Heh, heebie, you can read faces, can't you? For those of us who cannot, who instinctively shy away from eye contact, it's already like that.
You know, if you wear mirrored sunglasses, it's kind of similar.
It's better to veil your eyes and have everyone think you're staring at butts than take off your shades and remove all doubt.
I can read interesting faces. My attention span is too short for the kind that drone on and on.
You know, if you wear mirrored sunglasses, it's kind of similar.
Good point. Public health requires that we all look super cool.
Never saw it, but upon googling, the eyeballs remind me of the creepy MRI eyeballs.
I have mirrored cycling sunglasses and apparently the combination of glasses, mask & helmet is pretty funny.
Anyhow, yes to the OP. I can read eye expressions pretty well now after three semesters of practice.
The weirdest thing is teaching students for a few months, and then happening to see them without their masks, and realizing that your brain had filled in a completely different nose/mouth/chin than they actually have. Like, I actually know this person pretty well! And yet I am wrong about something that seems so fundamental and preliminary!
That's why masks should be labeled with things like "hiding a weak chin" or "warning: goatee underneath".
In a pandemic, no one knows you're half-person, half-dog-faced.
It is indeed a rabbit hole, but there was a podcast with a premise like this, a twist on Invasion of the Body Snatchers where aliens took over bodies via the optic nerve, originally somehow through the skies, then person-to-person gazes. They took over about 99% of the world, then were forced by nuclear submarines to stop and form treaty relations with the rump of humanity, which is where the story begins.
There wasn't universal eye covering, though; that was an occasional thing. (And all blind people were immune.)
Masks also cut down on weird smells on public transit.
Love this idea. Someone call Stephen King.
I feel like my coworkers and I adapted really quickly to the lack of information, even with new hires we didn't know before. My "smile" with a mask on is kind of an exaggerated eye crinkle and not much like my real smile. I suspect folks would do the same at reading faces with a different lack of information. Boring answer, but I feel like the all day, every day nature of masks where I work means it's so free and easy to interact without masks but yet another slightly unpleasant thing people adapt to pretty well.
My "smile" with a mask on is kind of an exaggerated eye crinkle and not much like my real smile.
Right! I hadn't realized to what degree my facial expressions are deliberate efforts to communicate, but I've had to work up a new repertoire in the pandemic.
And this is where I plug unsounded. An awesome webcomic that has, among its may creative wonders, a disease spread by eye contact.
https://unsoundedupdates.tumblr.com
I don't have to do too many Zoom calls (thank god), but I'll admit an increasing willingness to only pretend to pay attention, timing my nods and mm-hmms based on intonation and half-heard phrases, not actual engagement. This being on-topic because it's only possible because on Zoom no one can tell exactly where you're focused. I'm not making "eye contact" with the camera, I'm looking at the speaker's little square in the corner, or the meeting agenda, or my iPad where I'm taking notes, or Twitter, or the Wikipedia article I started before the call.
13: I'd say that I fart about as often with a mask as I did before.