Best interaction with an antimasker:
Them: masks don’t work
Me: We’ll I’m going to wear one anyway
Them: Well then you’re just traping the germs against your face
Me: so you’re saying they block germs?
They even stated the correct reason to wear a mask: to trap the germs against my face, so others don’t get infected
It’s like they don’t compute the idea behind it, it stops at me me me
My favorite reply to them is that it’s America and I can do whatever I want, I’ll call them snowflakes too whenever appropriate. They get pissed when you insinuate they’re anti American lul.
Well, it’s only fair, seeing as they ARE anti-American.
i’ve just recently seen the same with pro 2a people. It was on a video about inclusive gun safety training, because the 2a is quite literally, for everyone. SO many people in the comments were saying something along the lines of “well if we trained them, then they might kill us”
Yeah no shit. What do you think they thought of you prior to this moment huh? Just utter fucking ignorance for anything more than a mere shred of intellectual thought being put into whatever they say. Not to mention that this is borderline authoritarian policy by nature but that’s the other funny part.
Didn’t gun control ramp up when the Black Panthers started exercising their rights to bear arms? Funny thing is the Panthers seem much more like a “well-regulated militia” than this Wild West, permitless carry, anything goes BS.
exactly. gun control only started when minorities started exercising their right to bear arms. The right don’t want gun control laws until the groups they are trying to oppress start exercising their second amendment rights.
i mean, that’s also perfectly legal under 2A, 90% of the time gun control is related to regulation in regards to owning, rather than the ability to the own it period. Which is another argument all together tbh.
I wouldnt know much about the specifics of that group though, only that it has to do with civil rights from memory lol.
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John Stewart’s latest show did a great job pointing this out. “Pro-constitution” redco- hats supporting a dictatorship and ignoring the fundamentals of the constitution.
Someone once told me that the box in which masks came in says “doesn’t protect from viruses”, as if it was hidden-in-plain-sight proof that masks don’t work.
Yeah, they don’t protect the user from viruses, they protect other people. The box is technically correct, Patricia, there is no conspiracy here.
It is humorous that these people think that they have some secret knowledge that only they know and they feel so much power because of it. Except that the information they know is incorrect and they just end up looking like an idiot.
Not in their own minds, and that is all that matters. Also not to their church members, sadly:-(.
Perception is reality and they cannot perceive a reality in which they aren’t always correct.
I mean, I would not say that it is reality, just that they act like it is - except even that much is not true, b/c when they get REALLY sick, they finally show up at a hospital begging to be saved. So even they know, deep down, where the medicine is at. Cognitive dissonance is a horrific, terrible thing:-(.
… Which masks? N95 will totally filter viruses, no?
They will, but you have to follow some protocols, like not having beard where the masks is supposed to seal around your face, not using it more than ~3 times (iirc), not trying to clean it (just let it rest for some days on a clean surface) and etc.
Basically always seal testing.
Also, iirc the N stands for not oil resistant, so any oil staining ruins it. I’d guess that includes sneezing on it.
Not to mention skin is chock full of oils
I think they actually do understand but don’t have enough empathy with other people to see it as their responsibility to protect other people from their viruses.
Not that someone as perfect as them would ever sick enough to potentially infect others…
This. So much of this. I can’t even convince family members to not go and socialize with dozens of others while they are sick! Five years ago, I would have bet my life’s savings and every appendage I have that I would get the correct answer if I asked someone whether illnesses spread through contact with or being near a sick person.
Claims are not evaluated, in the loyalist worldview. They’re not arguments. They’re slogans. You shuffle your cards and say whatever might justify the ingroup being fundamentally superior to the outgroup. Because of course, it is impossible for someone to simply be wrong. That would require evaluating claims. No: truth is dictated by people above you. They must be right and smart and handsome, or they wouldn’t be above you. Any challenge, any criticism, any disagreement, is a personal attack. You are calling someone lesser.
And I say “you” because these people think this is all we’re doing. They think that’s all there is. It’s reality as a team sport.
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Or, more likely, they’re selfish jerks who don’t care about anyone else. “The greater good? What’s that?”
While it is fun to tweak their titties with this, it will make zero difference on their position because their position wasn’t arrived at by rational thought.
Their actual position is that they don’t give a fuck about anyone other than themself. Everything they claim to believe is just a rationalization they think will sound good to someone else. All they care about is what they can convince others.
While there is some nuance between people, you pretty spot on.
Weaponized magical thinking.
Please stop you’re going to break them! 😂
My favorite interactions was going into Walmart.
It was mid/early spring, right as things were starting to lockdown. I wasn’t wearing a jacket cuz it was glorious out.
Some old boomer lady started harassing me over not wearing a jacket and blah blah blah.
She wouldn’t shut up, and was blocking me from walking in, so I faked a sneeze. The look of horror on her face as she fled.
(And I’m pretty sure that was also the fastest time in and out of a Walmart…)
Why did she have a problem with you not wearing a jacket? What am I missing here?
it was in the 40’s f (4-10 c) and it was still winter. Spring in MN, that’s T-shirt weather. but boomer’s just can’t not treat middle-aged men like children.
You are truly evil… and this story was glorious, thanks for sharing it!:-P
You’re assuming these people believe we even send things to space. I had a serious ass conversation recently with my father’s roommate. Typical conspiracy theorist ding dong. Full on flat earther and everything. I asked him how he thinks GPS works if the earth was flat. He admitted he didn’t know but then when I started to explain how it works by pinging satellites we put up in space he cut me off and said space isn’t real. Like legitimately thinks space isn’t real. He on a separate occasion also complained that we didn’t need to wear masks during covid because we apparently make our own viruses in our bodies and viruses don’t spread between people.
These people don’t even understand how logic works. Let alone that people could be smarter than they are.
Well, if you reject all knowledge you cannot obtain through direct observation, you can kinda start to understand how they ended up where they are.
They’re intimidated by the scientific method.
Many of them are religious and believe plenty of things they didn’t directly observe. It’s more that they have been trained through religious thinking that if someone confidently claims something it must be more true than someone who honestly admits that “it is the best we can know right now and we will update our understanding as we obtain more evidence.” These people need the answer now and that answer can’t change because changing your opinion based on new evidence is seen as weakness and opinions should be handed down from on high and never change.
There’s always been crazy and stupid people. And then we gave them the internet to connect and to have a voice. Now they feed of each other’s crazynies and believe they run the world.
Only way to fight this is education. Give people the ability to see through crazy. You’re not born with common sense. It’s taught and learned.
Not a solution but it is fun to put a flat-earther with a hollow-earther and say Earth is a ball. Then you grab some popcorn.
We should just start jettisoning these people into space
Tbh, it’s really your fault for choosing to interact with this person more than once.
yeah, god forbid you try to break down the echo chamber existing between parties for the benefit of public good.
Fuck you, be a good robot for the party and STICK ONLY WITH THE PEOPLE I DEMAND YOU TO STAY WITH.
I just want affordable healthcare
Unfortunately, the answer to that doesn’t lie in science but in politics.
But I took a course in college Called political Science. So what about that mister science man?
Ask the military industrial complex. Too much good applicable science and tech comes from space exploration.
Not really.
The NASA budget has been slashed for decades on a row and is currently a tiny amount compared to what it was before. That they still manage to do what they do is half a miracle in on itself.
It’s so bad that a 3 percent of the military budget given to NASA would double it’s budget instantly.
With that in mind, I would put this on the military industrial complex
My point was that spending on NASA isn’t why we don’t have health care.
Ah… point taken, then.
The funny thing is that NASA contracts the same companies as the military anyways (in the modern day, at least)
NASA Prime Contractors Aerojet Rocketdyne, Boeing, Jacobs, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman currently have over 3,800 suppliers contributing to Orion, the SLS rocket, and the lunar spaceport at Kennedy.
It gets slightly less funny when you realize that that’s the reason Nasa’s latest rocket made primarily from Space Shuttle parts is way more expensive than basically any commercial rocket. Essentially Congress only agrees to fund NASA if it means they also get to fund these military contractors.
Socializing your health care might destroy you guys, since there’s so many fatties, smokers, guns and people who ignore doctors. Sounds expensive.
Except that it is a proven fact that public health care costs less per capita than private, so actually it sounds less expensive. The people lobbying to keep it private are the only ones who stand to lose and their brainwashed army of sycophants can’t understand anything beyond the points they’ve been trained to parrot.
So I would love public healthcare but what’s the reason that public is cheaper
This came off snarkier than I intended I’m just curious
what’s the reason that public is cheaper
The number of middlemen is removed and their profit motive is removed from the equation.
Huh that makes sense
Plenty of information out there, they shouldn’t need to take the time to do that for you
I blame the obesity epidemic on the weak ass FDA and nutrition labeling. A ‘serving’ is whatever the hell they feel like making it - I’ve seen 1/3 of a cookie, a single tick tack (rounded down to 0g sugar), and every other arbitrary amount so actually comparing products takes so much time that most dont bother. Combine this with the fact that 90% of restaurants dont even bother giving you any information at all so you have to cook or go to specific big chains to actually track calories. Also it’s a safe assumption that everything at a restaurant is packed full of carbs, cheese, and oils for max calorie density.
Sugar free cookies! Serving size 1/100th of a cookie, round the grams of sugar down to zero! May as well, what’re they going to do? Stop you?
Smokers?! Have you ever been to France? It’s like a trip back in time to 80s America, with a smoker on every street corner and an ash tray on every cafe patio table.
People act like their mamas never told 'em to cover their damned mouths when they cough or sneeze. It’s the same damned thing, only masks work much better at keeping your filthy germs from infecting other people.
Common sense ain’t common, they say, and this anti-mask nonsense is just proof that it’s true.
But don’t you know? Having symptoms like “drier mouth,” “fogged glasses,” and “smelling your own breath” are much more dangerous than a virus that killed a million Americans at least.
What it really tells me it that the mouth breathers are crazier than we gave them credit for.
People act like their mamas never told 'em to cover their damned mouths when they cough or sneeze
Nor to wash their hands before eating (or even after going to the toilet.)
I tried explaining universal precautions to a pastor of a church I was attending, and pointed out that there is a Christian commandment to love one’s neighbor that overrides one’s personal desires. He could not dispute my points, but he also didn’t do anything to implement safety procedures.
Guess who left the church after the unsurprising COVID outbreak?
I realize a lot of people here aren’t believers, but my point is that even within the context of religion or common wisdom, masks make sense.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about how decades of lead in gasoline, pipes, and in other places likely damaged generations of people’s ability to reason. I’m sincerely beginning to think this is a bigger problem than we’ll ever truly know.
You learn that most people are disgusting the first time you use a crowded public bathroom.
Or lick their hands when handling money
But surely you must understand how someone, having failed all of their classes and then dropped out of school altogether, understands complex matters better than the people who are brilliant, have international acclaim, and devoted like 5 decades of their lives to study that same thing?
Or you know, at least watched this 11-minute video?
And if you do, can you explain it to me? :-P So far all I have is “Might Makes Right”, but somehow that seems to be lacking something…
They failed because they’re obviously smarter than science and not the other way around.
Also, are we not going to discuss the conspiracy theory that many of the people espousing this ideology were mysteriously killed!? And their families too! In fact, anyone even so much as near them had a chance to be affected, possibly some still here but with permanent brain damage!
Sounds pretty sus if you ask me…
Elon musk is college educated and successful, please trust everything he says.
Well, I was going to argue against that, but then I remembered that he is rich - which I guess is the same thing as smart? - so… okay! :-P
My point was that being educated doesn’t necessarily make you smart or correct either. Being uneducated doesn’t necessarily make you stupid. I know plenty of well educated people who I wouldn’t ask for advice from. Basically: “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.”
Yes this is very true. IQ is not the same as EQ, and neither are quite the same as “wisdom”. The latter comes from evaluated experiences - as in, if you fail to learn from your own mistakes then you will simply get dumber as you age, whereas if you seek out knowledge & learning & evaluate the mistakes of others, then the trajectory of your life will make you SMARTER as you age (up to a point ofc).
Truthfully, the only way to spot a counterfeit is to know the real thing so extremely well that nobody can pull a fast one on you.
Speaking of, don’t forget: GWB (the 2nd Bush president) only graduated Yale b/c his father donated a massive amount of $$$$ to the school - his grades (that he had sealed but at some point got leaked) reveal that he flunked out on his own merits. So even “educated” does not mean “educated” if you catch my drift.
As far as a “guarantee” though… nothing is every truly guaranteed, so that might be asking too much. Still, it’s a good reminder to look at someone’s character - did someone get rich merely b/c of accidents, or b/c they truly deserved it. Though, do any of the recently rich truly deserve it? Bezos who won’t let workers pee (even pregnant mothers), Musk for taking a truly fantastic idea and turning into something that literally kills people, and Zuckerberg who… (shudder), just not even going to go there.
Getting a higher education is one thing, call me when he has published multiple peer-reviewed studies in any field and I just might take his opinions in said field to heart.
🤓
I mean a lot of them also don’t believe we landed unmanned units on mars, or humans on the moon, for that matter, so…
It’s funny, I’ve heard plenty of morons talk about flat earth, but I’ve never seen anyone say anything about Mars.
Mars is obviously a star, since it is in the sky and glows.
Some of those dumb fucks think that it’s just Earth that’s flat, but other planets are round – probably because it’s so bleeding obvious they are when you look at them through a telescope. Somehow that logic doesn’t apply to the Earth though
Don’t give them any ideas.
So they just deny space exploration. Easy.
While using a smartphone with nano chips and GPS, based on satellites and Einstein’s General Relativity.
Flat earthers and moon landing deniers have entered the chat…
I recently had some guy rattle off 10 stupid reasons why we never landed on the moon in a row. I have never heard a more clear example of the fallacy of verbosity. One of them was "We didn’t have automatic windshield wipers for cars in the 60’s so there is no way we had the technology to go to the moon. "
I swear to god his reasons were that stupid and he had a ton of them.
The Saturn V moon rocket first flew in 1967, first carried a crew in 1968 and flew the first moon landing in 1969.
Bernard Sadow patented the first suitcase with wheels in 1972.
That sounds like some pure uncut Dunning-Kruger there!
Fossils, also fake
I am reasonably sure that a fair many conservatives feel that they are entitled to their biases and fallacies and the world must bend to these biases.
It’s deeper than that, they literally believe they can change objective reality by believing hard enough.
That’s why they excuse all of their bad acts, if they ignore it, it doesn’t exist to them.
Negative object permanence.
I think you are right. I believe it is somehow related their obsessive belief in their religion.
I am not saying that all religious people are bad. But, somehow, these people excuse their bad behaviour by quoting scriptures. There has to a correlation too.
No, their religion is a paper thin pretext. They don’t actually do anything the Bible says to do, and they do a FUCKTONNE of what the Bible explicitly prohibits.
And I’m so tired as a progressive Christian of these cuntservative evangelicals convincing all of the internet that any theist is a mouth foaming bigot.
Too bad they can’t make tulpas with that power
You can, and they’re useful, and tulpa is a stupid fucking name. There I said it.
The only thing about them is that they are really only useful for organizing parts of yourself that you are not consciously aware of. You can’t manifest a slenderman IRL but you can make a mind palace and vastly improve your memory, or go on spirit journeys and learn how to forgive.
It’s all in your head but that doesn’t make it any less real.
Currency and democracy are ideas made manifest, and all they are is shared ideas in our heads.
What’s the point of using my mind to create something internal? It would be better if I could just twist reality with a thought. Smh.
It’s complicated and if I fully explain it to you, it won’t work as well for you.
Google ‘mind palace’ and start playing with the practice. It’s really just a fun imagination game that can actually improve your memory drastically.
I’ll just look for a chaos magic grimoire at this point
Yeah ok but there’s a difference between being a chunibyo and wanting to organize your thinking.
Behold: what religion does to a person’s mind.
Poindexter… not hard slang to get correct. Dumbasses.
Fuck off Pondexter
Giga 🤓
Step on Mars but not on snek.
What is the thesis of this meme, that people are just stupid and there is no underlying problem or system that can be improved?
Science is often communicated to the public via either companies, politics, or the media. Which al have their own interests and issues in representing “scientific facts”. To give some examples of the “science” people have been exposed to: These new pain killers are perfectly save and absolutely not addictive. Making health care accessible is actually bad for the economy and will be more expensive in the end. Or the numerous articles on outlier papers published in the media that conclude that it’s actually healthy to [insert obviously unhealthy habit here (sponsored by some industry group)].
Science has a communication problem, and the communication conduits have a huge credibility problem. The results of which made an already bad pandemic even worse.
Holy shit, a reasonable comment that doesn’t just assume the other half of the country are idiots.
People don’t know what to believe and are skeptical for good reason (some historical, some present). Time and time again we’ve seen our institutions fails us. We see blatant corruption that the elites don’t even bother to hide (e.g. corporate capture). And we see freedoms eroded in times of crisis (e.g. Patriot Act). I’m not saying we should be conspiratorial about doctors or science. But reasonable people on both sides of the aisle see what’s happening to our institutions and this has knock on effects.
The thesis is that you should listen to experts when you don’t know what you’re talking about. No one is saying experts are never wrong, but they’re more likely to be right than just some guy. There’s a whole lot of ‘just some guys’ who claim to appreciate science until it tells them something they don’t want to hear. That’s what the meme is against.
Okay, what about when there is a lack of consensus? When you have scientists who, for example, argue that the virus came from the Wuhan lab whereas the narrative being told is that that’s crazy. This is the problem I have with people in this thread assuming that everyone who isn’t immediately on board is dumb, delusional, conspiratorial, etc. We’re not talking about flat Earth theory here; it’s not that simple.
The problem is only when expertise is unduly dismissed. If there’s no consensus you listen to the differing ideas and you can determine what sounds right to you while acknowledging your lower level of confidence by being extra cautious until there’s more information available.
Sure, people yelling on the internet is annoying and bad, but that’s regardless of the argument they’re pushing. It doesn’t say anything about the quality of the evidence if one side is more annoying.
Science is often communicated to the public via either companies, politics, or the media. Which al have their own interests and issues in representing “scientific facts”.
Science is communicated using whatever means has an audience.
Science is also communicated much more precisely and accurately in scientific journals, but those generally aren’t easily accessible to the wider public.
Do you have a suggestion to how we might solve those 2 overlapping problems?
Well it doesnt help that studies post covid restrictions found many of said restrictions where ineffective. Masks tho we have good evidance they work at least.
Masks are more effective in protecting others if you are sick, rather than protecting yourself if others are sick. We should have the attitude that protecting others is good.
We should have the attitude that protecting others is good.
This flies in the face of North American “exceptional/radical individualism”.
Asian societies are largely collective. You do what you can to serve others, putting the needs of the community ahead of your own, and this leads to tighter-knit, stronger, and more resilient communities.
North American society is based on “muh rights” individualism, where the person is most important, and society needs to serve their needs, and not the other way around. This leads to weak, ephemeral, almost non-existent communities that are there only in name, or by a fluke of geography that makes completely random people cluster together without ever making serious or deep social connections.
Of the two, the former might end up being stifling to creatives and neuroatypicals, but the latter cannot survive any significant challenge without a significantly negative impact on the “community”.
The 2 party political system flies in the face of basic individualism.
They still do reduce transmission to yourself but yeah, the big win is in not spreading it yourself.
My favorite metaphor for the subject: If you’re wearing pants, it’s really hard to piss on other people.
Masks are more effective in protecting others if you are sick, rather than protecting yourself if others are sick.
This was 100% not the messaging that was told to the public in the beginning.
I think they dumb down messaging too much. But then again, with what we know now, it’s not like the public is behaving responsibly. But thats not a messaging problem.
As always, it’s better to recommend more strict restrictions when you don’t know if they’re effective and there’s an impact on public health. Hindsight is 20/20
I don’t know about other countries, but the on and off lockdowns in some countries proved to be ineffective. Many experts said it’s better to do lockdown in one go than it being staggered and having different levels of restrictions. But on the one hand, the totalitarian zero-COVID restriction like had happened in China is just as ineffictive.
Yep, the lockdown waves probably weren’t ideal for preventing viral spread, but we now know they were at least better than doing nothing.
Hopefully we learn for next time
If you’re going to lock the country down then you need to support small businesses too. Imagine spending long nights building a business only to see it disappear under COVID restrictions. And then you learn that the restrictions weren’t necessary.
Ship no go. Can you make it go?
Well you have to let the virus out if you want to get rid of it. Why do you think there’s that saying about having to pass a cold along?
Big Cold is just a dolled-up ponzi scheme, I tells ya
white hoods covering the whole head are ruined too
