MEETUP IV
I think I wasted a bit too much time this morning arguing with people on Facebook about the efficacy of face masks. (THEY WORK.) My oldest niece, Brandi, refuses to believe they are necessary; to her credit, she still wears them as recommended. But, she just posted today asking if the mask mandate has resulted in fewer COVID cases, and immediately there was a cascade of dipshittery in the comments claiming that it has made no difference—none of which provided any sources, and all of which ran counter to actual evidence, easily found. So, I posted a calm response with two different links illustrating that cases actually are declining, almost certainly thanks to mask mandates.
Brandi then predictably responded with follow-up questions making it pretty clear she didn't even bother looking at the links I sent; this really was just an exercise of her asking her friends to tell her what she wanted to hear, and her friends happily obliging (which is the long and short of the Facebook experience overall, really—and I won't deny that I have fallen victim to it myself; at least I actively try to push against it). I got into a specific thread with one of the commenters in which I quite easily and quickly found sources to refute her many ignorant claims, after which she either moved the goal posts of her argument (at first she tried to say "never in history" have we had to wear masks for a flu; after that was easily refuted, she changed it to "okay never in our history") or resorted to the talking point of "fudging the numbers" and claiming we're all just being lied to—a stance which then of course makes it very easy to refute anything.
After my final comment to this other woman, in which I finally said, "These answers are not difficult to find, and frankly it's not other people's responsibility to find them all for you, but I'll bite just this one last time," and I provided a link to an article explaining why the world did not grind to a halt in the same way with the H1N1 pandemic (simple answer: that one, while still easily spread, was not nearly as deadly), I just turned off notifications for the post. No reasonable answer to all her dumb questions satisfied this woman, so I finally stopped engaging with her, or with Brandi's original post itself. At least I still left some reasonable counter-programming in the comments amidst all these people making totally unsubstantiated claims.
I just finished up with the fourth week of Zoom Friday Office Lunch Meetup. Two new people joined this week! Jordan from Social & Environmental Responsibility, who had been at a few of these meetups several months back when we could actually meet at bar after work; and Michelle from IT, who I think had also been at one or two of those in-person meetups but I can't remember. Jordan had to leave about halfway in.
But, thanks to Michelle, for me this was the funnest conversational hour so far, as she brought up movies! She had just re-watched Jurassic Park, which, unlike me, she had not seen in many many years apparently. Of course I had to tell everyone that's my second-favorite movie of all time. (Conversation moved too quickly for anyone to ask what was #1.) She also brought up having watched Jaws, which is also on my top 10! So then Rebecca would ask other prompting questions like what our favorite movie genre is. In fact we spent easily the majority of the hour talking about movies, and how they have differed by decade, and all sorts of other things about them. At the end Michelle said next week we'll have to talk about TV series recommendations. I promised I'll write a list. I'll be ready!
Andrew returned for this week's meetup, as always with a different virtual background. I had to ask him what it was; he said "It's just basically 2020." It was an animated still of a destroyed city street apparently from Adventure Time, which I had never watched.
Anyway. Brent was the host as always, so this week's peak number of attendance was six, I think: Brent, Michelle, Rebecca, Andrew, Jordan and myself.
It was a good time. And I still have plans to meet up with Tracy (socially distanced!) at Streissguth Gardens after work. But for now I should get back to that work.
[posted 1:08 pm]