The mask argument is pointless and idiotic and will probably never end
By: Matt Casey
Tags: Masks, People Management, Covid 19

The mask argument is pointless and idiotic and will probably never end Matt Casey Jul 7·4 min read

Before I get going, don’t worry. I agree with you about masks. You’re definitely right. It’s that other lot who are wrong. Those selfish idiots on the other side who think the wrong thing are the ones to blame. It’s not you. You’re right. They’re wrong. Your experts are better than their experts. Your science is sciencier than their science. You’re the best, they are the worst. You’re totally right to hate them and call them names and dismiss everything they have to say. It’s what any good person would do in your situation. You’re the good guy. They’re the bad guy. That’s a fact, and only an idiot would bother talking respectfully to those morons to find out if they might just be a good person who has a different opinion to you on government policy. They most certainly aren’t good people, so don’t even check. They’re monsters. But luckily we have you. Thank heavens for that.

It’s been a couple of days now since the UK Government announced that they would be removing all pandemic related restrictions on July 19th. Within minutes of the announcement, it became apparent that the British — mustering our seemingly inexhaustible ability to find stupid reasons to hate each other — have decided to fully go to war on the issue of masks. Twitter instantly became host to a rapidly escalating doom Olympics, contested by people who had clearly been waiting all day for the moment they could charge full steam ahead into def-con furious. The competition to imagine the most horrifying scenario ramped up rapidly to the point where people were all but guaranteeing the end of the human race because some people might stop wearing a mask when they go to the shops.

To balance this out, we had huge numbers of equally unbearable people celebrating as if we’d all just been released from slavery. No longer would we have to suffer the ignominy of doing something basically irrelevant. Our chains would finally be broken. Swing low, sweet chariot. This group — not satisfied with the histrionics of treating wearing a mask as if it were an unimaginable hardship — took it in turns to issue any challenger variations of the same “If you’re scared, you can keep wearing a mask” taunt, all the while steadfastly ignoring the almost infinite number of times it has been explained that people wear masks because they believe they protect those around them, not themselves. But ignore that, right? Those cowards are just cowardly cowards. The cowards.

As this all played out in my Twitter feed, and as my acceptance that this ridiculous non-issue was going to turn into the new Brexit began to sink in, I made a decision. I’m going to find this funny. What else can anyone who isn’t completely insane do at this point.

I will make a prediction. Not a single person on either side of this debate is ever going to change their mind. Not a single one. They will exchange a billion tweets between each other, but refuse to learn a single thing about how one another really feels. The face people will never learn that the mask people aren’t cowards, and the mask people will never learn that the face people aren’t selfish. They will just scream into the internet about how right they are, and how evil the other side is for thinking a thing that they don’t even think. Everyone from both groups will spend the next several years arguing with an evil caricature villain that only exists in their own imagination, and not once even consider that they might just be two different groups of people who care about other people but who have different views on how a society should handle a pandemic.

I have no hope for any other outcome. We have managed to argue about Brexit for however many years now without taking a breath, despite the fact most of us didn’t even know what the EU was before the referendum, so why would this be any different. And so, with no hope of it not happening, or it achieving anything, I’m just going to laugh at it. If you want to spend your energy saying horrible things to a stranger because they have a different view on face masks, then you are a silly person, and I am choosing to be entertained by your silliness.

Now, what almost certainly won’t be apparent to you is that all of that was originally supposed to be the intro to an article about management. I was going to point out that July 19th will be an interesting demonstration of how people respond to economic, social and moral incentives. Then I was going to suggest you buy my book. But I’ve depressed myself too much to bother now. Who cares about management anyway. I’m just going to post this article and wait for both groups to abuse me and tell me I think things I don’t think.

God I miss the nineties.