Hate influencer Chaya Raichik – who goes by “Libs of TikTok” online – is trying to take her show on the road, and it doesn’t appear to be going well.
Raichik gave a speech yesterday at the Indiana Memorial Union at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, alongside Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN).
During her speech, she ranted about “pornographic” books in schools and moved on to her hatred of everything “woke.”
…
Some students started laughing.
“Um, do you have a question? Is something funny?” she asked, apparently not expecting people to find her over-the-top concerns funny.
“How do you define wokeness?” someone in the back asked.
Raichik tried to respond: “Wokeness is the destruction of normalicy [sic] and… And… Um… Uh…” More students started laughing.
“… of our lives,” she said, apparently thinking she was finishing a sentence.
Ugh, I hate the dickhead move of pretending not to understand someone with a mask. What a child.
Don’t know much about fhe context here, so I won’t defend this person if she’s actually pretending. That said, I wore masks consistently, and completely understand their value, and would never complain about people wearing them, but…
Holy hell are people harder to understand when wearing them. I know it’s a me problem, and I know why it’s a problem, so I completely understand why somebody would say that.
Still not enough to justify not wearing one.
It makes sense. Your brain uses all kinds of cues even if you don’t realize it. That includes things like smiles and even some degree of “lip reading”. If you can’t see someone’s mouth moving, you lose some cues and your brain has fewer signals to rely on when interpreting speech.
That said, if you can take a phone call, you can understand someone through a mask. It’s not an impenetrable barrier for communication.
Context matters. In a room one-on-one, yes, absolutely it’s like a phone call. Out in public, the non-verbal cues matter much more. As a concrete example, phone calls in the quiet are just fine, but I can’t use a drive-through.
Well, drive through speakers are also notoriously bad. 😅 But yeah fully agree. When I talk to other people in my 2nd language, I often understand them perfectly well in person but the same person talking about the same thing is hard to understand for me over the phone. If I watch something on TV and I can’t see their face, I feel compelled to turn up the volume way higher than I would for English. Language is harder than we think, but our brains are really good at using all information at its disposal and making it feel deceptively easy.
It’s only a few minutes in - at the 2:15 mark approximately; it’s the guy up there with her in the vest. Just look at his facial expression and body language - he’s trying to score points for the AntiMa crowd. He’s just being a douche.
Well that’s pretty inexcusable then.
Get real close and laugh directly in their faces open mouthed. Ask if they wished we had covered our mouths if they complain.
or like… don’t be an asshole who gets in people’s faces.