wait I just used inspect element, and the font only looks bigger so nevermind

I am going to guess that the diff between you and John's models here is that John thinks LDT/FDT solves this, and you don't.

Sorry to give only a surface-level point of feedback, but I think this post would be much, much better if you shortened it significantly. As far as I can tell, pretty much every paragraph is 3x longer than it could be, which makes it a slog to read through.

Yeah, I meant medical/covid masks imply the wearer is diseased. I would have also believed the cat mask is a medical/covid mask if you hadn't give a different reason for wearing it, so it has that going against it in terms of coolness. It also has a lack of plausible deniability going against it too. If you're wearing sunglasses there's actually a utilitarian reason behind wearing them outside of just creating information asymmetry. If you're just trying to obscure half your face, there's no such plausible deniability. You're just trying to obscure your face, so it becomes far less cool.

Yeah pretty clearly these aren’t cool because they imply the wearer is diseased.

Oh I thought they meant like ski masks or something. For illness masks, the reason they’re not cool is very clearly that they imply you’re diseased.

(To a lesser extent too that your existing social status is so low you can’t expect to get away with accidentally infecting any friends or acquaintances, but my first point is more obvious & defensible)

I think with sunglasses there’s a veneer of plausible deniability. They in fact have a utilitarian purpose outside of just creating information asymmetry. If you’re wearing a mask though, there’s no deniability. You just don’t want people to know where you’re looking.

What do you mean by "model-based"?

I don't know! Got any information? I haven't heard that claim before.