Sunglass Security
As a preface to this blog, I want to remind you that I am not trying to be (nor, to the best of my knowledge, am I) creepy. But I know that is exactly the notice with which a creepy individual would preface his/her blog. For empirical evidence, I’ve recently been described — upon inspection — as harmless. Surely, no menacing individual could be described as such.
The point of this blog is to explore the titular (alt: eponymous) phenomenon of Sunglass Security, an alliterative phrase I have devised for ease of remembrance and marketability (who can say no to alliterative products such as Krispy Kreme, Lulu Lemon, Bed Bath & Beyond, Chuck E. Cheese, etc.). Whether or not this title is sufficiently click-baity is an exercise left for the reader—though I suspect if you’ve made it this far, it was, indeed, sufficiently click-baity.
Last summer, I rarely left the house and essentially forgot the experience of wearing sunglasses. This summer, though, as I’ve been participating in Reopening Activities, driving around, and the like, I have been wearing sunglasses at a much more regular clip. As social animals, we have a proclivity for social exploration. To put it less mildly, people are interesting, and so we often want to look at them to gain a better understanding of them. Of course, such overt gazing is not genteel behavior (see: canonical meme below).
This is where sunglasses come in. Wearing sunglasses allows you to fully sum up individuals, even at close distances, without breaking unwritten rules of society. For example, when I see a fellow wallowing Sixers fan while traveling, I want to see which jersey he (or, less frequently, she) is wearing. (Is it a Simmons jersey that will soon need to be burned?) If I see someone driving a Sports Car, I want to ascertain his (or, less frequently, her) motivation for meretricious display. (Is it a mechanism to cover up deep-rooted insecurities or just good old costly signaling?) If I see someone with an outfit that is incongruous with the heat of the summer, I’d like to determine for which Investment Bank the poor sap works (“or, less frequently, her” should be implied here). With sunglasses, these tasks are much easier to complete. Without them, they leave a curiosity itch behind.
And surely, I cannot be the only one benefitting from Sunglass Security. I am nearly certain that I have passed other passers-by (note: not passer-bys, of course) who have used the exact same mechanism to understand my presence (e.g., make out my harmlessness). Of course, neither me nor my gazing partner could ever call one another out on our staring practices due to the inkling of doubt that is concomitant with sunglasses. With sunglasses, you can never be sure that someone is looking at you. It becomes a coordinated punishment problem; a tragedy of the commons, if you will (this is a blatant — yet intentional — misuse of the latter buzz-phrase). As we know from Game Theoretic models, coordinated punishment is only viable when signals are near certain. Sunglasses prevent signals from reaching near certainty. Fantastic news for sunglass sporters.¹
This leads me, in a characteristically circuitous path, to my next — and final — point. It was recently brought to my attention that masks serve a similar purpose to sunglasses but with respect to (wrt, for the math folks out there) facial expressions, singing along with lyrics, or hiding one’s face for any purpose.² Masks, then, are essentially equivalent to sunglasses. The Mask & Glasses combo is unparalleled in its ability to shield you from judgment. Not only can you stare at someone with impunity, but you can react with a disgusted face, and no one will be the wiser.
And this is how we will convince the anti-maskers to start wearing masks again. #TeamDelta.
[1] Those who sport sunglasses, not those who play the sport of sunglass, which — as far as I know from my near-maniacal following of the Tokyo 2020 (c. 2021) Olympic Games — does not exist.
[2] Of course, masks also serve a critical function—though some doubts have been raised by important thinkers (see: Hippopatumus [sic] below)—in #StoppingTheSpread, but I am not a CDC representative, and thus feel unqualified to comment on this matter.
