Tag Archives: neurotic people

animals, communication, condescending twatbags, dogs, healthcare, overly helpful people, social media, Virginia

Some people have forgotten how to be civilized…

I had a couple of interesting communication related experiences yesterday. One involved an online exchange I had with a stranger. The other involved an observation I made in a matter of seconds as I passed a playground.

A few days ago, I noticed that someone on Facebook had written that they had been born just as smartphones were coming on the market. They wanted to know what life was like before smartphones were invented, as they were thinking of ditching their phone. I noticed one person wrote that we all watched a lot more television in those days, which I will agree is true.

It occurred to me, after I read that person’s post, that I spent a large portion of my life without the Internet. When I was growing up, we had to talk to each other in person. While I definitely had some uncivilized moments back in those primitive days, I also think I learned basic decorum that some people are missing in today’s hyper-connected Internet world.

We used to have to talk to each other in person, or maybe write a letter. We had no email, Facebook, or Twitter. Our circles of contacts were much smaller than they are today. Consequently, most days, we didn’t find ourselves in a pissing match with a stranger. Last night, I found myself being invited to such a match… and after it was over, my head was spinning! How did I get to this place?

Two days ago, The Atlantic shared an article titled “When Did People Start Brushing Dogs’ Teeth?“. It was an interesting piece about how, in the past, most people didn’t clean their dogs’ teeth. Nowadays, veterinarians encourage dog owners to use canine toothpaste and toothbrushes and have their dogs’ teeth professionally cleaned. The author of the article, Kelly Conaboy, married her personal experiences as a dog owner with somewhat recent history. She wrote:

The supposed ease of the finger brush is an attractive prospect for those facing both a new daily task and a new source of guilt. My friend and I both are dog guardians for the first time in our adult lives, but we agreed that, growing up, we didn’t remember being told to brush our family dogs’ teeth, nor did we remember thinking it was a task we were neglecting. We didn’t even remember ever seeing dog toothbrushes or dog toothpaste for sale. My friend looked into my eyes and asked a question I could tell she’d been mulling for some time.

“Were we always supposed to brush our dogs’ teeth?”

I grew up in the 80s, and we had dogs during that time. I don’t remember the vet ever telling us to brush our dogs’ teeth. Hell, my very first paying job was working for that very same vet. The subject never came up during that time.

Years later, when Bill and I were newly married and had moved to Fort Belvoir, Virginia, our “higher speed” Northern Virginia vet recommended dental care. Our dog at that time, Flea, really needed a dental in the worst way. We couldn’t afford to have his teeth cleaned until Bill went to Iraq, and we got a temporary boost in his pay. While Bill was deployed, I had Flea’s and his sidekick, MacGregor’s, teeth cleaned. I believe it was about $1100 for the two of them. Flea lost four teeth; they just fell out of his mouth. Miraculously, we weren’t charged for that.

Our finances are much better nowadays, so our dogs do get routine dentals done. I have tried to brush their teeth, but my dogs have never been too cooperative with that particular chore. Arran was particularly resistant to things like toenail trims and teeth brushing. Still, I can see the value in doing it regularly, if your dog will allow it. And now, dentals are a must, even though we didn’t used to do them.

Conaboy’s article is very interesting, as she explains that yes, we probably should have been brushing our dogs’ teeth all along. But, you only know what you know. As time passes, most people become more knowledgeable and wiser about things. So, if you didn’t know about the importance of doggie dentistry in the 80s, you might know now, right? Know better, do better (as much as I hate that cliche).

The Facebook reactions to that post ranged between approval and mockery. Lots of people assume canine dental hygiene is just a scam to help vets pay off their student loans. For the life of me, I can’t understand why so many people would begrudge veterinarians making money so they can pay their bills. Some people act like everyone should work for free, as they also lament communism and people expecting things “for free”. Even if doggie dentistry was a money making “scam”, why would people in a capitalist society have a problem with that? If you don’t want to get your dog’s teeth cleaned, no one is forcing you. It’s just a recommended service.

Personally, I’m a believer in doggie dentals. Noyzi had his first one last summer and is due for another. We just need to make the arrangements. Arran really needed one before he passed, but obviously, it wouldn’t have been wise to put him under anesthesia.

I decided to comment on the article. I do not think what I wrote was at all controversial.

Imagine how you’d feel if you didn’t clean your teeth. I don’t brush my dog’s teeth daily, but he gets regular dentals. It helps prevent chronic diseases and makes his breath stink less. 

They’re paying a lot more attention to horses’ teeth, too. Call it progress.

I got maybe 19 likes for my comment. Cool, huh? But then someone named Laurie wrote this seemingly snarky comment to me. And it wasn’t about canine dentals, but about my comment regarding horses.

…horses get their teeth filed once a year to remove rough edges. Believe me, nobody is brushing horses’ teeth!

I was surprised by her response, because nowhere did I make a statement indicating that horses’ teeth are being brushed. I wrote that they’re “paying more attention to” them (which they are). So I responded.

I didn’t say they were brushing horses’ teeth, I said they were paying more attention to them (aka floating them).

Laurie comes back, tagging me with a link to a National Geographic article about Mongolian horse dentistry that’s been around for hundreds of years.

I probably should have just left it alone, but this is a phenomenon that genuinely puzzles me. Lately, I feel like people are just waiting for a reason to come at other people with criticism or discounting comments. I didn’t get the sense that Laurie was trying to be helpful or conversational. It felt like she was trying to pick a fight, although it’s possible that I took her comment as more aggressive than it was intended to be. So I wrote:

Is there a reason why you’re picking on me? What is so controversial about what I posted? I don’t need a link from National Geographic. It’s not that important.

Laurie wisely (or perhaps cowardly) didn’t respond again. I honestly didn’t see why she needed to confront me about my first comment regarding horse dental care. I grew up around horses, and I know for a fact that, back in the day, veterinarians didn’t routinely float their teeth unless there was a specific need for it. The procedure did exist, but it wasn’t like an appointment with the farrier every six weeks. It was only done when it was clearly necessary.

I don’t spend time with horses anymore, but I do know that nowadays, equine vets are floating a lot more teeth than they used to, just like today’s small animal vets are doing a lot more dentals. That was my point. Did Laurie miss the point? Because I never claimed anything about horses getting their teeth brushed. I even wrote that my dog doesn’t get his teeth brushed, even though I probably should see if he’ll let me do it (Arran wouldn’t, so I never got into the habit). The main idea of my comment is that companion animals need dental care, too, not that every animal should get daily tooth brushing.

Laurie probably didn’t read the article, because it’s behind a paywall. She probably also didn’t read my initial comment very carefully before she decided to respond. I took a peek at her profile. There’s a picture of her riding a horse in what appears to be three day eventing. So she’s a “horse person”. I also see that she lives in Clifton, Virginia, which is a Northern Virginia suburb. I spent several years of my life living in Northern Virginia, so I have personal experience with the stereotypical type of person who tends to live there. I’ve also been around plenty of “snotty” horse people who have more money than brains or class.

Certainly not every person from NoVA is an asshole; but there are probably a lot more assholes per capita living in that area, than there are in other places. They can’t really help it. Northern Virginia is a place where it costs a lot to live, there’s a lot of traffic, and many people have powerful jobs. Based on her profile, Laurie appears to be a “somebody”, and since she’s involved in an expensive sport in an area where it costs a lot to live, she’s probably a bit of an asshole. I don’t know for certain, of course. We’re complete strangers. There was a time when I never would have had a conversation of any kind with Laurie, unless I happened to meet her at a horse event. But, since I don’t ride horses anymore, the chances of that ever happening would be pretty slim.

For all I know, offline, Laurie is a total sweetheart, but based on our unfortunate interaction yesterday, I came away with the impression that she’s kind of a bitch. She may feel the same way about me, because I didn’t just acquiesce or ignore her when she crawled up my ass about the intricacies of equine dental care. Instead, I pointed out that I never claimed people were brushing their horses’ teeth. Then I confronted her for “picking on me”. That, in and of itself, is probably annoying to her. She probably didn’t expect me to confront her in kind about her comment. But then, I was genuinely perplexed as to why she felt the need to bust my chops about my original statement. There was nothing snarky or rude about it, yet Laurie felt compelled to issue a “gotcha”. And I, in turn, felt compelled to call her out for trying to do that.

It was a rather uncivilized and unnecessary exchange, wasn’t it? It occurred to me that Laurie wasn’t coming at me from a place of friendship or cordiality. She was wanting to issue a correction, without knowing a thing about me, and apparently, after not having read very carefully.

I understand that most people wouldn’t think twice about this interaction. Some people may be reading this thinking that I’m neurotic for taking the time to write about it. The truth is, I AM a bit neurotic. That exchange happened to hit one of my “psychological sunburns” (as the damnable Dr. Phil would put it). My whole life, people have been telling me to “shut up”, discounting my opinions or experiences, laughing at me, or otherwise trying to belittle me for just being myself. As a middle aged person, I am no longer willing to just let things go. I probably should be more laid back than I am, but ignoring these types of people, who try to make themselves feel better by crapping on me, makes me feel helpless. So now, people who do what Laurie did– especially when they’re overbearing women– tend to get the business end of my retorts.

Something similar happened the day after we lost Arran. I posted about it. A troll on RfM left me a really mean comment about Arran. I confronted the troll, and promptly got a “talking to” from “Lot’s Wife”, a poster who seems to insert herself in every controversy and offer her fifty cents. “Lot’s Wife” is a person I’ve come to really dislike, and she’s a reason why I don’t really visit RfM much anymore. She reminds me a lot of an “overly helpful” person I used to run into regularly. And now that I think about it, all women who treat me that way remind me of one of my sisters, who used to criticize me for everything from the way I look, to the way I laugh. I’m sure these types are battling their own neuroses and psychological sunburns, but then their neuroses seem to bump into mine! I guess I can, at least, turn these interactions into thoughtful blog rants, right?

The main thing is, though… most of these people probably wouldn’t behave this way offline. Or, if they did behave this way, they’d probably tone it down significantly. It’s a lot harder to be aggressive, or even assertive, to people who are staring you in the face. Laurie also probably wouldn’t have misunderstood my comment if we’d been talking to each other in person. We both would have had non-verbal cues to guide us and inform our responses. It probably wouldn’t have been nearly as negative an interaction.

I miss in person interactions with normal, nice people. It seems like the older I get, the less often I interact with actual people, rather than online profiles. And the pandemic made things worse, and eroded people’s social skills, including mine. I wrote about that last year, when Bill and I got our COVID-19 vaccine boosters and I was super cranky because we got to the site too early. I found myself feeling less “nice” when someone in person witnessed our exchange and chimed in “helpfully”. I probably wouldn’t have reacted that way in the past, when I had more practice talking to people in person.

And now… on to the observation I made while passing a German playground…

Yesterday, it was cold and sunny outside. I took Noyzi for a short walk. As I passed the little playground in our neighborhood, I happened to witness something that struck me as rather profound.

There were about two dozen little kids on the playground. I think there might have been two or three adults supervising them. A little girl, maybe four or five years old, fell down. She started crying, and didn’t immediately scramble to her feet. Instead, she laid on the ground wailing for a moment.

The adults did not come running, as they might have in the United States. Instead, another little girl, maybe the same age or a little older, came over to the kid on the ground, offered her her hand, and helped her to her feet. The first girl stopped crying and slowly got back to playing with her friends, running around the playground. The entire incident took less than a minute or two, and yet the simple civility of it blew me away on several levels.

First of all, when I was that age, I don’t remember being supervised that closely on a playground that wasn’t attached to a school. We kids would go to the playground, but there wouldn’t necessarily be any adults around to watch us. Sometimes there were, sometimes there weren’t.

Secondly, when I was a kid and something like that happened on the playground, I don’t remember other kids coming over to help the fallen kid to their feet. More often than not, they’d just stand around and laugh. I didn’t see any kids laughing at the girl who fell down, but in my day, I’m sure they would have. At least, if they were American kids. Today, an American adult supervising the children would have probably run over to the girl to see if she was alright, but in my day, we were pretty much expected to get over it by ourselves, as appears to be the case in Germany.

What the little girl did yesterday struck me as remarkably mature and civilized. I’ve noticed a lot of that kind of basic civility in Germany. Like, for instance, the time I was forced to stand on a train leaving the Frankfurt Airport while holding curry wurst. The train lurched, and I almost fell, which would have caused me to spill the snack all over the place. A German lady very calmly grabbed the curry wurst before I ended up wearing it. My first reaction was annoyance, but then I was grateful. It really was a kind and thoughtful thing to do. Her reaction was to be helpful, rather than critical or mocking. I’m sad to say, I don’t see this instinct as much among Americans, especially online.

I’ve even noticed this among Germans online. When the dog we hoped to rescue in 2020 got loose and we were trying to find him, I noticed many Germans were happily sharing our Tasso flyer. Very few were writing mean comments about how irresponsible I was after the dog escaped his pet taxi. I even got some really kind private messages from strangers that were genuinely helpful and consoling.

Conversely, I feel like Americans often just want to tear people down, especially when the other person is a stranger. Or they’re “fake nice”, as they’re ripping each other to shreds privately.

This doesn’t mean that all Germans are mature or polite. I’ve been yelled at plenty of times by Germans in person. It’s just that I’ve found that most people here seem more willing to see other perspectives and they don’t immediately react with snark or rudeness when someone has a different viewpoint. I feel like more people here are more likely to offer a hand to help someone up, rather than pointing and laughing at them. But, of course, some exceptions apply. See any story about my ex landlady. 😉

Anyway… just some deep food for thought on Wednesday, which is a light chore day for me. I guess my interaction with Laurie the veterinary dental expert is proof that virtually ANYTHING can be controversial on the Internet.

Carry on…

ETA: This morning, I woke up to find a notification from Laurie. I chose to ignore it. 😀

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condescending twatbags, healthcare, overly helpful people

Asshole detectors…

Yesterday, I read an article on The Atlantic entitled “Are Outdoor Mask Mandates Still Necessary?” Written by Derek Thompson, this piece was exactly what it sounds like… an article about whether or not people should be forced to wear face masks when they are outside. Here in Germany, we aren’t obligated to wear a mask outdoors if we can “socially distance”. I have noticed that despite the rather anal retentive and uptight rule following stereotype that seems to dog the German people, folks here are not too jazzed about wearing masks 24/7. I never see people wearing them when I’m walking my dogs through the neighborhood, although people do wear them at bus stops because it’s required.

Thompson included statements from respected public health experts from around the world, explaining why the zero tolerance/100% enforcement attitude could backfire in getting people to comply with the rules. Thompson wrote:

Requiring that people always wear masks when they leave home, and especially in places with low levels of viral transmission, is overkill. As mentioned, the coronavirus disperses outside, posing little risk to people who are walking alone or even swiftly passing by strangers. In fact, almost all of the documented cases of outdoor transmission have involved long conversations, or face-to-face yelling. The risk calculation changes if you’re standing in a crowd: Some uneven evidence suggests that the Black Lives Matter protests last summer increased local infections. But that’s an easy carve-out. States can end blanket mandates and still recommend outdoor masking by anyone experiencing symptoms, or in crowds. (Extended conversations pose their own risk, but when people are vaccinated, the odds of viral transmission are probably somewhere between microscopic and nonexistent.)

Outdoor mask mandates might also turn people off from obeying better rules. “Given the very low risk of transmission outdoors, I think outdoor mask use, from a public-health perspective, seems arbitrary,” Muge Cevik, an infectious-disease and virology expert at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland, told The Washington Post. “I think it affects the public’s trust and willingness to engage in much higher-yield interventions. We want people to be much more vigilant in indoor spaces.”

Makes sense to me. If I’m alone in the woods or swiftly passing someone on my walking route, I don’t think wearing a mask is as important as it would be if I was in a huge crowd of people who are shouting. Also, there are quite a lot of people who just plain resent being “nannied” and “nagged” by others. If we let people exercise their free will in less risky areas, they may be more willing to cooperate when they’re indoors. And yes, to me, it makes more sense to wear a mask when indoors with strangers than it does out on the street, when you can be far enough away from people not to risk sharing germs.

Thompson continues:

Julia Marcus, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, spoke with several male mask skeptics last year for a piece in The Atlantic. When she explained that masking wasn’t as important outdoors, the men became more amenable to wearing them indoors. By connecting rules to reasons, she got them to see the value of covering their nose and mouth when it actually mattered. Last week, Marcus told me that she’s baffled by the notion that the best way to get people to wear masks inside is to mandate that everybody wear one when they’re alone outside. “We don’t recommend condom use when people are enjoying themselves alone to get them to wear condoms with their sexual partners,” she said.

The argument that outdoor mask mandates create a warm and fuzzy feeling of social solidarity confuses a personal definition of etiquette (“I think my mask makes everybody feel safe”) with a public defense of population-wide laws (“everybody should wear a mask everywhere, because it’s the only way to make everybody feel safe”). Masks send all sorts of messages to all sorts of different people. To some, they’re beacons of safety; to others, they’re signs of imperious government overreach. As Marcus argued, mandating a public-health tool that’s not needed can drive away people who might otherwise be on board with more important interventions. “I think there’s a proportion of the population that believes restrictions will last indefinitely,” Marcus said, “and they are probably one of the hardest groups to keep engaged in public-health efforts.”

And I also liked that Thompson considered that not everyone has the same reality. A lot of people– myself included– are lucky enough to have backyards or balconies. But many more people are not so fortunate. In our previous house, we lived next to a large naturepark. But we didn’t have balconies or a yard with a functional fence, where we could let the dogs out free. The fence at our last house was more of a decoration, and would not have allowed us to safely sit outside with the dogs untethered. I know a lot of other people in Germany simply live in flats with no private spaces at all. As Thompson says:

Finally, mandating outdoor masks and closing public areas makes a show of “taking the virus seriously” while doing nothing to reduce indoor spread, in a way that often hurts the less fortunate. To deal with its COVID-19 spike, for example, the Canadian province of Ontario instituted a stay-at-home order and closed many parks and playgrounds. “These policies are made by people who have yards,” Marcus said. “If you live in an apartment building and have no yard, and are required to wear masks at all times outdoors, you never get to be maskless outside. And then, where do people gather maskless to socialize? Inside their homes”—where the risk of transmission is higher.

I thought Thompson’s article was fair and balanced, and the information within it was reasonable. I especially appreciated the comments from Julia Marcus, who came right out and said that there are people (like me) who worry that the mask mandates will turn into an indefinite rule. Allowing for some easing of the rules outside gives people hope that we won’t have to tolerate these rules forever, and that will make it easier to keep being vigilant. A lot of us just PLAIN don’t want to live this way for the rest of our lives, and we resent other people insisting that this is the way it HAS to be from now on. The fact is, many people feel that this is NOT how it should be. We should be working hard on a solution that makes mask wearing obsolete for most people. Or, at least that’s my opinion… but it seems like more and more people, especially in the United States, feel like only one opinion is the correct one. Anyone who disagrees is automatically an “asshole.”

One thing I take comfort in, at least here in Germany, is that it’s pretty obvious to me that people here are not going to accept being forced to wear face masks forever. In fact, I have noticed that even rule loving Germans are starting to rebel. There have been more protests lately, especially as Angela Merkel has pressed for stricter lockdowns. People are really getting tired of the crisis and they’re becoming more apathetic and lax.

I know there are people in some countries that are forced to wear veils whenever they are outside, but the rest of the world isn’t the Islamic world, where those kinds of oppressive rules are okay. And Thompson then ends with this uplifting conclusion:

Hyper-neuroticism is a mitzvah during a pandemic. But we really don’t have to live like this forever, and it’s okay for more people to say so. We can learn to look at a well-populated beach and not see a gross failure of human morality. We can see somebody unmasked in a park and not think, I guess that one doesn’t believe in science. We can walk down an uncrowded street with a mask, or without a mask, or with a mask sort of hanging from our chin, and just not really worry about it. We can reduce unnecessary private anxiety and unhelpful public shame by thinking for a few seconds about how the coronavirus actually works and how to finally end the pandemic. Let’s tell people the truth and trust that they can take it. Let’s plan for the end of outdoor mask mandates.

BRAVO! And let that be the FIRST step in eventually ending ALL mask mandates, because COVID-19 will be under control, like most infectious diseases usually become after time passes and science advances. Or, at least that’s what I think we should be aiming for. That’s what makes the masks different from seatbelts, which I don’t think we’ll ever get rid of, at least in my lifetime.

I felt pretty good as I read Derek Thompson’s article. But as I finished reading about how there’s a weird dichotomy between hyper-neurotic mask police types and vehement anti-maskers, I had sinking feeling that there would be tons of comments left on the magazine’s Facebook page. Sure enough, I was right. So many people, clearly folks who didn’t bother to read, left comments regarding this article. And one person wrote that non-maskers are his personal form of an “asshole detector”. Behold:

At this point I think of them less as masks and more as asshole detectors. Even if the chances are small, it’s the very least you can do for your fellow man. How damned privileged is our society that this is a hot button issue? If it happens to save even a few extra lives, it’s worth it. Buck up buttercups.

Seriously, dude? I think YOU are an asshole for taking this attitude toward your fellow man, especially as you pat yourself on the back for being so “considerate” as you judge people you don’t even know. And I think people who comment on things they haven’t read are assholes, adding unnecessary and uninformed noise that everybody else has to wade through.

and…

I live in southern Georgia and literally no one wears masks in stores, etc. All asshole behavior. I literally got into a verbal argument with a man that refused to stand on the 6 ft marker on floor in grocery store check out line. No mask. Even the clerk was like, “Sir, stand back!” It’s like the non-maskers get off on being a bully.

Why get in an argument with someone? Just get away from them. Arguing with a stranger is “asshole behavior” too, isn’t it?

There were more comments like that, along with the usual chorus of people writing things like “just wear the damn mask”, which I find pretty offensive, myself. I don’t think it helps compliance when you swear at people. In fact, people who swear at perfect strangers are probably assholes, right? I actually feel like telling them to go fuck themselves, but because I’m a lady, I don’t do that. 😉 Instead, I just think it to myself… and if I get angry enough, I vent about it in my blog.

I mean, I do wear a mask if I have to. But I go out of my way not to be in situations where I have to wear a mask, or deal with assholes who take it upon themselves to determine what perfect strangers are or are not doing as “asshole detectors”. Here’s one that made me laugh…

But it doesn’t matter. Wear the mask. It’s not an inconvenience in any way. It’s the least difficult thing that has ever been asked of us to do collectively. Articles like this only lend credence to selfish, broken people. Wear the mask until the pandemic is over. Simple. And until then, STFU.

Dude… to some people, it truly IS an inconvenience. You may not think it is, but they do– and they get an opinion and a vote, too! And telling someone to STFU, sorry, is also “asshole behavior”. You don’t get to tell people to STFU, simply because you claim to agree with the opinions of “experts” and you assume they don’t. There are all kinds of people out there who really are experts, and most of them have more balanced, fair, informed, and sensible opinions than yours. This lady had a sensible comment, in my opinion…

As a biologist, I can confirm that masking while outside was only suggested if you would be less than six feet from others (the transmission distance for errant coughs, sneezes or loud talking); it was never required by science to mask all the time outside. I carry or wear it and put up/on as I approach others on a path etc. ps I would warn against dining inside until one is vaccinated: the author’s point about the indoors being highest risk is valid.

And this guy also has reasonable thoughts, in my view…

I agree with this. The problem with outdoor mask mandates with fines for noncompliance is it becomes something law enforcement can selectively enforce. Look at what Miami was doing. They passed an ordinance that said everyone had to wear a mask at all times indoors or outdoors even when social distancing is possible. Miami police basically set up mask traps and stood outside supermarkets just waiting for people to come out of the store and take the mask off or wear it under their nose so they could ticket them. A woman was walking through an empty parking lot without a mask and was ticketed. Someone was in a barbershop and pulled his mask down for a few seconds to take a drink of water and a police officer happened to be walking by and that person was ticketed. I think a reasonable person would agree that this enforcement was overreach. I get the seriousness of the virus, but you have to give people a little breathing room. If a person is walking in an empty parking lot or on a back residential street and is not wearing a mask, but has a mask with them in case he or she comes to a situation where he or she can’t socially distance, then I don’t see the problem.

Sounds to me like Miami has found a great way to fill its coffers by oppressively fining people over mask wearing. Glad I don’t live there, especially as hot as it gets.

It baffles me that so many people have gone to such extremes on this issue. It should be perfectly okay to hate wearing a face mask. It should be okay to say it out loud, and hope for the mandates to end at some point. It should be alright to expect and fervently hope that we’ll get to a point at which this nightmare is either ended or mitigated. Otherwise, why go on living? I HATE living this way, and I don’t have it as bad as a whole lot of people do. Telling people that they don’t have the right to their feelings is toxic, and labeling them as “assholes” because you make assumptions about their character based on their masking habits is extremely limiting and offensive. Obviously, people who feel this way about other people are assholes themselves. Are there really people out there who think the whole world should be expected to accept living like this from now on? It blows my mind! As long as people are complying, what’s it to you, anyway?

I particularly love it when people compare mask wearing to wearing a seatbelt, or they compare going outside maskless with drunk or reckless driving. It’s absolute lunacy. I think, if seeing someone’s bare face outside in a sparsely populated area makes you compare them to drunk drivers or reckless people, you should simply do your best to avoid them. That’s what I do when I see someone on the road who drives erratically. I let them go ahead and get away from them. I don’t fan the flames by flipping them off or cursing at them through my window. Doing that in Germany can get you a pretty stiff fine, actually. It’s against the law to insult people or shoot the bird at them. Seems like doing one’s best to avoid problems is the better way to get through life. But… that’s just me.

Sigh… I really think Derek Thompson’s article is a good one. It gave me hope to read it. And, if people had taken the time to read it, they’d find that he consulted “experts” before he shared his thoughts. He’s quoted a Harvard educated epidemiologist, for Christ’s sakes, yet so many people feel the need to claim that Thompson is being “irresponsible” by giving people hope that things will get better! I would certainly listen to Julia Marcus of Harvard Medical School talking about COVID-19 and mask wearing than I would some jerk commenting on The Atlantic’s Facebook page.

Anyway… if you read all of this blog post and don’t think it’s an “asshole detector”, I thank you. I really think these hyper-vigilant, hyper-neurotic, nagging mask cheerleaders are how we wind up with right wing nutjobs like Marjorie Taylor Greene and straight up narcissistic creeps like Donald Trump in charge. There needs to be balance in all things… and that includes mask mandates. But maybe I’m just an asshole who needs to STFU. If you honestly think that about me, I hope you will take it as a cue to find someone else’s blog to read. 😉

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