I Was Called a Sheep on the Nextdoor App
By: Jennifer Geer
Tags: Masks, Expression, Social Media, Pandemic, Culture

I Was Called a Sheep on the Nextdoor App

And that pretty much sums up 2020 for me.

Image by Manfred Richter from Pixabay

If you’re not familiar with Nextdoor, it’s a platform where communities can come together and share information on their local area. As Nextdoor states on its website, “we believe that by bringing neighbors together, we can cultivate a kinder world where everyone has a neighborhood they can rely on.”

It’s a lovely sentiment. And before recent events, I would have believed it to be true. In my local community, people generally do help each other out on this platform by providing recommendations for things like furnace repair vendors and lawn cutting services, or posts for lost dogs.

At least, that is what my Nextdoor community used to be like. But now. Well, now it’s yet another opportunity for people to scream at each other over recommended cloth facial coverings used to stop the spread of a deadly disease.

Not to mention the nasty debates raging over school openings, but we’ll leave that to another day.

The mask-wearing debate rages on in the middle of America

Recently, I saw a community member had shared a post detailing their upset at a local small business in which neither the employees nor the manager had masks on.

I live in a state where masks are mandated. In most public places I have been in, almost everyone I encounter is wearing a mask. But this neighbor entered a small retail store and saw that nobody had a mask on, including the employees.

He was concerned he may have been exposed to a deadly disease. He wanted his community warned before they entered the establishment, possibly exposing more people to contracting Covid-19. So he put up a post about it in his Nextdoor community feed.

I made the regrettable mistake of getting involved in the post by thanking him for the heads up. I also referred him to a state agency that fields complaints on businesses not cooperating with the state mandate. They work with the local health department to help educate businesses on the importance of wearing masks.

And then. My usually friendly community. The same people who in the past have given me referrals for garage door repair services. The same people I may have chatted with at school functions or someone I’ve let cut in front of me in line at the grocery store when they only had a few items. These people, my fellow neighbors, exploded in vitriol.

People were furious. Not at the business. At the neighbor and at anyone that had dared to support him. People demanded their rights to not wear masks. People who had never been to this store now vowed to give it business. I was called a sheep and a Karen. The neighbor who began the post was called, what I’m sure they deemed as much worse than either sheep or Karen, a liberal snowflake. We’re not in the deep south either. We’re in the suburbs of a large city in a blue state.

The fighting ensued

The angry responses came fast and furious from both sides.

There seemed to be two camps of people:

On one side are the people who would rather not end their days hooked up to a ventilator struggling to breathe their final breaths. These same people seem to not want this to happen to loved ones they live with either.

On the other side are the people who know it is their God-given, American right to walk around bare-faced and spewing their droplets of Covid-19 onto every available surface they see. They’ve heard of civil rights, and they feel certain being told to wear a mask somehow inhibits them.

I have questions

It’s not just my experience on Nextdoor. We’ve all seen from social media the outrage being expressed by people refusing to wear a mask in public. We’ve all seen the videos of grown adults throwing toddler fits over wearing a cloth facial coverings.

But why? Why do people get so angry about wearing a mask? Yes, it’s a bit uncomfortable and stifling. But you get used to it. I’ve seen little children wear masks with no problems. Besides, don’t you think you will breathe better through a mask than on a ventilator?

This whole thing leaves me with so many questions. Why does wearing a mask, which evidence has shown is immensely effective at preventing the spread of Covid-19 cause such ire in Americans?

What does wearing a mask have to do with civil rights? Civil rights are the rights for all to have equality in things like public education and fair trials. Wearing a mask inhibits your rights about as much as wearing pants does.

What about my right not to catch Covid-19?

The science is clear on this. Masks work. When did following science and expert opinions become so fraught with political tension?

I’ve seen mask protestors wearing signs that say “my body, my choice.” Are they aware this slogan came from pro-choice advocates from the 1970s? And are they also aware that wearing a mask over your face isn’t actually doing anything to your body?

When did we get so selfish? When did we stop caring about others? You wear a mask not to protect yourself, but to protect others. And others wear their masks to protect you. When did we all stop helping each other?

You have to abide by certain rules of society to live in a community, like wearing clothes and shoes, why do you think wearing a mask is any different?

Why the earth-shattering anger?

Why am I a sheep because I don’t want to die?

Why can’t we work together?

We were all doomed when this became a political thing. If Trump and the other Republican leaders would have worn masks from the beginning. If both sides could have made a joint effort to protect Americans, maybe we’d have had a chance.

But that’s not how it happened, and here we are.

I was a young adult during the terrorist attacks of 9/11. I had just started my first real job and I remember going on my lunch hour to donate blood to the survivors. I waited in line for over two hours surrounded by many others taking time out of their day to help others.

We weren’t in New York. But that didn’t matter. Americans had been attacked. And what I felt around me was a feeling of a strong community. A feeling that we’re Americans and we’re in this together. We won’t sit back and let others suffer. We’ll stand up and do what is right.

What happened to that sentiment? There are 160,000 Americans dead and the count is rising. It rises every day. But we’re so caught up in politics and nonsense, we don’t even see the disaster occurring around us.

So much fighting

And instead of any sense of let’s get through this together, we insult each other on social media.

As for the insults being lobbed. You’re a snowflake or a sheep if you believe in expert advice from the epidemiologists.

Truthfully, I’ve never felt too bad about being called a snowflake. Each snowflake is unique. They are a marvel of nature. It’s not just that they are all unique within one snowfall, there have never been two snowflakes exactly alike from the beginning of time throughout the entire universe.

So sure, go ahead, call me a snowflake.

Photo by Darius Cotoi on Unsplash

I don’t mind being called a sheep either. Sheep are gentle animals. They care for their young, they stick together. They mean no harm to anyone. They simply want a safe space to munch grass.

Sure, they may panic a bit when a dog is nipping at their heels, but honestly, who doesn’t panic a bit about that?

My questions remain unanswered

I can’t explain why any of this is happening. But I have my theories. The people that voted for the man that said he was going to make everything great again, have a lot to lose socially and internally if they admit they were wrong.

The more you’ve invested your time and energy into believing something and into convincing others of your beliefs, the harder it becomes to quit. You do everything you can to continue to convince yourself you are in the right. The more the evidence piles up otherwise makes no difference. The stronger you dig into your erroneous beliefs.

Cult leaders know this. It’s how they operate it. And it must be even harder to leave the group when your fellow community is entrenched in it. How do you say no to the kool-aid when you’re watching your family and friends cheerfully stand in line to drink it?

People are scared and upset. Cases are spreading even in rural areas now. People are dying. Finances are wrecked. People need something to direct their fear and anger. And if they can’t, or won’t, blame the people in charge of creating this chaos, they’ll find something else to blame. They’ll find something else to direct all of that rage towards because it has to go somewhere.

In this case, it’s gone to face masks and the people who want you to wear them.

Go ahead, call me a sheep

We can either come together and work at saving lives, or we can keep fighting and watch the country fall into ruin while hospitals overflow and people die.

As for me, I am not drinking the kool-aid. Nor am I going to waste one more minute at debating the merits of wearing face masks. If you are still unconvinced at this point, I have only one thing left to say to you.

Baaaaa.