To everyone wondering why people get so *angry* about wearing a mask (and why sometimes they get angry at *others* wearing masks), I have a theory. 1/ https://twitter.com/darollins/status/1276866934714388483

My sense is most if not all of the mask haters are politically conservative. And masks violate the epistemic closure that has been metastasizing on the right for *decades*. 2/

Fox News and various right leaning outlets have been closing themselves and their viewers off from science, expertise, objective reality, etc. for a very long time. Eventually your brain and its impulses get conditioned to reject what is inconvenient. 3/

Climate Change. WMDs in Iraq (and how the Iraq War was going). Black president. Mass shootings. Universal health care vs for-profit health care.

For a long time, Fox News et al provided a bubble that protected conservatives from confronting their errors. 4/

And the same bubble was attempted to cover the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It’s just the flu.”
“Plenty of testing.”
“It’s just in the cities (where those ppl live).”
“It’s fine, get back to work.”

For awhile, and with enough willpower/denial, one could believe all the above. 5/

Mask wearing exposes the folly of that denial. But unlike normal news reports, neighbors arguing, virus numbers debates, etc., masks are a literal, visual, constant reminder of conservative errors. You can’t insist the pandemic is over if everyone around you is wearing a mask. 6/

And thus anger. People who gravitate to Fox News et al in the first place are people who *want* to be told comforting lies and reassured their beliefs are not wrong, unpopular, bigoted, etc. And again, for *decades*, they’ve been conditioned to not (re)examine their beliefs. 7/

They are being forced to confront their errors- literally, visually, constantly- when they’ve had no practice at it. Their brains are being “threatened” and they have no tools or skills to deal with that threat in a mature fashion. 8/

So how do we approach people who are so threatened (and thus impulsively angry)? How do we persuade them that embracing reality is, albeit challenging and stressful, far better than magical thinking? Yeah... I don’t know. 9/

Affiliation (ie having a trusted source tell you the truth) can help. As much as I dislike them, Liz and Dick Cheney urging people to wear masks might help. Maybe. 10/

That still leaves us with the episodes of anger in stores. What does a worker do? IMO, they should keep doing what we’re seeing them do- deny service and let mask haters go cool off and deal with their feelings without endangering others. Let them go find a safe space. 11/

Sadly, unless and until there is a *unified* message to wear masks, this anger will remain. Conservatives just cannot change behavior unless and until their trusted leaders tell them to change. 12/

TL;DR either the Trump Administration must start loudly advocating for wearing masks (lol not bloody likely), or this pandemic won’t even begin to be under control unless and until a Biden Administration takes over. January 2021 is a long ways away. Stay safe, wear your mask. 13/