Do you want someone to rip your mask off?

This train of thought started with this Spacing post but wandered a bit and is now only tangental.

People in those comments talked about shaking people out of their routine and snapping them out of their zombie state. You hear about this a lot when people are talking about public space issues. It's also generally seen as something that's wrong with urban societies - for example, when I was taking courses at Mac, one classmate said she hated taking to GO to Toronto because everyone was wearing their masks.

This is always talked about as a problem to be solved in the third person. We have to snap them out of their zombie state, we have to get them to take their masks off. But you never hear it talked about in the first person. You never hear anyone saying "Oh, I just want someone to just pull me out of my daily routine and rip my mask right off!"

Is it really a problem for the people wearing the masks? When you, personally, have your mask on, are you wishing that someone would walk up and forceably rip it off?

This may just be me because I have a far higher tolerance for social disengagement than most people, but really, I'm fine. Sometimes I need my mask to protect myself (empirical evidence has demonstrated that my smiles are both beautiful enough to be remarked upon and easily misconstrued by the people I least want to misconstrue my intentions), but even when I'm perfectly safe, really I'm fine. I usually have my ipod, full of music and comedy, I usually have a good book with me, I'm mentally de-stressing and intellectually engaged. It is, quite simply, not a problem that needs solving. Are there people out there for whom it is?