see that the statement was copied from there with minor wording tweaks. But then someone added "until at least spring 2021". There are three problems with this:
 * It doesn't match with the source at all.
 * It completely changes the meaning from a prediction of what will happen after the pandemic to a prediction of what will happen during it.
 * It is out of place relative to the preceding sentences.

Removing the addition'll at least address these three issues, but the section needs more work generally. I think this essentially means finding more sources to give an adequate coverage of predictions of what will happen (or continue in the current new state) after the pandemic. Furthermore, I wonder how many countries have recovered sufficiently that they have already settled to a new normal (perhaps save for restrictions on international travel). Hopefully we can source some information on what the new normal is like in these places.

If we're going to cover things that have changed during the pandemic then have this in a separate paragraph and explicitly address the semantic shift. — Smjg (talk) 23:19, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * This source is clearly talking about the period between the lifting of lockdowns in May 2020 and the availability of a vaccine (which at the time was thought to take years). It is not saying at all that people will social distance forever after the pandemic is over, which is absurd. When reading the article it is clear that when it says "after" coronavirus in the title, it is talking about after the virus arrived in society, i.e. during the pandemic, not after the pandemic entirely. Our text must not misrepresent an article clearly making claims about during a pandemic in a way that makes it look like we are talking about a post-pandemic world. Crossroads -talk- 06:50, 18 May 2022 (UTC)
 * "which at the time was thought to take years" -Not actually true, it was thought this would take only slightly longer than it did in reality - spring - or fall for some hardcore pessimists - of 2021 rather than late 2020 as it turned out. Any talk of "years" was clickbait panic-mongering, not scientific consensus.Romomusicfan (talk) 13:35, 25 January 2024 (UTC)