{"id":21414,"date":"2022-10-12T19:02:58","date_gmt":"2022-10-13T02:02:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/?p=21414"},"modified":"2022-10-12T19:06:30","modified_gmt":"2022-10-13T02:06:30","slug":"the-danger-of-hand-gestures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/?p=21414","title":{"rendered":"The Danger of&#8230; Hand Gestures?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I don&#8217;t know why I was worried about finding enough topics for this month.  Every day, there is a new outrage on Twitter to comment on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today, I learned that we&#8217;re not supposed to give a thumbs up gesture anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Why NOBODY should be using the &#39;thumbs up&#39; emoji in 2022<br><br>Full story: <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/vaWd4yI9nz\">https:\/\/t.co\/vaWd4yI9nz<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/SHGAFeNxVg\">pic.twitter.com\/SHGAFeNxVg<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MailOnline\/status\/1580201881690701825?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 12, 2022<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><figcaption>The thing is, it&#8217;s an old gesture that has a clear purpose.  It&#8217;s an affirmative, a good-to-go, a sign of approval.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>It seems like some people used it sarcastically, and now it&#8217;s&#8230; bad?  It&#8217;s aggressive?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We should all grieve the death of nuance and context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When the OK hand gesture was basically overtaken by white supremacists, I was a little bit upset assholes usurped what I thought was a common gesture, and we just let them have it.  <em>Maybe<\/em> there&#8217;s some subtle difference in the tilt of the hand, but as a white guy that wants nothing to do with that hate movement, I&#8217;m not going to risk it.  No more OK hand gesture for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But thumbs up doesn&#8217;t fall into that category.  If we&#8217;re going to find fault with people using it with passive aggression, maybe we shouldn&#8217;t be upset with the gesture as much as the passive aggression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As someone else said, I&#8217;ve seen people get a little upset over ending a sentence with a period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">I shared it with my college-freshman employee who told me ending sentences with periods is a sign of anger. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/DZs5tIAO4y\">pic.twitter.com\/DZs5tIAO4y<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Tyce of The Tortured Writers Dept. \u270d\ud83c\udffe\ud83d\udc68\ud83c\udffe\u200d\ud83d\udcbb\u2e06\u2e09 (@21stCenturyCeo) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/21stCenturyCeo\/status\/1580314659915059201?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 12, 2022<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><figcaption>I really think this all circles back to context and nuance.  If I&#8217;m texting with someone that has a particular style, I&#8217;ll respond appropriately to them to try to communicate effectively.  I won&#8217;t necessarily change everything about the way I communicate to appease someone else, because I expect that over time, people will come to understand my style of communicating as well.  You may text in all lower case with no punctuation, but I&#8217;m still going to text like I&#8217;m trying to please a grammar teacher.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>This goes for the thumbs up, as well.  A hand gesture as an affirmative can be effective, giving a visual queue to go along with my words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As far as Twitter drama is concerned, this one seems pretty small, and maybe I&#8217;m just adding fuel to the fire by giving it as much attention as I have.  I guess I just don&#8217;t want to give up forms of communication for reasons I have a hard time agreeing with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t know why I was worried about finding enough topics for this month. Every day, there is a new outrage on Twitter to comment on. Today, I learned that we&#8217;re not supposed to give a thumbs up gesture anymore. It seems like some people used it sarcastically, and now it&#8217;s&#8230; bad? It&#8217;s aggressive? We [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21414"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21418,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21414\/revisions\/21418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}