mask shaming

This is the practice of judging the conduct of someone who is not wearing a mask as required and either rebuking them or at least giving them the evil eye.  It seems to me that while there has been comment about it in Australia, we are not indulging in it wholesale. There does seem to be a lot happening in the United States.  And in Britain, oddly, a person reported being mask-shamed because she was wearing a mask when it was not mandatory.  So mask shaming results from not following the norm – wearing or not wearing masks.  In America there are some comments about mask vigilantes as well.

 There is also vaccine shaming, that is, attempting to make someone who has not been vaccinated feel guilty about it. Alternatively, it can be turning on someone who has been vaccinated when they were not officially eligible for a vaccine but somehow managed to get one.

 There is also travel shaming.  This is a response to those people who decided to take refuge in some holiday place and foolishly posted pictures of themselves having fun. 

 The first of these shaming events that I noticed was cough shaming, the disapproval directed towards someone who coughs in a public place while not wearing a mask.

 We are told by psychologists that attempting to shame people into good behaviour rarely works. They simply become more intransigent in following their own choices.