The '90s PC setup, for that ultimate cozy computing experience

I've noticed over the past few years a revival of the '90s computer setup among online Millennial nerds, mainly those who are into video games and want to recreate their childhood experience of playing Doom etc. on the original hardware, for authenticity value. A couple visual reminders:

Aesthetically, everything is in beige or light gray. While most cutting-edge consumer electronics of the '90s were black, computers were supposed to be for more utilitarian tasks, and did not have to look cool and sleek and all-black. They were the same bland, unnoticeable beige-y color as medical equipment and landline phones.

The uniformly black appearance of computers and their peripherals only took place during the 2000s, when they were no longer used for utilitarian purposes, but rather as entertainment devices that were replacing the television set and the rest of the old home entertainment center.

Functionally, there are separate devices for each major function, instead of the current all-in-one device (laptop or smartphone). A desktop PC (tower or slab, either is fine), a good ol' CRT monitor, a keyboard (preferably clicky), a mouse (rollerball type, therefore with a mousepad as well), and speakers. I've also got a flip-top disk case meant for 5 1/4" floppy disks, which also fits CD-ROM cases (the color is beige body and tinted clear lid, naturally, with an '80s typeface on the front: "DATA-CASE").

As a result of all these bulky components being present, the '90s setup required a solid piece of furniture — a desk or table. These were not the nerd battle stations of future decades, but something right out of contempo home office design, as the computer was still treated as a productivity device, not one primarily for entertainment. Today's nerd battle stations or rigs look more like a home entertainment center from the old days.

Although it's something I'd like to explore more in depth in another post, the location of the computer was also more like that of a home office device. It was most definitely not part of a man cave, goon lair, gamer dungeon, or blacked-out bedroom. There was nothing escapist about the room it was in, since it was for being productive, not entertaining yourself into an alternate dimension where you no longer feel like killing yourself.

There was at least one window nearby, letting in natural light, and perhaps some natural white noise from the outside world. And there were other places and things and furniture items in the area that could distract you for awhile after you got bored of writing or spreadsheeting or whatever on the computer. It could even have been in a wide-open area like the kitchen / dining room, or the living room, where there was no expectation of privacy — because the user wasn't using it for escapist purposes. It was for wholesome, innocuous use for the entire household.

At any rate, the all-in-one setup only took over as computers became goof-off devices, where you don't really care about how each separate function performs. Back in the '90s, computers were not yet the next time-killing tech addiction.

Also portability was of no concern, because what kind of lame geek would want to do some computing on-the-go? All-in-one design dovetails with portability, and both are related to the current use of them as tech addictions to kill time. You need your fix wherever you go, so it must be portable, and therefore all-in-one.

One function, however, that laptops and smartphones never integrated from the old setup is the printer — a perfect sign of how disposable and impermanent the output of your touchscreen tapping truly is.

But the main function that was lacking on the old setup, which prevented it from becoming a mind-numbing, soul-sucking dispenser of digital opium was online connectivity. Sure, a few people had primitive internet service in 1993 with AOL — and basically no one was online before then — but recall how barren the online world was back then.

Hardly anything on the world wide web, especially anything of an addictive social media interactive nature. Not even the Web 2.0 stuff from the 2000s like blogging. Virtually no porn, let alone in a video format, let alone full scenes, let alone streaming.

What did an online account actually offer you back then? An email account that saw no more than a couple emails a day, a chat room that got old after an hour, Instant Messenger for the occasional conversation with a rando anon (not constantly touching base with your IRL social circle, or displaying status updates like the "away message"), probably only one discussion group that interested you, and a barebones reporting of the national daily news.

True, you probably had a handful of video games for the PC that could eat away at your free time, but except for the 1% of guys who are incurable video game addicts, nobody played them for hours a day, day after day. It was a fun little diversion for an hour, then you turned it off, came back to it a couple days later, picked up where you left off, and kept it casual.

And yet, just like the primitive form of the internet that would only get worse, the '90s computer culture was marked by the rise of the first-person shooter video game genre with Doom, which did allow for online multiplayer (although hardly anyone made use of that at the time), foreshadowing the disappearance of guys into the online video game vortex during the 2000s and after. But during the '90s itself, these things were still in a fairly benign state.

So, any attempt to recreate the '90s PC setup has to turn off the internet connections (if they exist), and restrict the number of video games to a handful... no more than 10. Probably just Myst, Doom II, a legacy copy of Oregon Trail, some Sierra point-and-click adventure games, etc. No autistic collecting of things you'll only play once or not at all, but rather a small number of things that you are committed to long-term.

This also economizes on memory usage, as online programs chew up the most resources, and it obviates the need for second-order programs like security / firewall, which also hog resources, and themselves need to be constantly updated over the internet. You can still transfer data from and to the internet via USB flash drives, or floppy disks, or CDs.

I've switched to writing all my stuff with offline-only computers, and if I need to upload it to the web, save it to a USB flash drive, which an internet-enabled computer can send off into the online domain, from which my composition computer serves as a virtual sanctuary.

This is the only way to accomplish "distraction-free" word processing, spreadsheet filling, coding, or whatever else you're trying to get done. It's not a full-screen word processor (although I do use one of those too — Q10), it's a machine that does not even tempt you into "just checking in on" the buzzing and churning of the online world.

And no, this does not render the computer into a mere "overglorified typewriter," because of all the other productive tasks it does (spreadsheet, database, etc.). It allows for some entertainment with separate video games, as well as fun little puzzle games like Minesweeper or Solitaire that you can play for a little bit and feel fine putting away.

And it serves as an archive, especially for pictures. Most people never look through their old pictures on a laptop or smartphone, because they're posting those pictures as part of their social media addiction and status-striving contests, where the buzz and novelty evaporates within 24 hours, and they're of no use or concern ever again. Something you shot on your digital point-and-shoot camera and downloaded onto a desktop computer, or older prints that you digitally scanned into modern image files, were meant to be looked at every now and again. They were meant to memorialize something, however mundane it may have seemed at the time, but which can really take you back and feel a larger impression when you look at them again for the first time in years or decades.

It can also serve as a music library, or at least playback device. All your digitally owned files, or CDs, will play perfectly well, and you'll have a better pair of speakers than what's in a laptop or smartphone (that includes the crappy headphones that are necessary for phones). No streaming, though — you actually have to commit to something for longer than a single listen, although you could delete the file or sell the CD later if you really don't like it.

You probably won't be playing TV shows or movies from DVDs or large digital files, since the monitor is not HD-capable, and the CD-ROM drive may not handle DVDs. But those should be played on a TV anyway, not a much smaller computer monitor. This also prevents getting endlessly sucked away into an escapist activity like binge-watching TV shows on a streaming platform.

Speaking of monitors, you probably won't be able to find a nice CRT monitor (of any color) for a reasonable price anymore. They, along with all the rest of "retro / vintage tech," got scooped up over the past decade, as the central bank's program of money-printing for the top 20% (quantitative easing) gave autistic collector nerds in the tech sector more disposable income than they knew what to do with.

Inflation shows up where they're actually spending their money, so that did not include ordinary clothing items at Walmart, but did target anything tech-y and collectible. Video games are the worst casualty, but it includes less nerdy and more artistic things like old photography equipment as well.

I was fortunate to score a flat-screen Sony Trinitron CRT from the early 2000s off of Craigslist for only $20 back in 2014. One of the most advanced monitors of its type. It's a beige box with Dell badging, so it feels more '90s than 2000s.

You should still be able to find beige LCD monitors, though, without too much hunting or paying too much for them. Beige computer stuff is getting more difficult to find in the wild at thrift stores, as the Millennial autists scoop it all up, but that's only necessary for aesthetic authenticity.

The most important aspect to recreate is the functional nature of these machines — separate components instead of all-in-one, arranged on a desk or table, near a window, in an inviting area rather than an escapist lair. And disabling the damned internet connection! You could revive this experience with a black-case desktop, black LCD monitor, black USB keyboard, black optical wireless mouse, and black speakers, according to current aesthetic trends.

It would have a more cutting-edge color palette, and probably none of it would be made in USA or Japan like in the good ol' days, but functionally you would be right back in the pre-degenerate stage of computer usage.

The dignity of the home office, or really the study / den / library, is something that most Gen X-ers — and certainly most Millennials — do not expect to ever enjoy. One of those things that the Boomers all had, but which our deteriorating standard of living has ruled out. But in this case, it's all your own fault, giving in to your online tech addiction, particularly involving social media.

None of the equipment has to be expensive (only if you want all vintage), especially if you buy it used or donated. Lower wages and salaries are not preventing you from using components instead of all-in-one, getting a table or desk (used / thrifted are cheaper and higher quality anyway), and placing it all in a pleasing, soothing location instead of retreating into a lair or slumping over in bed all day with your phone in hand.

Ideally, keep all the gay internet-enabled crap in another room, at least a different part of the same room. But you need a safe space from online world. It's more fun and enjoyable, anyway — and more productive!

Reflections on getting COVID in April 2020

I'm going to do a bit more COVID posting, but have decided to break it up into a more digestible series. And what better place to start than looking back on and learning from when I myself got coronavirus during the spring wave of last year?

To begin with, I find it strange how few people on the internet appear to have gotten it. It's rare to hear people share their stories, whether they're a large account on social media, or a lowbie in their replies. I understand why, say, Aimee Terese did not get it — she's in Australia, and their country smartly closed its international borders early and consistently, as did their Kiwi neighbors. See, even a libtard-run government like New Zealand can protect its people from pandemics, and all without the insane protocols that we have had to endure for over a year in America.

Really the only case I remember was @HeatherHabsburg from Twitter, fellow founding member of the lads-and-lesbians affinity group. She also got it during the spring wave.

Perhaps the cerebral types who are terminally online simply avoided contact with the outside world better than the corporeal types? Sorry, but one lesson I learned was that this thing was not nasty enough to turn yourself into a hermetically sealed nerd in order to avoid, or to keep others from catching — unless they were old and vulnerable.

It also makes me wonder whether lesbians like Heather were more likely to get it than gays. Gays are more cerebral, nerdy, and snobby, whereas lesbians are more corporeal, jockish / craftsy, and down-to-earth. I've read through the Red Scare podcast subreddit occasionally, and the girls-and-gays crowd there has mostly avoided it. I don't know about the lads-and-lesbians crowd — if someone has a better feeling for Tumblr, witch tok, or other lesbian online spaces, feel free to chime in.

If so, it would be yet another example of the horseshoe theory linking cottagecore lesbians who were on Tumblr in 2012 and groyper super-straight lads who were on 4chan back then. Every time I see @that_groyper (now just @groyper on Gab) posting a picture of home-baked bread, reporting on his moka pot brew du jour, and posting about nature hikes and interest in bugs and other ugly creatures, I have to check to make sure I haven't wandered into a cottagecore YouTuber's videos.

At any rate, by far the most widespread reaction to Heather Habsburg getting COVID was the deranged moralizing about how she had no one to blame but herself, since she sat in a restaurant where no one was wearing masks. She also commented on how pleasing it was to see such a sight. So in the minds of the deranged, the epidemic gods were meting out punishment on her not only for flouting the protocols, but praising the rule-breaking for its humanizing effects.

Even those who were sympathetic to her still concern-trolled her over masking, saying you're too good to succumb to COVID just because you don't want to wear a mask.

However, for the moralists keeping puritanical score, I happened to get COVID when everyone including me was the MOST restrictive in our behaviors. Everything was shut down except supermarkets and drug stores, which I only made a trip to once every 2-3 weeks. I held my breath and covered my nose & mouth when I went outside to take the trash / recycle bins to the curb. I had no one over, and visited no one. I didn't even go for a leisure ride in the car!

I wore a surgical, not cloth, mask on the rare trip outside, and I disposed of it after a single use, not just after every 8 hours. I wore latex gloves inside the supermarket, and disinfected my eyeglasses with rubbing alcohol after getting back home. In the supermarket, not only did I keep 6 feet away — we kept out of the entire aisle when someone else was already there.

The only extreme measure I didn't take was the disinfecting of grocery packaging, quarantining them, etc., since it was already known to not spread that way.

And despite all of that, it still got me. I didn't blog about it at the time because I wasn't fully sure that it was COVID — I did not suffer the supposedly telltale fever, but I had all the other symptoms, including the strange ones like the freezing feeling in my fingertips and toes for a bit before the debilitating ones struck. And it was during the spring wave that was hitting the rest of the country, so it wouldn't have been unusual for me to have gotten it too.

It wasn't a cold because there was no typical stuffy / runny nose, or other sinus problems. No productive cough either. It wasn't the flu. It had severe dehydration, though.

After 2-3 days of not even being able to drink a cup of water, let alone eat food, at last I could eat and drink again. I made a nice hearty steak and vegetable stew, loaded with animal protein, fat, and electrolytes. The first dish of that instantly brought me back to 70% of normal functioning. When you're low on electrolytes, which the nervous system uses to communicate, your brain can't send signals to itself or to the rest of the body, so it adds to the bodily fatigue and the mental cloudiness.

Recovery went well from there. I felt pretty normal after a week, and fully normal after about two weeks. I have no remaining problems taking a full breath. The only thing I'm not sure about is impairment of the sense of smell. I've always had a really strong sense of taste and smell, and it seems to still be that way, although there could be some minor loss that would show up on a lab test.

Naturally I didn't go anywhere or interact with anyone once the bad symptoms hit, or during my recovery. And again, I was maximally protective — at least, according to the official protocols — when I may have been infective early on before the major symptoms.

But it's possible, perhaps even likely, that I did spread it to someone else because those protocols were clearly wrong. They had a totally incorrect model of how it was being transmitted — as though it were a person-to-person contagion. And objectively in hindsight, they did nothing to slow / stop the spread.

I'll be posting more on the correct model for COVID's spread — where infecteds pollute a common public resource — but even if you didn't have any mathematical modeling under your belt, or knowledge of history, or awareness of diseases in other parts of the world, you could still figure out that the experts had gotten it totally wrong.

Somehow someone spread it to me, despite the fact that everyone in my neck of the woods (not just me) was taking the most extreme measures in April 2020. So I could have just as easily spread it to someone else, in the same way that I picked it up. Both links in that chain of transmission took place because the technocracy had no clue what was going on, and instantly fixated on an incorrect model of transmission, as well as a set of protocols that were therefore destined to fail.

Luckily for me, I was "only" 39 years old at the time, and it felt like a bad cold or bad flu, albeit with its own distinctive mix of symptoms.

On the silver lining side, I had immunity during the much more widespread wave during the fall / winter. And it convinced me that for most people (under 60 or 70 or whatever), it was not severe enough of a threat to justify the extreme protocols — even if they did work, which they observably did not. And it got me thinking about what the epidemic's dynamics actually were, if the flu-like standard SIR model was wrong. And after that, what types of measures might actually be able to slow or stop the spread — purifying, or at least neutralizing, the public resource from its pollution.

Maskless Pixie Dream Girl, coaxing wary sad sack out of his corona quarantine cocoon

Just had one of the most delightful little experiences tonight, and gave me an idea for how a Manic Pixie Dream Girl role could be set in a story about emerging from the hellscape of the past year.

The governor, like some others from the holdout states, has finally lifted the coronavirus restrictions (de facto for now, de jure starting next month). So I headed out today to make the rounds and see what effect it has had. Basically none for now -- it was only announced yesterday, and most people will take a few days or a week to hear about it and react.

But while stopping by a supermarket, I saw a nice bubble-butt girl down the way, so I figured let's take that path and make a little eye contact. Then as I got closer she turned so I saw her in profile and... wait, is she not wearing a mask? No way!

Normally when you see another maskless person in a public place, you don't really high-five each other or even acknowledge each other as belonging to the same team. However, I was so taken aback by a babe baring it all like that in public, that I couldn't help my eyes from fondling every feature of her face. The way you look a curvaceous girl up and down -- only just around the face! How crazy these restrictions are making us.

And just like getting her entire figure looked up and down, she was a bit shocked but more pleasantly surprised, especially since it was from a fellow no-masker, and a hot guy to boot. No judgment, no nagging or finger-wagging. This time, actual recognition that we're both on the same team -- team cool people.

She burst into a bright pure smile, giggled a bit, and said hiiiii! I gave her a nice smile and "Hi" back, letting her know what a breath of fresh air that was, and left it at a pleasant passing interaction. If I weren't recovering from a cold, and had more mental focus, I would've chatted her up a bit about how nice it is to not have to wear them anymore, how surprising it is to see another person doing the same, of course slipping in a quick compliment about how unjust it is for a pretty face like hers to have to be hidden under a mask for so long, and so on and so forth.

Life needs to get a lot more flirtatious now that the dam is breaking among the impotent rulers about trying to force these failed restrictions on us.

Then my mind went to analyzing what type she was, and who to expect the early adopters of free faces to be. She was 5'8 - 5'9, light brown hair, TANNED, cute face, fit body, bubble butt, high-waisted light-blue jeans and a white mid-riff baring top with ever-so-slightly puffy shoulders. As always with us guys, I didn't notice her shoes at all (only really attention-getting stuff like tall boots make an impression).

I'm guessing she was an athlete in high school or college. Now that I think about it, she reminded me a bit of my best girl friend from high school, who played a bunch of sports, as well as cheerleading / poms. Chipper, outgoing, fun-loving, wanting to provoke a little reaction -- for the good -- in other people, while still being a wholesome girl-next-door.

Was she... born from 1995 to 1999? Pretty sure, she didn't look to be in her late 20s, more like 23-25.

That would make her a prime candidate for a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, who are born during manic phases of the 15-year excitement cycle, and play their roles during a restless warm-up phase of the cycle. The last such climate was the restless phase of 2005-'09, with women born between 1980-'84. Fast-forward 15 years, and here we are all over again.

Use google to search the blog for "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" to see all my previous posts on the topic, mainly from last year. But she did seem to check all the boxes, including the ones most observers don't notice as defining features of the MPDG (butt girl rather than boob girl, manic phase birth, boy-ish streak but fundamentally girly and nurturing).

* * *

So then, how could this be made into a MPDG movie for our new restless phase? Below are just the set-up points for this particular movie, with most of the gaps filled in with how they would be in any other example of the genre, with or without some idiosyncratic flare depending on who the writer, audience, and producer are.

Obviously the male protag would not be like me, as I'm not a sad sack seemingly always down-on-his-luck, lurching from one quarter / mid-life crisis to the next, wary to leave the comfort of his asocial cocoon. She doesn't need to nurse me back to health, coax me out of my cocoon, and give me the confidence to give it my all in life and love, etc.

Plus I'm not from the right birth phase -- the sad sacks are typically born during a restless phase. In the late 2000s, these guys were born from 1975-'79 (not a big age gap). During the early '90s, the characters were played by guys born from 1945-'49 (larger age gap, midlife crisis movies). I was born in a manic phase (early '80s), so I'm like the MPDG in being resilient, carefree, and happy-go-lucky. I wouldn't need her to swoop into my life and pick up my spirits. They're my best friends from high school -- peers -- not guardian angels who rescue me.

This time around, who would be in need of her charms and powers? If it's a quarterlife crisis movie, then someone born from 1990-'94. If a midlife crisis movie featuring a noticeable age gap, the same '75-'79 cohort from the late 2000s, only now they're in their mid-40s instead of early 30s. The IRL couple Zach Braff and Florence Pugh would fit the hypothetical pattern, though I don't know how well they'd actually work on camera.

Casting decisions aside, what would be the rough plot and themes? It's like the other MPDG movies, only tied in to the pandemic, and really the restrictions and our adoption of those restrictions. It's another kind of cocoon we've put ourselves into, supposedly ordered by the government -- but hardly anybody challenged them to find out if they were truly being enforced.

Small biz owners held protests last summer, but they were not petitioning the government as everyday ordinary citizens subjected to masking, social distancing, school closures, shuttered offices, etc. Ordinary citizens who didn't want to wear pointless masks indoors, or parents who wanted their kids to be taken care of in school since they paid their taxes already, didn't really push back forcefully until this year.

Now those restrictions are gradually being lifted, although from the view of those who have burrowed into the cocoon, the change is way too rapid and abrupt. Jarring, disorienting, filling them with dread and anxiety.

Naturally, the warped losers who will bitterly cling to these restrictions would not be the main characters, since they're not truly human and do not deserve humanizing. They're just boring lamewads and libtards, whose lives are unworthy of dramatization. Maybe as minor characters who act as foils to the humanizing portrayals of real people. There would be zero mention of politics, "not wanting to appear to be a Trump supporter," etc. Partisans should leave angry, and the silent majority should feel relieved.

The sad sack is someone who is well-meaning and went along with the protocols just to avoid confrontation and not have to face the prospect that he was being told to do something pointless or even harmful. Not a zealot, he was passively psy-opped -- although he was already in a place in his life where he'd been sinking into depression, loneliness, and the like, which made the choice to burrow into the corona cocoon all the easier to just go along with.

Now that the mandates and restrictions are winding down, he feels the security and stability of his bubble-world starting to erode. He sees some people behaving as though corona never happened, and others as though the end of restrictions never happened. It's yet another perplexing social puzzle fucking with his mind.

He's still going along with the restrictions, though out of passivity rather than zealotry. He just doesn't feel prepared enough to emerge from the cocoon -- too risky, at least right now -- although he does flash back to how pleasantly mundane his daily life used to be before the lockdowns etc., and does want to return to that world. Not utopia, but something ordinary, where people aren't wearing masks everywhere, where people exchanged small talk, and schools, libraries, etc., are no longer closed down.

All of his social circle is as hesitant as he is, or more so, to leave the cocoon. So no help in his character development there. Some are passive sad sacks like him, others outright MSNBC junkies, who he views as pitiful and "I hope I don't wind up like that".

Then one day in the supermarket (one of the few places everyone will continue to visit), there's a young woman without her mask on, and he's struck not only by her looks but her having left the cocoon. For a man, it never feels reassuring to see women who are more risk-taking than you. At some point, you might try to prove you're not more risk-averse than she is. The initial feeling is merely unsettling -- upstaged by a girl!

Fascinated, he wanders closer to her, and when he gets within 10 feet or so, she notices him, gives him a puzzled look, which makes him nervous -- what has he done wrong? "Y'know you don't have to wear that thing anymore..." Delivered with a dry-humored head tilt, if she's a mumblecore indie actress, or a bright knowing smile if it's for mainstream audiences. A gentle neg, while still initiating conversation and encouraging him to leave behind his burdens and improve himself.

Maybe she follows up with a highly self-aware comment like, "Besides, I'll bet you have great bone structure, and shouldn't hide it under a mask", sensing that he's the nervous type and might have taken it the wrong way and requires a humorously over-the-top compliment to reassure him.

Their first interaction is pretty brief, leaving him bewildered but consoled that somebody out there seems to care about his well-being. The setting is a supermarket, so they'll both be back frequently and run into each other before too long, not ships passing in the night. Each time he's still wearing the mask, partly out of his own anxiety but also to prod her into chatting him up about taking it off, renewing their social contact during a lonely time. It's somewhat of a running joke between them, but also something she really wants to see him change, as does he.

No wait -- she works at the supermarket, then they don't have to knock into each other coincidentally at the same time, over and over. The proverbial cute Whole Foods cashier of every middle-class liberal under 40's dreams. Maybe she works at the bakery department -- more feminine and nurturing, allows her to show her free-spirited creativity by the type of things she bakes, and how she decorates them, or carves patterns into the bread loaves, etc. And there's more free time for them to chat without the line getting backed up.

As their relationship progresses, she bakes a loaf (or a cake) just for him, with a cartoony version of his mask-free face carved / decorated onto the top. To show she's thinking about him and cares about him, wants to make nice things for him, but also wants to see him pull himself up and leave behind the corona cocoon (for which the mask is only one iconic element, representing the entire spectrum of isolated depression-living he has slipped into).

The cartoony style of the decoration takes the edge off of her message, shows it's not judgmental or harsh, and makes light of a sad situation. (It's also more believable technically -- she's not an accomplished portrait artist, who also happens to work at the local Whole Foods bakery).

The social distancing angle is secondary, since most people didn't really adhere to it very much -- masks were the main thing. But occasionally it references that part of the protocols, by her getting close to him, he gets uncomfortable because he's a nervous sad sack being approached by a babe-alicious guardian angel, but he rationalizes this as fear of germs instead, again using corona as a crutch. But she persists anyway, to express her fondness for him, as well as to cure his fear through exposure therapy -- "See, this isn't hurting anybody, is it?"

When they first kiss, I think she initiates it, and even removes his mask to do so. First she gets up close, casting aside the social distancing guideline. Then she gently removes his mask, against the mask zealotry. Then she gives him a gentle, tender kiss -- not a French kiss -- against the guidelines about not exchanging germs literally face-to-face during a respiratory / aerosol pandemic.

After building up to that point, this first kiss catalyzes his transformation. He gradually starts to undo one restriction, beginning with the mask itself, then another, and another -- and then those restrictions that he invented himself and placed on himself, with no one like the government to blame. Like, "Well, we're quarantined for months... might as well watch Twitch streams / listen to podcasts for 6 hours every day to kill time until it's all over. I have to occupy my time somehow..."

He learns to give up Zoom calls, goes back into a physical building to work, making a point to smile, shake hands, small-talk, and all the other physical mundane stuff he'd been used to. His boss notices this new-found confidence and assigns him some special project, one that can only be done through an IRL presence, joking to him that a lot of his colleagues are still too frightened to leave their Zoom cocoons. Wow, now the boss respects him more, too.

Manic Pixie Dream Girls are fated to not stay with the male protagonist, as they're earthly guardian angels meant to nurse him back to health so that he can do what he's supposed to do, with renewed confidence, vigor, and happiness. Once their role is done, that's it -- but they're the nurturing type, and are happy to play that role, satisfied by how their pet project turned out.

Toward the end, he meets another woman who is still wearing a mask, not sure if it's a co-worker (boring, but also believable). He uses the same line on her that the bakery babe used on him, about good bone structure. She responds to the cocky-funny neg by removing it, and they small talk, flirt a bit, arrange some dates, and start dating seriously. It doesn't really matter who she is, she's the off-ramp, and we can fill in the rest ourselves.

I don't think the MPDG should get spurned in this one, so she meets some creative type who she starts dating as well. Usually she would have to vie with the other woman for the protag's affection, get jealous, feel used or cut loose after having nursed him back to health, and so on. With all the crazy raw emotions going on around the pandemic, lockdowns, etc., I think that part of the standard formula would be out of place.

During their final encounter of the movie, the protag shows up to the bakery with his gf, and sees the MPDG flirting with her bf. While things had gotten more than just friendly between them, they were never a serious couple, so there's no hard feelings, and both have used their new-found confidence to find success in the dating-and-mating world for real -- outside the playful / mock-version that had been transpiring between them during the first 2 acts.

Sure, it's a happily-ever-after ending, but the goal is to make audiences more hopeful and feel inspired to make these changes and improvements themselves. Not to have moral ambiguity cloud the critique of the restritions, nor to have it leave audiences scratching their heads about how they ought to interpret the implications for their own lives.

It's not a high-brow for-all-times movie, but a cultural shock to help get us the hell back to a more normal world. Not by achieving political or economic change -- that's not what culture is capable of doing -- but altering enough social behavior that ordinary people start treating each other differently. The silent majority in this country, and elsewhere, already wants this to happen -- this would not be imposing something on a blank slate. They just need an inspiring pep rally to give them the kick in the pants they need to get going.

Lockdown fatigue song "Friends Like This" by Hey Violet

Here's the newest song from Hey Violet, best known for "Guys My Age" from several years ago. It's a corona song that's not about the anxiety caused by the disease threat itself, unlike "Level of Concern" by Twenty One Pilots from last year. It's more about the boredom, restlessness, and frustration over social isolation caused by the protocols that were supposed to curb the pandemic (but which have failed and nevertheless seem to be here indefinitely).

Hopefully it's a sign that public attitudes have begun to turn against the protocols, having saddled everyone with such a crushing burden, while delivering no protection for the vulnerable. If people felt like there were an even trade-off, I don't think young alt bands would be grumbling about the costs needed to save old people. Rather, we didn't save hardly any of them last fall / winter, but we've had to put up with this insane degradation of our daily lives nonetheless. It has been lose-lose, not a trade-off.

The tone is subdued for now, not aggressive enough to qualify as a protest anthem, but still an earnest plea mixed with some black humor, to show that it's a serious matter. Serious enough to induce gallows humor, and to cause people to air their grievances. It's like "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash, just less fed-up and sick-of-it-all.

But the longer these burdens drag on, with no benefits to be enjoyed, the mood will get more insistent and confrontational, a la "We're Not Gonna Take It" by Twisted Sister. Still, changing behaviors have to start somewhere.

Radio's dead: contempo stations stop playing current music (signs of a Dark Age)

Continuing the series on the new cultural Dark Age that has begun setting in, let's look at pop music.

No, we will not be subjectively evaluating today's music and contrasting it to some Golden Age or another from the past.

Rather, the signs of this Dark Age are objective -- if you were to listen to the radio, you'd have little awareness that pop music has existed in the 2020s.

The source here is the "contemporary hit" format -- the stations that are supposed to play the hot new stuff that everyone's buzzing about, not retro, and not from just one genre. These are the stations that you're supposed to complain about for "only playing new stuff" and not appreciating anything good from the past, just one damned pop hit after the next in an endless flux of fashion.

After not listening to my local contempo hit station for a few months, I wondered what they were up to -- what new songs are all the rage 3 months since I last checked in? There's always the algorithms from the big online platforms to suggest new things, but I'm talking about what's actually catching on, growing, and lasting.

Shockingly, there were hardly any new songs at all. I double-checked their "recently played" list on their website, and it has been like that for days. It's not like I happened to check during a "blast from the past" hour. Saturday night played a few more new songs, but not much. Overall, they're simply not playing new music.

What are they playing instead? Mainly music from the 2010s, across a variety of genres, and emphasizing the late part rather than the early part of the decade. But you're still more likely to hear early 2010s music than 2020s music on the contempo hit station.

Especially when you count by distinct songs, rather than total airtime -- they might play one of Ariana Grande's hits from this year or the last, five times throughout the day. But they'll play five different songs from the early 2010s over the same period. Only a tiny handful of new songs are making it into rotation.

Even worse, hit songs that they were playing last year have disappeared from their playlists. "I Love Me" by Demi Lovato, "Midnight Sky" by Miley Cyrus, "Break My Heart" by Dua Lipa, "Willow" by Taylor Swift, "Monsters" by All Time Low, and dozens of others by mega-stars, have vanished from the airwaves. (And no new acts are taking their place!)

So it's not like the station is unaware of new hit music from the current decade -- they played a fair amount of it last year. Rather, they are deliberately erasing the signature that "the 2020s were here" in the guestbook of the pop cultural record.

I noticed a somewhat similar pattern early last year, where they seemed wary to play new songs from the new decade, and were still relying heavily on 2019 and even '18. However, they did not stretch farther back than those couple years, certainly not back into 2010. Eventually they did play new songs, so perhaps they were just hesitant at first.

But this year, they are not doing that reluctant-at-first bit. They're just not playing new stuff -- and crucially, hardly anything from the last year either.

If it were a matter of relative years -- "current" vs. "last" year -- then their reluctance in 2021 would mean most of their playlist would be from 2020, with only a handful of older years thrown in for variety. But there's not even much from 2020 still being played, including the hits that dominated that own station's airwaves and the charts for all of last year.

Instead, it is a matter of absolute years -- "2020 and 2021" vs. "2019 and before". They were hesitant to play 2020s music last year, and they're even more hesitant to play 2020s music this year. (Maybe 5 songs from each year of the 2020s, played over and over again.)

All of the 2010s music in their rotation is not "last year's music" -- it's from 2 years ago at least, up through 11 years ago. They've decided that it's not worth investing in the current decade -- and presumably any future decades -- to promote its songs, so might as well just play stuff from the last decade.

This is the first time in American culture when material from only a few years earlier has become "retro," as the current material is either not being made, or being distributed, or being demanded by audiences. Imagine in 1981 there being a '70s station, or in 2011 there being a 2000s station.

Not only has this never happened before -- a time period becoming a reified "remember when?" age only a few years after concluding -- but today, this is the newest music available. It would be bad enough if there were a dedicated 2010s decade station in 2021, but far more dire if that were the most recent music being played. And yet here we are.

Contrary to the "singularity" view of these developments, we are not in a climate where new stuff is being created, distributed, and consumed one day -- and then treated as retro and due for a revival the next. There is no "instantaneous nostalgia" or whatever.

Rather, this is a process of exhaustion and breakdown. Creators may not be able to collaborate well enough to make new hit songs. Distributors may not want to promote anything new because they don't trust the creators to give them songs that will sell like hotcakes, or don't trust audiences to gobble them up. And audiences may not trust the creators or the distributors to give them what they're hankering for.

Whatever the variety of forces involved, it all smacks of an unraveling of cooperation, collaboration, trust, and collective investment in a total musical culture. There's not going to be another phenomenon in music, no more scenes, and no more sub-cultures (a topic covered here recently).

At some level, the American people -- or better yet, people living in America -- no longer feel like being bound together by a common culture that is distinctly theirs, and that is so captivating it's eagerly adopted all over the world.

We're at the stage of imperial decline where it's not only the political and economic domains showing signs of exhaustion, but now the culture-makers too can squeeze no more blood from their stone.

And for the same reasons -- plummeting levels of "asabiya," or the potential for a group to pursue concerted collective action, out of a sense that the in-group is special and destined for greatness. When that fades away, it not only means the end of far-flung territories staying integrated into the empire, it means the end of the larger-than-life culture that the empire produced.

Roman culture ended during the Crisis of the Third Century, and American culture has ended in the wake of the catastrophe year of 2020.

Aimee Terese triumphant tribute song: "Spectrum Chick" (David Guetta parody)

It's been awhile since I've done one of these, but what better occasion than the triumphant return of the princess of the anti-woke left to her OG Twitter account, shellshocking the demented hall monitors who kept reporting her respawns?

Why her, you may have asked over the course of these Aimee tribute songs? She just radiates such an all-consuming intensity -- like a Fairuz of shitposting -- that it's impossible not to be possessed by her if you're susceptible to muses. That's equally true for her haters, who can never get her out of their head, lmao.

This one is to the tune of "Sexy Bitch" by David Guetta feat. Akon from 2009 (original lyrics here). I went with the "chick" version of the lyrics, to stay faithful to the original tone, which mixes a complimenting and a playful-negging word ("sexy" and "bitch"). "Spectrum" is a playful neg, so there needs to be a complimenting word to pair with -- "chick" rather than "bitch". She's a bruh-girl and needs her compliments tempered by negs.

Singing it aloud would make it clear, but the prosody in the first line of the chorus goes: ON the SO-cial PLAT-FORMS, with both syllables of that final word receiving stress, and a brief rest in between them.

* * *

Log on to read her
Cuz everyone sayin' "That's the tea" yuh
Unceasing tweeter
I feel deranged and I wanna breed her

They say she red-brown
It's just a cope and I won't retweet 'em
They try to drive her underground
The baddest MENA account around

She's not like other girls on the social platforms
Not leftie millionaires, or a gamer-gone-woke
I'm tryna find the nerve to subscribe this girl
And not put her on a pedestal

The way she prophesyin' in a Tinkerbell tone
Have to stop what I'm scrolling so I can quote her post
I'm tryna find the nerve to subscribe this girl
And not put her on a pedestal

Oooh, girl!

Mmm, you's a spectrum chick
On the spectrum chick
Mmm, you's a spectrum chick

Oooh, girl!

Mmm, you's a spectrum chick
On the spectrum chick
Mmm, you's a spectrum chick

Oooh, girl!

Aimee Terese, back from the dead, for good (mua ha ha...)

A night wind howls over a shallow grave in Twittermoor Cemetery, blowing away the dry pebbly dirt to reveal tortoiseshell eyeglass frames.

Something metallic is glinting in the light of the full moon -- a sugar-free Red Bull can.

Double-H cup tits punch through the earth, grab onto the ground around them, and hoist the rest of a five-foot frame out of its cancel-casket.

Now showing, on mini-screens everywhere...

"Didja think I was gonna take my permaban lyin' down, ya jannie cunts?"

When she burns you online, your balls disappear in real life...

Matt Christman is rambling in a livestream about the dialectics of masturbation in the age of covid lockdowns, when he spies a dreaded username flash across the side of the screen.

"Oh great, that deranged Australian woman has entered the chat," he complains while rolling his eyes, and prepares his lungs for an impromptu diatribe.

Suddenly, a bark-encrusted beam of solid oak breaks through his iPhone, impaling him instantly, while dono-blood pours slowly from his mouth. As his gaze puzzles over the tree trunk plunging into his chest, a sing-song hummingbird voice plays over the TTS:

"It was about time for that guy to... log off."

No poster is safe...

"You know you love to hate-scroll me!"

A Spectre Haunting Left Street, Part 4/20: Aimee Lives

* * *

That's right, she's gotten her original account restored, complete with the iconic Red Bull avatar. God bless her guardian angels in what is otherwise the Hell of Silicon Valley.

We all know she's a sweetie, not a horror movie monster. But it's hilarious how her bugmen nemesis-posters view her as a dire, unstoppable threat like a slasher flick killer who can never be fully put to death.

Not only because it shows how thin-skinned and flimsy-minded they are, but because they're meme-ing her into some larger-than-online-life persona who all the cool kids are going to become fascinated by. Nobody wants to dress up as the victims of a slasher movie -- they want to emulate Jason and Freddie.

Their whole anti-Aimee discourse is rather like Wes Craven's New Nightmare, where merely fabricating a narrative for storytelling purposes actually brings its monster to life, crossing over from the narrative realm into the real-life realm to wreak havoc on its narrative creators.

Who said that "online isn't real"? Heh heh heh...

Bully the maskers outdoors

The tide has been turning over the past month or so in public behavior regarding the failed measures meant to stem the pandemic last year, especially the placebo masks. Now it is time for the early adopters of "no masks indoors" to push further into enemy territory -- and don't worry, it is very poorly defended, as you'll discover. This will keep the momentum building until the mandates are rolled back outright.

It's time to bully the lamewads who insist on wearing masks outdoors. Indoors, people are still torn, and you can't be sure that your target would be a true zealot. But by this point, anyone wearing one outdoors knows what they're perpetuating, and they open themselves up as fair game.

I'd been pondering this escalation for a few days, but today everything fell right into place, and I seized the moment. I was cruising down the main drag with Rick Springfield's greatest hits CD blasting out the windows, as throngs of people were filling the sidewalks on a sunny afternoon. Midway through "I've Done Everything for You," I caught sight of a joyless sourpuss of a woman in middle age, wearing a mask among a mostly face-baring crowd.

I turned down the music, raised my voice, deepened the pitch, and slowly escalated the intonation, like a stern father warning his children of bad consequences if they keep it up:

Take off the mask outdoors, BOOMER

Goddamn what an exhilarating attack, on such a deserving target! I was already on a rush from the sun, the tunes, the crowd, and from already having howled like a wolf at a thicc babe in running shorts only five minutes earlier. I was still going several blocks later, and let out a Ric Flair WOOO! just thinking about it.

These social-polluting hysterical zealots need to be punished for what they've done, but more importantly, everyone else needs to witness it. That way, the behavior will spread from the original role model (such as moi) to multiple waves of imitators. And even for those who don't take it up themselves, they'll know that the public battle has decisively shifted against the mask freaks.

That will help to shatter the conformity effect, even if they only witness one single guy doing it. Only one bullshit-caller was needed to shatter the illusion of the emperor's new clothes, or the "line comparison" experiments from social psychology.

"Wow, this must be the first time I've seen someone go on the offensive to bully the wearers of masks -- things have changed."

Fuckin' A they have, and everyone should understand that, the faster to undo these failed draconian measures.

Reflecting back on it, I don't think I could've improved anything. I picked a stereotypical killjoy Karen, who would get no sympathy from the fun-loving crowd. I didn't stop to bask in the victory, because traffic had to keep moving, but also it doesn't need to be a drawn-out confrontation -- a drive-by is perfectly fine, and gives them no chance to respond.

We're not debating them anymore, since they never responded with facts in the first place, like when you point out that cases soared exponentially throughout last year, despite all the measures imposed on or adopted by us. They do not need to be debated, they need to be bullied and defied.

She and any minority of fellow zealots did not respond by yelling back, naturally since they were caught off-guard because they assumed they would never become the targets of mask-based bullying themselves. Time for a rude awakening, bitches!

The setting was great, with a huge number of spectators witnessing that single event. No point in doing this at a park where you and the zealot are the only ones present.

Also, I've been deliberately telling myself for the past few weeks, "Don't call them a libtard, don't call them a libtard," in order to not drag partisan polarization into it. Especially if you're vastly outnumbered, as anyone in a city will be. Make it about the failed draconian policies per se, and the broader know-nothing technocracy that produced them. Plenty of urbanites, libs / progs / commies, and Democrat voters will be on board if it's not framed in a "Trump supporters vs. the libtards" way.

I mainly call them "lame" or some variation, to brand the failed measures as uncool and unworthy of imitation. But "Boomer" was a better fit for this context, since most people were not Boomers, and young people especially do not want to be associated with out-of-touch killjoy old people. If the local old people were normies and not wearing masks, obviously I wouldn't have used that term. And I don't care that she was a Gen X-er instead of a literal Boomer -- the crowd, and she, understood what I meant, and it cut deeper than using the accurate generational label.

Having new wave and power-pop music blasting out of the windows established that I was cool -- and if anyone could see inside the car, also hot. It's so crucial to frame this as fun-loving normal people against the joyless wannabe dictators, if any of our messages and behaviors are to spread.

Particularly when the spectators are from the post-X generations, as along a main drag. I don't think Zoomers have ever experienced a climate where people hurl insults out of the car window against a seemingly unprovoking but well-deserving target, like playing a verbal game of mailbox baseball. Some Millennials might remember this in a watered-down form from the late 2000s (if emos and preppies called each other faggots as they drove by), but they too could use some reminding.

These tactics will not work in reverse for the other side, since most people in the audience already do not sympathize with the policies. And just hearing a drive-by scolding won't make them more compliant -- it would backfire, if anything. Whereas when we do it against the zealots, it resonates with what most of the audience is already feeling, but is reluctant to admit or act on. It jolts the silent majority out of its slumber.

Something to keep in your bag of tricks for White Boy Summer.

Masks off

About a month ago I started wearing the mask loose so it didn't cover my nose. This was both to breathe more freely but also to start sending the signal to everyone else that the whole mask thing is over.

Then over the past two weeks, I've started to just not wear it at all while indoors -- to breathe even more freely, to de-dehumanize the social environment, and to signal even more unambiguously that we're not going to wear masks anymore.

Those of you who live in the Sun Belt, or in a rural area, may be familiar with this transition already. But if you're in the North, and in a city, this is still in the early adopter stage.

Since the face liberation movement is still inchoate, what follows are some impressions of who's simpatico and who's hostile, after the failure of the mask policy to end or even decelerate the growth of the coronavirus pandemic.

(I might write a separate post about the inability of grassroots individualism to solve collective problems at the top. This post is just about the changing climate right now.)

First, who else is doing it? It's men, ages 25 to 45, high testosterone, not necessarily counter-cultural, and not detectably Republican or Democrat. Yesterday I saw open faces on a 30-something MAGA dad with his daughter, a single Hispanic or Middle Eastern guy with a pony tail, and a punk / alt guy with his gf / wife (who was also not wearing a mask).

Basically, who's the most risk-taking, but also comfortable challenging authority legitimately -- e.g., if the policy does not work, we don't have to follow it anymore. If it were teenagers, that would stem more from a defiant impulse. If it's fully matured men, that's the go-ahead to treat it seriously and not as a bratty backlash.

Who is the most excited to see the mask come off? From my own experience, overwhelmingly girls from teenagers to 30-somethings. They suffer the most from facial coverings, because they have the cutest faces, unlike middle-aged and elderly women. Females are also more social / empathetic than males and need to see, and make, facial expressions in public. And at that age, they're more drawn to signs of risk-taking and bad-boy behavior in guys.

(NB: not "risk-taking" in terms of contracting the disease -- the masks have already proven ineffective at that. I mean in terms of risking someone hectoring them, threatening to kick them out of the store, and so on.)

This goes double when the bad-boy behavior is channeled in a pro-social direction, like getting rid of a failed and burdensome policy that the authorities are refusing to end themselves. Then it's not like stealing a car and going for a joyride, which would only attract a tiny minority of girls.

Fitness babes are pretty anti-mask. Two of the small number of women I've seen with no mask, or pulled down under their chin, were wearing their gym clothes, including the only woman I remember seeing without a mask several months ago when no one was going mask-free. I just so happened to see her again tonight at the thrift store, and in the same section (books), still without a mask.

But by far the most enthusiastic free-the-face girls are the MENA baddies -- no surprise if you read Aimee Terese or Leila Mechoui on Twitter. They will lock eyes for the longest, and get the most visibly horned up, at the sight of a bold decision-maker who's saving or protecting the group. We're providing cover for the rest of them to do likewise, at a cost to ourselves when we get hectored. It's not merely to preen as badasses while the chicks are looking.

One of the only girls I've seen without a mask -- and the only one who was under 30, and who was not potentially following the lead of her bf / husband -- was a MENA baddie with wild wavy hair who came strutting through the TJ Maxx doors with it pulled all the way down under her chin. Not even a pro forma full coverage while initially entering, and then stealthily removing it when there were no prying eyes. Just coming out guns-a-blazin'. She was a teenager, too, albeit accompanied by her mother and so perhaps feeling like someone else had her back if she got hectored.

Tonight at the supermarket "I Love It" came on over the sound system, and I started whistling along and hitting the side of my leg to the beat, when all of a sudden a mocha-licious southern Meddie turned the corner and stopped dead, gawking at me while I was browsing. She was wearing gym shorts and a hoodie in the local college colors, so in her early 20s living off-campus. I should have reciprocated the attention, strutted on over, and taken off her mask for her, unhooking it like a bra, and planted a kiss right on her lips.

However, that would have been a bit too far for social acceptability in a Midwestern supermarket, with lots of people around us. Maybe if no one else were watching...

It's possible that the guys in my vicinity are also excited to see masks coming off, but since 99% of them are not gay, they're not sending a signal back as eagerly as the girl spectators are. They'll keep it to themselves, talk to their friends about it afterward, and then go into a store with no mask themselves in a few days or weeks.

Who, then, are the most hostile? Not other men. Imagine how terminally cucked you would have to be to stop and wag your finger in another man's face about following a proven pointless policy. I'm sure a good amount of them do not approve, but they will never degrade themselves low enough to whine about it to my mask-free face. It's not only the fear that they are risking the start of a physical confrontation, for no tangible benefit to themselves or others. They would just feel like a pathetic little bitch, and that's bad enough.

Even the low-T "I FUCKING LOVE SCIENCE" soyboys will just silently stew in resentment IRL, and then bitch about it impotently on the internet afterward.

Instead, the finger-waggers are all women, roughly ages 30 to 50 or 60, nearly exclusively white founding stock, and in particular Germanic. (No surprise for a race addicted to following pointless rules for its own sake, even when there is no tradition or test of time to back it up). Fatter than average, including some who are downright obese. Mostly unattractive -- only one so far looked average, although hard to tell with the mask, and she was one of the most polite anyway.

It's split evenly whether they act confrontationally or politely, although if Midwestern niceness is not a phenomenon where you live, they could be more in-your-face about it.

I'm sure most of them are liberals, but some appeared conservative.

It seems like the same demographic who gets the most heavily propagandized by the media, because they see themselves as the stewards over the health of the nation. Foreigners, Ellis Islanders, kids of recent immigrants -- it's just not their society to dictate the terms over, and they know it. But women of founding stock feel it's their birthright to nag the citizenry into behaving according to the laws.

Don't interpret this as WASPy dominance, though. They're not upper class, but those with degrees from low-ranking colleges. They're strivers eager to prove to those with real wealth and power that they're good little teacher's pets and hall monitors, deserving of a promotion. For every maskless person I hector, can you pwetty pwease cancel $100 of my student loan debt?

So far it's split between workers and fellow customers. Three workers have told me to wear a mask on their own. Another one (and the only African-American) seemed like she might have been indulging a customer who had asked to speak to her manager or something.

As of now, I've been momentarily going along with the workers' requests, to get them off my case, and because I know it's coming from their boss or some irate customer, not them being a loser themselves. After a bit, I'll take the mask off again. But if a fellow customer barks anything at me, I shut them down and blow them off unambiguously, and as nonchalantly as possible, so they don't get the reward of getting a rise out of me.

The best is when they don't even bother arguing against "the masks are just a placebo," and instead go complain to the workers -- who then don't do shit to indulge the hysterical freak, and just let me be. I'm a regular at the places I frequent, and have been for years, so they know I'm good. They also don't want to have to add to their tasks on the job -- now they're supposed to follow me around the store and make sure I never once take off my mask? Bullshit, that's above my pay grade.

The best of all is when those workers are young women, the kind who are the most supportive of the face liberation movement, especially if it's regarding a random hot guy. Why would they possibly care, Karen? -- they're not a fat ugly menopausal psycho like you. I really have a heightened respect for those workers now, having stood up for me. I imagine them singing to themselves, "I'll keep you, my dirty little secret, dirty little secret, who has to know?" xD

Overall, the hostile types are rare, but that is irrelevant. All it takes is one to threaten your ability to free your face indoors. It is nice that there's not an entire army of them swarming at the same time, but they are frequent enough to present an obstacle during every visit to a store.

However, now that the trend is accelerating -- I didn't see anyone else without a mask last week, and this week I'm likely to see several others -- they have nowhere to go with their hectoring. They can already sense that this is the beginning of the end of the policy, and not because the government has lifted the mask mandate -- because people are sick of failed policies, and no one higher up is enforcing them.

Indeed, the whole point of masks was to devolve responsibility down to the individual. If the elites don't want to get involved, that includes enforcement of their own mandates. They would actually have to stick their neck out, put their foot down, threaten a confrontation with their underlings, and so on and so forth.

They would rather abdicate the chain of command altogether and live a degenerate life away from whatever troubles are going on in society. This is not the New Deal era of strong government, when the mayor, governor, or president might send in the police or the military to deal with even non-violent civil disobedience like sitting down at a whites-only lunch counter.

Today's leaders shirk the duties and costs of being a strong leader, and we're going to take advantage of that when they deliver pointless or harmful orders to the common people, unless we come at them specifically (like storming the Capitol building -- but not going mask-free into our local indoor public spaces).