Mask bullies don’t want to persuade you — but to humiliate and rule youhttps://nypost.com/2021/08/10/mask-bullies-dont-want-to-persuade-you-but-to-humiliate-and-rule-you/Law professor Ann Althouse recently reproduced two memes she saw on Facebook. One read: “It took ‘click it or ticket’ to get people to wear a seatbelt. I wonder if ‘mask it or casket’ might work.” The other said: “It’s a face mask, not a Star of David or pink triangle, you whiny, privileged dolt. You’re not being shoved into a cattle car and taken to camp. You’re going to Walmart for twinkies and Diet Coke. Grow up.”
They’re both poor efforts at persuasion, of course: Generally, calling people names, threatening them and saying they’re stupid are ineffective ways of winning them over.
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Maybe the mask fanatics are just poor persuaders. But it seems just as likely that they are engaging in poor persuasion because they aren’t trying to persuade.
As with so much that goes on in today’s society, and especially on social media, this sort of thing isn’t aimed at convincing those who disagree, but rather at garnering high-fives from people who agree and, ultimately, creating an ideological veneer for unquestioned elite rule.
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At any rate, all the blaming and shaming on social media and elsewhere is less about persuasion than about the emotional needs of those doing the blaming and shaming. It makes them feel better about themselves, and in today’s society, feeling better about oneself is the greatest of achievements. It’s helpful if the feeling suffices to legitimate the right of laptop-class “meritocrats” to bully the oiks on things like masks and lockdowns — when their actual performance casts serious doubts on their merits.
Very true, it's 'lites stroking their superiority complex and virtue-signally to each other. Are
Mask-Mockers,
Anti-Covid-Vaxxers, or
Vax-Mandaters the least bit better? A pox o' all their heads!
