Only connect

That is why meeting in person at organised events, social get-togethers and chance encounters is so valuable.

“The Event changed my life, never have I walked into a room of strangers and felt like I was with old friends. It’s given me the strength to act and quietened by doubts about whether I was on the right track. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.”- Tweet, 1 September 2021

That comment, related to the event organised by Scyldings at Warwick University in the last weekend of August, echoes many others. Attendees responded so strongly to meeting and connecting with online contacts, partly because of the government-imposed lockdown and social suppression of the last year and half (“only three weeks to flatten the curve”). Frozen in social isolation and warned that human contact could result in death, not only one’s own but that of one’s elderly relatives, people had been yearning for normality.

During the event no one wore masks or social distanced and no one (to my knowledge) caught or transmitted COVID-19. It was a sad sight to see serving staff wearing masks. Masks have become a sign of the frail, the zealous and the serving class. It was not that I made a point of smiling to staff without masks, just that I couldn’t help being pleased to see their face.

The impact of the event was not just turning internet acquaintances into real-life ones, it was sharing physical space. It was being able to shake hands, touch shoulders, clink glasses and pass around books. It provided common experience of interacting normally. At the event, it was being immersed in a community of dissenters. These were not internet edgelords but real people who paid money and put on their suits to meet in person.

Not for nothing have the most authoritarian lockdowns in Australia and New Zealand included instructions not to talk to people on the street. Lockdowns can only be sustained if individuals are isolated, made fearful and issued authority instructions via the media. There was some puzzlement about why the lockdown applied to public houses rather than other similar venues. The reason was not because pubs were a vector of transmission of COVID-19 but because they were a vector of transmission of knowledge. People exchange personal information which contradicts the official narrative and they start to act accordingly. The clampdown on hospitality (and to a lesser degree, religious gatherings) was always a clampdown on unmediated communication.

That is why meeting in person at organised events, social get-togethers and chance encounters is so valuable. It is a way of transmitting intelligence that government actions are authoritarian and disproportionate, reducing fear and sustaining normality in defiance of technocratic busybodies. It is a personal and social duty to raise a pint (or tonic water) at your local pub whenever you can.