Leaving my house is generally not the way I prefer to spend my time, pandemic or no, but my reluctance has intensified lately because, you know, masks. Ah, the mask. I know for sure I should be wearing one, but in spite of good, sturdy evidence that this is protecting both me and others, I sometimes feel like an idiot doing it.
This is because a lot of people are not wearing masks. I have even entered a couple of spaces in which zero people were wearing masks, other than me. The correct and informed thought response to this situation, of course, would be, “Oh look, a room full of bad decision makers.” Unfortunately, my actual response is, “Oh look, a room full of people who think I am a bad decision maker. SOUND THE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS ALARM WOOP WOOP WOOP.”
I like to think of myself as a reasonably confident person, but I am not immune to the pressures of social conformity, and probably neither is anyone else. A key malfunction in the human operating system is that while we are capable of being quite rational, we ultimately make decisions based on what other people are doing. You’ve heard of herd mentality, right? We’re all just sheeple.
People are more likely to believe fake news, for example, when others are around. We assume that someone else in the group will have fact-checked the information, thus negating the need to do it ourselves. Oh and then there’s the bystander effect, where people will fail to intervene in a crisis because hey, nobody else is doing anything either, man. Social proof is an umbrella term for all of this. It’s the reason we’ll only buy stuff with 4.9 stars on Amazon, and therefore also the reason review farms exist. We can’t help believing, in the deepest recesses of our wonderfully complex human brains, that whatever other people are doing is what is best for us.
It’s embarrassing (what would aliens think??), but it makes sense. An early human was much less likely to be eviscerated by a sabre-toothed kangaroo if she stayed with the group, so doing weird things wasn’t just uncomfortable; it was life-threatening. Nobody could afford to get kicked out for whistling entire songs in public or wearing fanny packs unironically. Archaeologists now believe, in fact, that of all the human bones found in prehistoric crocodile dens, up to 90% may have been from primitive people who chewed with their mouths open.
Prehistoric conformity: understandable!
Modern conformity: not super helpful!
So now here we are, needing to do this thing for the sake of public health and perhaps the continuation of civilization as we know it, and we’re getting derailed by social shame. This is why, if you see fifteen mask-free people crowding into a Starbucks vestibule next week, you’ll pause for a moment at the door before surmising, “Well, I’m sure they’re all epidemiologists,” and toss your mask back on to the front seat. And then, if you wish, you can pull out that handy little device you carry that connects you to all humans on Earth and see if they would have done the same thing.
Disease, advanced technology, socially dependent and irrational brains. Kinda makes you wonder if we’re getting the answer to the Fermi Paradox here (which just so happens to be my most FAVORITE paradox). Is this The Great Filter? Are we, like all other hypothetical life forms in the galaxy, about to be taken down by a once-containable cousin of the common cold and Facebook? Facebook?!
*shakes fists* ZUCKERBERRRRRRRRRRRG!!!!!!!
Herd mentality, groupthink, sheepledom, whatever you want to call it, almost certainly isn’t going away, but being aware of it may at least keep us from ripping our masks off in the throes of self-conscious agony. I don’t like feeling like an idiot, but I also don’t particularly want to come back as a microbe, so… We’re just going to have to brace ourselves for discomfort, fellow mask-wearing bearers of light, and hope we can start our own herd. I’ll wear the mask AND feel stupid.
Come join me. ALL THE COOL KIDS ARE DOING IT.
