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Comment by bacchusracine | Hacker News Reader

As a Deaf lipreader, fuck you. Sincerely.

What's that? I should get a clear mask? How does that help me understand YOU?

Prior to this whole thing I had pretty decent communications skills and could understand most of what was said to me after a life time of struggling to learn all sorts of tricks and tools to be able to understand my way around mumbling, muttering, accents, etc etc. Since everyone started covering up their faces the only recourse I have is to ask for the person to repeat themselves. Again. And again. And again.

When that person finally unblocks their face long enough to actually COMMUNICATE with me? I sincerely bless them for their efforts to get the message across. I despise the assholes like yourself whose only reason to exist is to make communication harder for people like me.

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I empathize with your situation, but please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. It doesn't help. And when you go all the way to "fuck you", it harms the position you're arguing for. If you're right on the fundamentals, that actually hurts everybody.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Wow, I can't imagine the struggle you must be going through in a masked-up world. That's got to be just incredibly frustrating and alienating.

Do you think maybe your hostility might be misdirected a bit though? Do you think it's fair to lash out at people who are advocating for more sensible mask usage for their intended purpose of preventing the spread of a virus and simply failing to consider the impact they have on you and the minority of others similarly afflicted?

I do think that pulling down a mask to communicate with a deaf person is probably the right thing to do, but I also think the person who you're responding to isn't off-base in a general assumption that most people doing that don't have such good reasons.

While you may prefer it when people pull their masks down to talk to you. I would bet there's going to be another lipreader who would be aghast if i were to pull my mask down to talk to them. I'd need to establish you were okay with it first and that the communication is important enough to justify the risks. Even then it's not unreasonable to refuse unless the communication was essential, a genuine health risk is going to trump communication 99% of the time.

While i would be okay with doing this as i'm vaccinated and in a low risk category and don't live with high risk people, if that wasn't the case (most people) I wouldn't under any circumstances pull my mask down unless the communication was life or death. I would have a choice between inflicting a horrible death on myself/others or making your life unfairly difficult. And as unfair as that is to you, choosing the second doesn't make someone an asshole when you consider the options available.

The only solution I can think of would be everyone wearing clear masks/shields, but since they aren't widely available and are more expensive, I don't think it's reasonable to expect most people to do it.

I think your anger (justified as it may be) is being misdirected here and your response doesn't really relate to the comment you're replying to.

> only reason to exist is to make communication harder for people like me.

Interesting worldview if you think trying to keep a global pandemic under control is based entirely on making your communication more difficult. I wonder how people respond to you who otherwise take the perspective of greater good > individual liberties

Your comment is disheartening, mainly because if there's actually a good reason to unmask (and to note that I do when speaking with a deaf person), I'll do it regardless if it technically break regulations or not. This is definitely targeted to those who already can comprehend speech clearly without relying on gestures or lip reading - that behaviour really, really irks me because that's not compassion - it's selfishness, and that defeats the whole thing.

As someone whose wife is continuously in danger of dying because of her almost complete lack of immunity to COVID - fuck you. Sincerely.

I understand that you are struggling but we are where we are with COVID.

Please do not take HN threads further into flamewar, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I am sorry, but I am responding with the same wording as the commenter - to show how this is over the top in this context.

I understand the importance not to go into flamewars, and I am glad this is not something we have on HN, I feel however they mirroring the expressions of a commenter in as another perspective helps.

This said, point taken.

I scolded the other commenter as well, but you (i.e. each of us) need to follow the rules regardless of what other users do. "But they started it" is a recipe for a downward spiral—it always feels like the other person started it and did worse.

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=downward%20spiral%20by:dang&da...

I completely understand what you are saying - and this is one of the points I like in HN that much. Your policing is the reason for that.

What I meant to say is that it is a figure of style to respond in a mirrored fashion (I think this is called chaismus or antithesis in English) to show that the argument works both sides.

But yes, you are right and, again, point taken. Thank you for the policing.

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