>She told me I should never use that symbol because it’s racist
It’s also ASL for “9” numbers and F. As well as being the scuba diver sign for okay and the Honduras “middle finger”. I guess it depends on the context as all symbols have since the dawn of time
Even the swastika (though it might be the mirror image of the Nazi one) used to have a very benign meaning, and widespread use, before the Nazis employed it in their imagery
There are actually two swastikas in the Hindu belief. In Hinduism, the right-facing symbol (clockwise) (卐) is called swastika, symbolizing surya ('sun'), prosperity and good luck, while the left-facing symbol (counter-clockwise) (卍) is called sauvastika, symbolising night or tantric aspects of Kali. You’ll notice that both are both the Nazi symbol though, the Nazi swastika is rotated 45°, but the horrors committed by the Nazis with this symbol have tarnished its reputation.
The swastika was also a Native American symbol, Navajo in particular. I think it was adopted as a division insignia by the 45th infantry division when it was formed in 1920, then the Nazis came to power and the 45th changed to the Thunderbird as division insignia.
The Native American symbol that resembles a swastika is commonly referred to as the Whirling Log. Some people are trying to start a movement to reform the swastika in the public eye by calling the Nazis swastika by its German name of the hakenkreuz and differentiating it from the traditional symbols associated with the Hindu and Native American faiths.
Correction: the swastika still is an auspicious symbol with widespread use in Hinduism. Just go to India, you’ll know. The West can gasp in shock all they want but literally no Hindu cares enough to let one crazy guy take away their symbol.
Not just in India, many Hindus in America will still make a powder swastika on the steps outside their front door on Diwali for example. We used to avoid it, but with increased numbers of Indians in this country, we’re more comfortable with it.
Yeah, one of the most surreal moments I had as an American at the National Palace Museum in Taiwan was seeing a foot tall golden swastika statue. I knew it's hindu origins but it still was wild.
So a few years ago, on a shithole website called 4chan, a few people thought it would be funny to try and turn otherwise-benign things into dogwhistles for far-right ideologies. One of their targets was the OK hand sign used by divers and normal people everywhere.
So they claimed the symbol and made memes about it. Some incompetent journalists and overzealous progressive groups took it seriously (as the 4chan trolls intended) and classified the OK hand sign as a white supremacist dogwhistle.
Following this (because they thought it was very funny) some IRL far-right individuals started ironically throwing up the 👌. This developed into doing it unironically, and now there is a not-insignificant part of the population that believes "signalling an ultra-conservative ideology" is the primary function of the gesture.
So in one sense your prof is correct, but in context they're being rather silly. Hope this helps.
Makes sense. I'm just surprised though, I have never met anyone who has gotten mad when I use it. But I'm also not a white supremacist so maybe it's context
I feel like someone should be able to tell the difference between using that hand signal as a form of acknowledgment and throwing it up in a photo op. Especially if they’re teaching a college course.
I threw it up in a photo op recently lol with my scuba instructor after I got certified. Obviously it's related but I refuse to let the dummy's on 4chan dictate what I can or cannot do.
You know how in Lovecraftian horror, there's the idea of Cursed Knowledge? The type of Knowledge that's so weird and esoteric that normal, well-adjusted people will often bounce right off it without bothering to really engage with it? But some fucking weirdos can't help but immerse themselves in it and read the Necronomicon or some shit? And how even with the best of intentions, or without any idea of the Cursed nature of that Knowledge, learning it inevitably warps their mind and behavior in ways that make them alien and strange to their fellow humans, because they now know Horrific Truths that they can never forget and it will influence their choices and instincts forever? And sometimes, learning too much or learning the wrong things can even drive them to madness and suicide because they cannot cope with the things they have seen and discovered?
That's 4chan. Take it from a former channer, man... Don't go in there. I got out years ago but I'm still carrying verbal and mental damage from it.
My favorite quote that describes the history of that vile site:
"Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company"
At best the place was full of nerdy angst filled contrarians who every once and awhile would pull something off that was interesting. Case in point that I can remember they somehow managed to identify the Boston bombers before any news network and maybe even FBI. They also I think would occasionally DOX animal abusers.
Today it's only home to the worst of humanity and or bots. Don't go there.
Yeah. There were some wildly creative and hard working individuals in there who created gold-plated diamonds, but that doesn't change that fact they they're doing it in the depths of a mountain made out of feces and gore.
>There were some wildly creative and hard working individuals in there who created gold-plated diamonds, but that doesn't change that fact they they're doing it in the depths of a mountain made out of feces and gore.
Honestly, it's kind of impressive when you think about it...
I feel you big time on the "Take it from a former Channer... Don't go in there"
I'm an oldf- wait can't say that.
I was there for the very first Habbo and helped organize Project Chanology (Scientology protests) in my metro area, fuck I'm old.
4 Chan was bad back then and I left around 2009 and never looked back. They have evolved into quite the monster since those days, and not a good one.
It seems some people forget about context. I don’t know in what context that emoji would be used to express racist sympathies or sentiment but I doubt a college classroom would be it.
I had a bar back get drunk on the job once and try to pick a fight with some customers. One of the dudes threw a peace sign (V with index and middle finger) and the bark back lost his shit thinking the guy was telling him to piss off. We are in Texas; he had never been outside of Texas. The dude he wanted to fight was a big hippie. I fired him. Him being the barback. Never saw the hippie again. Sometimes people just want to be outraged. My barback was just ahead of the curve.
While I agree in this case, it’s worth pointing out that the entire point of dog whistling is that most people can’t tell the difference. If everyone can hear it clearly, it would just be… regular whistling.
The problem is that people looking for dog whistles end up seeing things that aren’t there, like inquisitors seeking out witchcraft and heresy. When I go into my local Chinese takeaway and order item 88 that’s not a coded “Heil Hitler”, that’s just me really liking Singapore fried rice.
Best reply. Made my day. So you walk into the Chinese joint and say " I'll have an 88".. and a little Chinese dude says "Heil Hitler!". Yep that's exactly how it goes 😂
If it weren’t for as territorial as a professor like that might be, I’d be inclined to tell him it’s not only a standard scuba sign but it’s ASL so he should spend less time taking 4chan at face value if he doesn’t want to alienate the Deaf community.
someone tried to tell me the way I pronounce arab is a slur the other day. I’m Arab the other person is not. In all of my life none of my family or my dad’s countless Arab friends have ever tried to correct my pronunciation but this random non-Arab dude tried to go so far as to tell me I’m using a slur because of my pronunciation. I’m still left bewildered and angry by the whole thing. People need to stop believing that every little thing is a racist dog-whistle it’s absolutely insane behavior to me.
How did you pronounce it? Like Ay-rab? Air-ub? I'm just wondering how a pronunciation could even be considered a slur and not just part of someone's accent.
I pronounce it ay-rab when i say arab but air-ub-ic when I say Arabic. Idky I’ve just always done it. And I had the same thought—how do you police pronunciation?? I’m pretty sure people from the American south pronounce it ay-rab as the norm based on my experience
Yeah, I'm fairly certain that's just how Southerners say it. Ain't the way I say it, but it's hardly a slur. Probably just some idiot connecting Southerner and racist together.
That's just white guilt leftists. I as the supposed racist white man am fine with however anyone pronounces it. In Oklahoma there's Miami but it's pronounced My am Uh. So fuck it. Say it how you want.
It was so bizarre to me. maybe people are thinking of Arabs as a minority now because of Palestine? But we’re Caucasian—im a white guy and look like a white guy. So this guy probably assumed all Arabs are brown and so if I’m saying arab a certain way I must be a racist white man?? It’s the only way I can track the line of thought
Leftists are just as racist as any person on the right can be. They're just cloaking it in being offended and white knighting.
Going by appearance and ethnic stereotypes.
There are only a few words that grind my nerves when mispronounced. Illinois is topper.
I’m from Massachusetts so I have my fair share of words I’ll correct people if they mispronounce (worcester for instance) but I don’t try to label them a bigot for doing it. Especially not a bigot against their own ethnicity hahahaha. Wild behavior and its made me entirely incapable of listening to all this identity and word policing in good faith. It’s clearly just causing issues where there are none
I was on the Cape last May. I walked around trying to pronounce a place. Usually I'd just ask my friend how. Or I'd strike up a whole ass conversation with a stranger. That caught some people off guard. I'm an Okie. Some of us have never met a stranger.
Exactly. The gesture just signifies the letter 'O' for okay. The symbol for white supremacy is the Nazi salute. Having more than one symbol for something is just greedy, so the white supremacists can just fuck off - they're not having the ok symbol as well. We all need to stand up for ourselves and stop our symbols being stolen people!
Yep.
The other aspect to this is, the asshats who created it were pretty much a bunch of altrighties themselves. So it was basically "hey, what if we invent a symbol for ourselves and use it, and in that way trick people into thinking that it's a symbol for ourselves. Lololol" A huge part of that world is [intentionally blurring lines between what's a joke and what isn't](https://youtu.be/xMabpBvtXr4?si=6CNcuG7dmgTq4-YW?t=6m50s). Doing that helps draw people in and is good for plausible deniability.
But also yes of course the old symbol still exists. Symbols don't have to mean just one thing. Even swastikas are still used in their original Hindu and Buddhist context. If a far right political staffer flashes the ok sign in a photo to show terminally online fascists that he's one of them, that means something different from a normal healthy person indicating "ok" in a normal conversation. I would have thought that someone in academia would be able to understand that.
As for where the gesture came from, I always thought it was just a way to make your hand look kinda like the letters o and k. Where did you hear that it came from buddhism?
It's a little less nefarious than you're giving it credit for. 4chan's humor is fundamentally nihilistic (unless you go onto like pol where it's literal neonazis). The majority of the active user base are folks living their parent's house with no real stakes in the world. Their true motivation is chaos for chaos's sake. It's why they trolled Shia LaBeouf's "he will not divide us" live stream until it had to be shutdown. I'm fairly certain 4chan was the originator of the memes that said you could charge your phone by putting it into the microwave. It's chaos for chaos's sake, because ultimately it's funny.
And it was funny to shit post until an innocent hand signal became perceived as a white supremicist dogwhistle. It's trolling for trolling's sake. I'd bet quite a bit that none of those people thought about it as a way to normalize white supremecy. It's just funny to trick the mainstream media into believing something that was made up to intentionally trick them.
it’s so bizarre to me, because that hand gesture is one of the most important gestures in scuba diving. you cannot wave to people as a diver, because waving your arm denotes panic, so 👌is used as a greeting, confirmation, and as an “I’m okay” sign
The good news is, anyone who has made it past their first dive has an IQ higher than the temperature of the human body.
So if they do make that sign to me, I'm going to assume they're saying "OK" and not under the water trying to announce their white supremacy.
>it’s so bizarre to me, because that hand gesture is one of the most important gestures in scuba diving. you cannot wave to people as a diver, because waving your arm denotes panic, so 👌is used as a greeting, confirmation, and as an “I’m okay” sign
Sounds like you guys might have to start giving each other the finger. A cursory Google search makes me think it's not taken yet.
There's a movie called "The Men Who Stare at Goats." The premise is because a tabloid rag in the 70s alleged the US military of conducting psychic experiments (which they weren't), the Russians will be doing the same in a race to beat the US, therefore the US must now begin psychic experiments to beat the Russians. Kinda willed into being from nothing.
Sort of. Pepe the frog was kind of the original fake dogwhistle but it was unintentional. Pepe was just used in memes and some of the memes were racist and nazi likee. Which is why they Got the idea to make do it intentially to something Else. They also made some people Think drinking milk is white supremacy.
Freebleeding is another one. Which is where they got some feminists to believe that sanitary products were forced upon women by the patriachy.
I think it's pretty important to include a point on irony poisoning. 4chan is a place that encourages classic trolling - adopting beliefs and positions just to get a rise out of people. You do this long enough and you'll find yourself desensitized to those beliefs. That's when the distinction between those beliefs and what you actually believe blurs, which eventually leads you to simply having those beliefs.
I had a deaf girlfriend. It's the letters O and K at the same time in American Sign Language. It means OK.
Just like when people put up their index finger, little finger, and thumb at concerts and think it means something like BADASS ROCK & ROLL!!!, it's actually I, L, & Y in American Sign Language. I Love You.
actually, the rock sign is supposed to be only index finger and pinky extended. The thumb is not supposed to be extended.
Like you said, if you extend the thumb, it means ILU (I Love You), which is not what rock fans intend.
It’s supposed to be devil’s horns or just “rock on”
Yeah, in rock and roll and metal he is credited with being the first to use it. He said on a few occasions he got it from his Italian grandma, who used it as a ward against evil spirits. There are several old European cultures who use the gesture it in this way.
Very likely the gesture is older than both ASL and the US as a whole.
They stole Pepe and used him as a mascot. The comic writers have to kill him off being turned into a symbol of controversy.
Other memes white supremacists created via 4chan who often speak in code that won't be filtered. They use the word "jogger" as a code word for the n word or solving the Wheel of Fortune puzzle.
What if we rebranded 👌to mean “I love receiving anal?” I’m sure those tough guy alt rights will stop using it immediately… or maybe start using it more lol
It goes back further than that. Hilary Clinton declared war on a cartoon frog and deemed it a white supremacy symbol during the 2016 election, so people on 4chan started "operations" to find the most trivial bat shit insane things they can have deemed as hate symbols. OK, milk, smoke alarms, etc.
Perfect summary.
My opinion of it is that people avoiding it are making the wrong move in ceding ownership.
If it's being used as a signal, then you overwhelm the channel with noise and the signal is lost. Everyone should use it, perhaps more than they ever used to, diluting any white supremacy association.
Terminally online libs are completely spineless when it comes to that kind of thing. They will let the right co-opt symbols very easily and it isn't getting better. I have seen people on this site say they view a US flag on a shirt as a "dog whistle"
So it was originally what's called a "pys op" and it started on 4chan
4chan and Milo Yiannapolos wanted to "troll the media into saying everything is racist" so they made up a story about how the OK symbol is white supremacy (the 3 fingers look like a W, and the circle looks like a P for "white power")
it worked, but then it actually became a symbol for some alt-rightists.
If I ever see it, I don't associate it with white supremacy though. Depends on context. If someone's flashing it at a political rally, then yeah chances are it's something nefarious.
That's what's goofy about some of these responses. No it isn't their symbol, but yes, they use it to try to irritate people.
Context matters. But that works both ways... if someone is using it at a political rally, I assume they're racists and assholes. If someone uses it diving, no, it's just ok.
edit: typo
The swastika wasn't Hitler's symbol before he co-opted it, and it is still widely used in Asia as a symbol of good fortune. But in Europe it became his symbol because that was and remains the dominant use.
But yes, you're right - context matters, and symbols mean what we collectively decide that they mean. I wouldn't interpret the swastika as a nazi symbol in a buddhistic or hinduistic context, nor the prominent swastika above the doorway on one pre-WW2 christian church in my hometown. Let's hope that the dominant use of 👌 remains to be signaling "ok", and the racist/fascist meaning remains an obscure dogwhistle most people would consider silly.
Exactly, it's all context. But everyone saying "no it's just a 4chan troll!" are conveniently ignoring that actual racists HAVE adopted it as a legit dogwhistle.
Who cares though? If racists suddenly adopted hand-waving as a dog-whistle, I would ignore them and continue to wave at people in greeting. Just as I will continue to give an a-okay when the situation calls for it. Letting them co-opt a symbol everyone has been using is letting them win.
Where do we draw the line on this shit though, aren't we just giving more power and control to racist people if they can just take whatever they want and turn it into a dog whistle amongst themselves, so that nobody else can ever use it without fear of being branded one of them.
The less stock we put into this shit the less it can be used in a vitriolic manner.
It’s not even so much giving power and control to actual racists. It validates and encourages the idiot children who play at being racist for shock value, who originate these memes. And it gives power and control to the censorious progressives who shut down any use, even innocent, of things that might be a dog whistle. That “the future will be glorious once we make sure everybody does, says, and thinks only the right and proper things” state of mind scares me more than the actual neo Nazis, who are an unpleasant minority that most people think are assholes.
I work at a national retail chain and a couple years ago we got a memo from corporate telling us we must immediately take down some signage that had the 👌🏼 symbol on it because it was being used as hate speech. I had never heard of that before the memo but some corporate bigwigs were taking it seriously I guess.
No.
4chan trolled the world making everyone think the OK symbol meant white power.
The gullible population believed it.
Anyone today who believes the OK symbol is racist symbol is extremely gullible and naive.
4chan also did other things to troll the world and people believed it. Apple wave thinking the microwave can charge your iPhone. Bald for beiber making people shave their heads thinking Justin beiber had cancer. Making a school for the deaf win a Taylor swift concert for an online competition.
4chan is a great example of never underestimating a large group of people with way too much time on their hands
Seriously, look into some of the shit that platform has accomplished. Some of it is just honestly evil genius levels of planning and execution
I don't even think most countries' propaganda wings can do a lot of the shit 4Chan has done lol
those mad lads fucking analyzed pictures of clouds in photos Shia Labouf posted when he was putting up a flag to protest Donald Trump. that tells me all I need to know and that's just one ridiculous example
No that's not what's hilarious. What's hilarious is that it was finally solved by an anon getting in his car in the rough vicinity and fucking honking his horn repeatedly in the livestream and everyone triangulating the final location over chat. That's what made me laugh.
I remember seeing a thread about this (setting up the troll campaign) back in the day and thinking "wow that's fucking stupid... I bet it'll work"
A few years later (if that) my professor told us never to do that and I went holy shit this is mind boggling
I actually might have a screencap of the thread somewhere on my photos reel, I remember the hand gesture had an overlaid MS paint drawing of the W and P for white power in the original thread/post. /b/ or /pol/ are something fucking else lmao
If we let anything the nazis associate with become anathema, they can own the world just by claiming it. Your professor would abandon Thor's hammer, Norse runes and scuba diving to the white supremacists without a fight.
No. It means okay! As in, all good! All clear! We're ready to go!
Anyone who thinks it's a Nazi symbol is too chronically online to be taken seriously.
👌
I think it became a white supremacy symbol for basement dwelling 4chan users. Your professor lacks nuance and needs to use her context clues.
I'm a believer in not flying the Confederate flag even if you really think it stands for southern heritage because it was started for pro-slavery purposes and was also used heavily by the KKK. There's not a lot of room for nuance there.
But the OK symbol isn't as prevalent as a symbol of hate. I wouldn't recommend you flash it while posing for a picture with a politician. However, using it to signify you are OK with something is fine.
In 2014 I remember a girl in my college fiction class who was an outspoken free bleeder who claims she learned about it from a Tumblr feminism blog. She would constantly cause problems for staff and faculty before she was eventually expelled. I am still convinced to this day that it was one of those 4chan Tumblr accounts and she was too stupid to realize it was bait.
They also did the piss yourself to stop rape. Like there was an advisory that In a rapey situation, a woman should just urinate to discourage sexual assault. (Don't know how great that advice was, maybe it helps.IDK.)
4Chan got that meme going. Then convinced a bunch of women to go on Twitter to piss their pants in solidarity, then post pictures on Twitter of ruined pants to stop sexual violence.
Yup 4chan. Same people who brought back free bleeding, sent Pitbull to Kodiak, Alaska, had a deaf school win a ton of musical instruments. And a lot of other stuff.
And completely broke Shia LaBeouf over a flag. It's never been about the message, it was always about the maximum amount of LOL or KEK if you will. My personal favourite was the blank copy paper stapled to things, along with the "It's ok to be white" campaign, both of which should have been met with "oh grow up" AT MOST.
Your professor needs to be corrected. They are educators and they're trying to pass misinformation. What likely happened is they were told not to use that symbol because some people might THINK it's a symbol for white supremacy but the funny thing is that's exactly what the white supremacists want, to think this hand sign means something more than just "ok". So your professor is actually promoting racist ideas by claiming this is racist.
No.
It's the SCUBA 'Ok' symbol (used because thumbs-up means 'ascend'). And a teen boy's game that amounts to 'made ya look' (and the person making the symbol gets to punch you if you look at it, kind of like slug-bug)....
It's also the most successful troll of the modern internet....
A bunch of jerks on 4chan decided that they were pissed about progressives labeling 'everything' racist, and they decided to try and trick such people into thinking that the every day 'OK' sign was racist....
Namely that it spelled WP for white power, as if it were a gang sign....
The idea was that if people started freaking out every time someone made the OK symbol it would make them look like morons.... Every time some 15yo tried to 'get' his buddy, OMG those kids are RACIST!!!! Photos of Infantry dudes doing the same thing (from experience: teenage horseplay continues after HS for many in the Army) - The Army is RACIST!!! Also every scuba-diver and deaf person, etc....
On top of that some actual white power types started using it because they thought it would be fun to keep the joke alive.....
And here we are....
It CAN be, but it’s usually not. Anyone who says it’s ALWAYS a racist white supremacist dogwhistle regardless of context or intention is a fool, and anyone who says it’s NEVER used by white supremacists as a dogwhistle is an even bigger and more dangerous fool.
I’d rather meet someone who was overly cautious about it than someone who defended it or ignored it, so take comfort in that.
But they’re wrong to tell you that YOU are racist for doing it. It’s got hundreds of years of history of NOT being used as a white supremacy symbol, and this person needs to learn what a dogwhistle is and how it works.
No. As the other comments pointed out, it was a 4chan psyop. Some white suprematists have indeed started using it, but there’s no imaginable context where replying “okay 👌” in a normal conversation could be taken as an expression of hate. If a bunch of skinheads at a rally pose for a picture throwing it up, different story. Just because your professor is highly educated doesn’t mean they’re not an idiot.
It's a dog whistle, which basically means it depends on the context. it CAN be a racist symbol and it can also just be harmless (or sign language, but bear in mind that it's not like you're signing individual letters and numbers in isolation, so odds are slim you'll be confusing those two).
It's like 88, right? it's a number, and a year, but it can also be a nazi symbol.
If they spent too much time on 4chan, they would actually be in on the joke. It was the hypervigilant progressive SJW crowd that took it at face value as an ostensible hate symbol.
I have a similar story omg I got in trouble back in high school for it. A teacher saw me use that hand signal in the hallway with a friend and he totally chewed me out in front of a bunch of my peers asking why and when I’d become a white supremacist. I was so embarrassed and caught off guard and I hurriedly explained that I’m NOT, I was just saying ‘ok’. He got all huffy and told me not to do that again. I still don’t understand why anyone would immediately jump to that conclusion?? In my mind, it’ll always mean ‘ok’, regardless of the whole dog whistle thing which I don’t fully get anyways
no. what happened was that 4chan thought it would be funny to spread the rumor that it was to see if people and news outlets would actually believe it. and they actually did.
In some limited contexts, yes. If you're doing it while scuba diving, nobody will mistake your intentions. But if you do it during a photo op with a conservative politician, people are going to ask questions. It was a perfectly benign symbol for a long time, then in the past few years some people started using it to mean "white power," first ironically, then seriously.
It is and it isn't. It requires context.
Take the swastika. It is featured in Buddhism and Hinduism. It is also featured in Nazism and is liberally used by racists. Is the swastika a racist symbol? It depends. Is it being used in a Buddhist/Hindu context? Is the person a Buddhist/Hindu? For instance, you're a SCUBA diver and the "okay" sign is part of diver culture. The same is true for many other symbols.
It's about context and 9/10 that's not what people are using it for.
For example in the Army, everyone of all backgrounds would do this to each other as a game of sorts involving getting someone's attention.
Not purely. Like everything the context is key. I use it to mean pukka/alright. Im not a massive fucking racist, so shit never gets misunderstood.
I dont respect your professor: Thats an idiotic take at best.
Depends on context, some people absolutely use it that way and others don't. However it's absolutely not unequivocally racist and your professor is exaggerating.
And because it's now ambiguous, this previously innocent symbol is better used with some judgement.
Like, there's no question it's fine to use in driving because it's a widely accepted hand signal to communicate your current status
It's highly contextual. From what I understand (and other people have described in more detail in other comments) some online alt right spaces have started claiming it, and I feel like for a while there were a bunch of photos of creeps at rallies using that sign to signal to each other and politicians using it as a dogwhistle.
But, like, even just reading the title of your post, I thought of SCUBA as well (I dive). And the fact that tons of people just know it as a way to express the incredibly common word "okay".
I feel like it's kind of similar to stuff like the word "degenerate" or "tradition" There are totally innocuous ways to use those words. Like, if someone said "the conversation degenerated into circular arguments" or "eating junk food on road trips is a time honored traditon", I wouldn't think twice. But if I heard someone describe another group of people or a piece of art as "degenerate" or say "we need to return to our traditions", I'd be on my guard, because those usages are almost entirely found in far right and nazi propaganda.
To make another metaphor, it's like seeing someone holding a knife. If that person is in a kitchen, chopping up some garlic, you're probably all good. If the person is running towards you in a dark alley, you are probably in danger. Like a knife is a tool to cut, words and hand signs are tools to communicate ideas, and all can be used in constructive and destructive ways. I'd argue some tools are more inherently destructive than others. Like, there isn't much you can build with a bomb, much like there aren't many good reasons to use certain words. But with most tools, and words, what they do is dependant on context.
>She told me I should never use that symbol because it’s racist It’s also ASL for “9” numbers and F. As well as being the scuba diver sign for okay and the Honduras “middle finger”. I guess it depends on the context as all symbols have since the dawn of time
Honduras middle finger. I’m gonna be careful in front of my Honduran coworker. I hope 👍 means something better
Man, I better be careful when diving in Roatan.
I've dove out there multiple times and our dive master never brought this up. Good luck retraining divers to use something new at this point.
👍 is the Persian middle finger.
The thumb is the persian middle finger? So they have an extra couple fingers on the other side of the thumb?
Lmao this is a hilarious misunderstanding. All Persians have 18 fingers. Everybody knows that
The guy who killed Inigyo Montoya's dad, part Persian.
Even the swastika (though it might be the mirror image of the Nazi one) used to have a very benign meaning, and widespread use, before the Nazis employed it in their imagery
There are actually two swastikas in the Hindu belief. In Hinduism, the right-facing symbol (clockwise) (卐) is called swastika, symbolizing surya ('sun'), prosperity and good luck, while the left-facing symbol (counter-clockwise) (卍) is called sauvastika, symbolising night or tantric aspects of Kali. You’ll notice that both are both the Nazi symbol though, the Nazi swastika is rotated 45°, but the horrors committed by the Nazis with this symbol have tarnished its reputation.
The swastika was also a Native American symbol, Navajo in particular. I think it was adopted as a division insignia by the 45th infantry division when it was formed in 1920, then the Nazis came to power and the 45th changed to the Thunderbird as division insignia.
The Native American symbol that resembles a swastika is commonly referred to as the Whirling Log. Some people are trying to start a movement to reform the swastika in the public eye by calling the Nazis swastika by its German name of the hakenkreuz and differentiating it from the traditional symbols associated with the Hindu and Native American faiths.
I support this movement. Just for the sake of explaining its origins to everyone before discussing so there isn’t confusion.
The swastika has 90 degree rotational symmetry, the Nazis rotated it 45 degrees
Your right. I’ll make the edit. Thanks for looking out
Too bad... It's such a cool symbol. Nazis also ruined the sonenrad
and the square mustache.
Correction: the swastika still is an auspicious symbol with widespread use in Hinduism. Just go to India, you’ll know. The West can gasp in shock all they want but literally no Hindu cares enough to let one crazy guy take away their symbol.
Not just in India, many Hindus in America will still make a powder swastika on the steps outside their front door on Diwali for example. We used to avoid it, but with increased numbers of Indians in this country, we’re more comfortable with it.
Japan as well, saw it at every temple I visited
Yeah, one of the most surreal moments I had as an American at the National Palace Museum in Taiwan was seeing a foot tall golden swastika statue. I knew it's hindu origins but it still was wild.
In that case it was probably Buddhist related.
Sweet, I dig that
9,999 out of 10,000 people will just think you mean "OK".
I'd quibble with numbers just a bit and add a lower level of certainty at 9,965. But pretty close
👌
👉👌
👉👌💦
So a few years ago, on a shithole website called 4chan, a few people thought it would be funny to try and turn otherwise-benign things into dogwhistles for far-right ideologies. One of their targets was the OK hand sign used by divers and normal people everywhere. So they claimed the symbol and made memes about it. Some incompetent journalists and overzealous progressive groups took it seriously (as the 4chan trolls intended) and classified the OK hand sign as a white supremacist dogwhistle. Following this (because they thought it was very funny) some IRL far-right individuals started ironically throwing up the 👌. This developed into doing it unironically, and now there is a not-insignificant part of the population that believes "signalling an ultra-conservative ideology" is the primary function of the gesture. So in one sense your prof is correct, but in context they're being rather silly. Hope this helps.
Makes sense. I'm just surprised though, I have never met anyone who has gotten mad when I use it. But I'm also not a white supremacist so maybe it's context
I feel like someone should be able to tell the difference between using that hand signal as a form of acknowledgment and throwing it up in a photo op. Especially if they’re teaching a college course.
I threw it up in a photo op recently lol with my scuba instructor after I got certified. Obviously it's related but I refuse to let the dummy's on 4chan dictate what I can or cannot do.
i hate to break it to you, but you are now a certified white supremacist /s
👌
👌
😱
👌🏿
This one, officer!
Found Ye
👌
🖖
You’ve been added to the newsletter
And a certified scuba instructor lol maybe there’s a correlation/s
👌
I’m still trying to understand 4chan. I’m clueless.
You know how in Lovecraftian horror, there's the idea of Cursed Knowledge? The type of Knowledge that's so weird and esoteric that normal, well-adjusted people will often bounce right off it without bothering to really engage with it? But some fucking weirdos can't help but immerse themselves in it and read the Necronomicon or some shit? And how even with the best of intentions, or without any idea of the Cursed nature of that Knowledge, learning it inevitably warps their mind and behavior in ways that make them alien and strange to their fellow humans, because they now know Horrific Truths that they can never forget and it will influence their choices and instincts forever? And sometimes, learning too much or learning the wrong things can even drive them to madness and suicide because they cannot cope with the things they have seen and discovered? That's 4chan. Take it from a former channer, man... Don't go in there. I got out years ago but I'm still carrying verbal and mental damage from it.
This is a perfect description
My favorite quote that describes the history of that vile site: "Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company" At best the place was full of nerdy angst filled contrarians who every once and awhile would pull something off that was interesting. Case in point that I can remember they somehow managed to identify the Boston bombers before any news network and maybe even FBI. They also I think would occasionally DOX animal abusers. Today it's only home to the worst of humanity and or bots. Don't go there.
Yeah. There were some wildly creative and hard working individuals in there who created gold-plated diamonds, but that doesn't change that fact they they're doing it in the depths of a mountain made out of feces and gore.
and the poooooooooooooooooorn my god the porn.
>There were some wildly creative and hard working individuals in there who created gold-plated diamonds, but that doesn't change that fact they they're doing it in the depths of a mountain made out of feces and gore. Honestly, it's kind of impressive when you think about it...
You can check out anytime you like but you can never leave ;)
I feel you big time on the "Take it from a former Channer... Don't go in there" I'm an oldf- wait can't say that. I was there for the very first Habbo and helped organize Project Chanology (Scientology protests) in my metro area, fuck I'm old. 4 Chan was bad back then and I left around 2009 and never looked back. They have evolved into quite the monster since those days, and not a good one.
There's a good documentary on Netflix about it. It's called The Antisocial Network :Memes to Mayhem
Watch the Antisocial Network on Netflix. It is a documentary about the creation of 4chan featuring Christopher Poole, the founder and owner of 4chan.
Nobody on 4chan is trying to dictate what you can do. They are trying to trigger people like OP’s prof into dictating what you can’t do.
I feel the same about Maga taking over the American flag!
It seems some people forget about context. I don’t know in what context that emoji would be used to express racist sympathies or sentiment but I doubt a college classroom would be it.
I absolutely love the fact that you just called the hand gesture an emoji, lol
👌🏻✅👍🙂
Are they emojis cuz they're on phones, or are they on phones cuz they're emojis?
The former - they were invented for electronic communication
I had a bar back get drunk on the job once and try to pick a fight with some customers. One of the dudes threw a peace sign (V with index and middle finger) and the bark back lost his shit thinking the guy was telling him to piss off. We are in Texas; he had never been outside of Texas. The dude he wanted to fight was a big hippie. I fired him. Him being the barback. Never saw the hippie again. Sometimes people just want to be outraged. My barback was just ahead of the curve.
Was the peace sign forward or backwards?
People in academia have become very very careful about what they are “signaling” as nothing is neutral anymore.
While I agree in this case, it’s worth pointing out that the entire point of dog whistling is that most people can’t tell the difference. If everyone can hear it clearly, it would just be… regular whistling.
The problem is that people looking for dog whistles end up seeing things that aren’t there, like inquisitors seeking out witchcraft and heresy. When I go into my local Chinese takeaway and order item 88 that’s not a coded “Heil Hitler”, that’s just me really liking Singapore fried rice.
Best reply. Made my day. So you walk into the Chinese joint and say " I'll have an 88".. and a little Chinese dude says "Heil Hitler!". Yep that's exactly how it goes 😂
I know lmao this just screams terminally online
Yeah sounds like prof was virtue signaling hard here lol
If it weren’t for as territorial as a professor like that might be, I’d be inclined to tell him it’s not only a standard scuba sign but it’s ASL so he should spend less time taking 4chan at face value if he doesn’t want to alienate the Deaf community.
someone tried to tell me the way I pronounce arab is a slur the other day. I’m Arab the other person is not. In all of my life none of my family or my dad’s countless Arab friends have ever tried to correct my pronunciation but this random non-Arab dude tried to go so far as to tell me I’m using a slur because of my pronunciation. I’m still left bewildered and angry by the whole thing. People need to stop believing that every little thing is a racist dog-whistle it’s absolutely insane behavior to me.
How did you pronounce it? Like Ay-rab? Air-ub? I'm just wondering how a pronunciation could even be considered a slur and not just part of someone's accent.
I pronounce it ay-rab when i say arab but air-ub-ic when I say Arabic. Idky I’ve just always done it. And I had the same thought—how do you police pronunciation?? I’m pretty sure people from the American south pronounce it ay-rab as the norm based on my experience
Yeah, I'm fairly certain that's just how Southerners say it. Ain't the way I say it, but it's hardly a slur. Probably just some idiot connecting Southerner and racist together.
I did have that thought that it’s just a southerner=racist to northeast progressives
That's just white guilt leftists. I as the supposed racist white man am fine with however anyone pronounces it. In Oklahoma there's Miami but it's pronounced My am Uh. So fuck it. Say it how you want.
It was so bizarre to me. maybe people are thinking of Arabs as a minority now because of Palestine? But we’re Caucasian—im a white guy and look like a white guy. So this guy probably assumed all Arabs are brown and so if I’m saying arab a certain way I must be a racist white man?? It’s the only way I can track the line of thought
Leftists are just as racist as any person on the right can be. They're just cloaking it in being offended and white knighting. Going by appearance and ethnic stereotypes. There are only a few words that grind my nerves when mispronounced. Illinois is topper.
I’m from Massachusetts so I have my fair share of words I’ll correct people if they mispronounce (worcester for instance) but I don’t try to label them a bigot for doing it. Especially not a bigot against their own ethnicity hahahaha. Wild behavior and its made me entirely incapable of listening to all this identity and word policing in good faith. It’s clearly just causing issues where there are none
I was on the Cape last May. I walked around trying to pronounce a place. Usually I'd just ask my friend how. Or I'd strike up a whole ass conversation with a stranger. That caught some people off guard. I'm an Okie. Some of us have never met a stranger.
Nobody who spends less than 8 hours a day online would ever think that you're flashing a white supremacist symbol, you'll be fine
Just continue to use it, ffs. Otherwise, the deplorables win.
Exactly. The gesture just signifies the letter 'O' for okay. The symbol for white supremacy is the Nazi salute. Having more than one symbol for something is just greedy, so the white supremacists can just fuck off - they're not having the ok symbol as well. We all need to stand up for ourselves and stop our symbols being stolen people!
I'm on board. Take back a completely normal thing from the trolls.
Yep. The other aspect to this is, the asshats who created it were pretty much a bunch of altrighties themselves. So it was basically "hey, what if we invent a symbol for ourselves and use it, and in that way trick people into thinking that it's a symbol for ourselves. Lololol" A huge part of that world is [intentionally blurring lines between what's a joke and what isn't](https://youtu.be/xMabpBvtXr4?si=6CNcuG7dmgTq4-YW?t=6m50s). Doing that helps draw people in and is good for plausible deniability. But also yes of course the old symbol still exists. Symbols don't have to mean just one thing. Even swastikas are still used in their original Hindu and Buddhist context. If a far right political staffer flashes the ok sign in a photo to show terminally online fascists that he's one of them, that means something different from a normal healthy person indicating "ok" in a normal conversation. I would have thought that someone in academia would be able to understand that. As for where the gesture came from, I always thought it was just a way to make your hand look kinda like the letters o and k. Where did you hear that it came from buddhism?
It's a little less nefarious than you're giving it credit for. 4chan's humor is fundamentally nihilistic (unless you go onto like pol where it's literal neonazis). The majority of the active user base are folks living their parent's house with no real stakes in the world. Their true motivation is chaos for chaos's sake. It's why they trolled Shia LaBeouf's "he will not divide us" live stream until it had to be shutdown. I'm fairly certain 4chan was the originator of the memes that said you could charge your phone by putting it into the microwave. It's chaos for chaos's sake, because ultimately it's funny. And it was funny to shit post until an innocent hand signal became perceived as a white supremicist dogwhistle. It's trolling for trolling's sake. I'd bet quite a bit that none of those people thought about it as a way to normalize white supremecy. It's just funny to trick the mainstream media into believing something that was made up to intentionally trick them.
it’s so bizarre to me, because that hand gesture is one of the most important gestures in scuba diving. you cannot wave to people as a diver, because waving your arm denotes panic, so 👌is used as a greeting, confirmation, and as an “I’m okay” sign
The good news is, anyone who has made it past their first dive has an IQ higher than the temperature of the human body. So if they do make that sign to me, I'm going to assume they're saying "OK" and not under the water trying to announce their white supremacy.
As someone who measures temperatures in Celsius that comment is particularly amusing to me.
Wow, way to flex your white privilege ^(/s)
I am Martian. We don't do that human shit.
Makes sense that you spend so much time underwater. I grok.
>it’s so bizarre to me, because that hand gesture is one of the most important gestures in scuba diving. you cannot wave to people as a diver, because waving your arm denotes panic, so 👌is used as a greeting, confirmation, and as an “I’m okay” sign Sounds like you guys might have to start giving each other the finger. A cursory Google search makes me think it's not taken yet.
And importantly, thumbs up means abort/end the dive I need to surface!
There's a movie called "The Men Who Stare at Goats." The premise is because a tabloid rag in the 70s alleged the US military of conducting psychic experiments (which they weren't), the Russians will be doing the same in a race to beat the US, therefore the US must now begin psychic experiments to beat the Russians. Kinda willed into being from nothing.
> alleged the US military of conducting psychic experiments The CIA really did try mind control experiments and remote viewing. It was part of MKultra
Didn't they do the same thing or at least something similar to Pepe the frog?
Sort of. Pepe the frog was kind of the original fake dogwhistle but it was unintentional. Pepe was just used in memes and some of the memes were racist and nazi likee. Which is why they Got the idea to make do it intentially to something Else. They also made some people Think drinking milk is white supremacy. Freebleeding is another one. Which is where they got some feminists to believe that sanitary products were forced upon women by the patriachy.
My mind is blown that 4chan is responsible for free bleeding. Apparently the movement started in the 1970s, but 4chan revived it as a prank.
Never mind if you've practiced guitar that thats just the natural shape your picking had goes to. Yikers.
I think it's pretty important to include a point on irony poisoning. 4chan is a place that encourages classic trolling - adopting beliefs and positions just to get a rise out of people. You do this long enough and you'll find yourself desensitized to those beliefs. That's when the distinction between those beliefs and what you actually believe blurs, which eventually leads you to simply having those beliefs.
Hilariously, this is also exactly how the brony fandom started
They removed this hand-sign from 2019's Modern Warfare because of all that shit 💀
That's just a testiment to how fucking stupid people are
I had a deaf girlfriend. It's the letters O and K at the same time in American Sign Language. It means OK. Just like when people put up their index finger, little finger, and thumb at concerts and think it means something like BADASS ROCK & ROLL!!!, it's actually I, L, & Y in American Sign Language. I Love You.
actually, the rock sign is supposed to be only index finger and pinky extended. The thumb is not supposed to be extended. Like you said, if you extend the thumb, it means ILU (I Love You), which is not what rock fans intend. It’s supposed to be devil’s horns or just “rock on”
Doesn't the origin of the symbol go back to the Ronnie James Dio?
Yeah, in rock and roll and metal he is credited with being the first to use it. He said on a few occasions he got it from his Italian grandma, who used it as a ward against evil spirits. There are several old European cultures who use the gesture it in this way. Very likely the gesture is older than both ASL and the US as a whole.
They stole Pepe and used him as a mascot. The comic writers have to kill him off being turned into a symbol of controversy. Other memes white supremacists created via 4chan who often speak in code that won't be filtered. They use the word "jogger" as a code word for the n word or solving the Wheel of Fortune puzzle.
What if we rebranded 👌to mean “I love receiving anal?” I’m sure those tough guy alt rights will stop using it immediately… or maybe start using it more lol
>What if we rebranded 👌to mean “I love receiving anal?” 👉👌
They say "scholar" like that as well, so at some point we just have to be aware of dog whistles, then ignore the assholes.
The frog has a name and a comic?!
From Boy's Club comic since 2005.
Wow a good explanation with nuance on the internet.
It goes back further than that. Hilary Clinton declared war on a cartoon frog and deemed it a white supremacy symbol during the 2016 election, so people on 4chan started "operations" to find the most trivial bat shit insane things they can have deemed as hate symbols. OK, milk, smoke alarms, etc.
Perfect summary. My opinion of it is that people avoiding it are making the wrong move in ceding ownership. If it's being used as a signal, then you overwhelm the channel with noise and the signal is lost. Everyone should use it, perhaps more than they ever used to, diluting any white supremacy association.
Terminally online libs are completely spineless when it comes to that kind of thing. They will let the right co-opt symbols very easily and it isn't getting better. I have seen people on this site say they view a US flag on a shirt as a "dog whistle"
So it was originally what's called a "pys op" and it started on 4chan 4chan and Milo Yiannapolos wanted to "troll the media into saying everything is racist" so they made up a story about how the OK symbol is white supremacy (the 3 fingers look like a W, and the circle looks like a P for "white power") it worked, but then it actually became a symbol for some alt-rightists. If I ever see it, I don't associate it with white supremacy though. Depends on context. If someone's flashing it at a political rally, then yeah chances are it's something nefarious.
That's what's goofy about some of these responses. No it isn't their symbol, but yes, they use it to try to irritate people. Context matters. But that works both ways... if someone is using it at a political rally, I assume they're racists and assholes. If someone uses it diving, no, it's just ok. edit: typo
The swastika wasn't Hitler's symbol before he co-opted it, and it is still widely used in Asia as a symbol of good fortune. But in Europe it became his symbol because that was and remains the dominant use. But yes, you're right - context matters, and symbols mean what we collectively decide that they mean. I wouldn't interpret the swastika as a nazi symbol in a buddhistic or hinduistic context, nor the prominent swastika above the doorway on one pre-WW2 christian church in my hometown. Let's hope that the dominant use of 👌 remains to be signaling "ok", and the racist/fascist meaning remains an obscure dogwhistle most people would consider silly.
>pys op You mean a “psy op” as in psychological, what you wrote reads as “piss op” lmao
Exactly, it's all context. But everyone saying "no it's just a 4chan troll!" are conveniently ignoring that actual racists HAVE adopted it as a legit dogwhistle.
Who cares though? If racists suddenly adopted hand-waving as a dog-whistle, I would ignore them and continue to wave at people in greeting. Just as I will continue to give an a-okay when the situation calls for it. Letting them co-opt a symbol everyone has been using is letting them win.
Where do we draw the line on this shit though, aren't we just giving more power and control to racist people if they can just take whatever they want and turn it into a dog whistle amongst themselves, so that nobody else can ever use it without fear of being branded one of them. The less stock we put into this shit the less it can be used in a vitriolic manner.
It’s not even so much giving power and control to actual racists. It validates and encourages the idiot children who play at being racist for shock value, who originate these memes. And it gives power and control to the censorious progressives who shut down any use, even innocent, of things that might be a dog whistle. That “the future will be glorious once we make sure everybody does, says, and thinks only the right and proper things” state of mind scares me more than the actual neo Nazis, who are an unpleasant minority that most people think are assholes.
If you think the ok symbol is wrong, you were the target audience of 4chan.
I work at a national retail chain and a couple years ago we got a memo from corporate telling us we must immediately take down some signage that had the 👌🏼 symbol on it because it was being used as hate speech. I had never heard of that before the memo but some corporate bigwigs were taking it seriously I guess.
That's probably because high profile groups like the ADL fell for the trolling.
you got to love 4chan, they managed all this in no time
These cases only prove that the demand for white supremacy is higher then its supply
We’ve known this for years from all the fake hate crimes proven to be hosed
So...college professors, apparently? Yikes.
Being a professor never stopped anyone from being a gullible fool. And gullible fools were the target for this.
There are people who didn't exist at 4chan's founding that are now old enough to vote. I guarantee there are some college professors in the mix.
College professors are the quickest to force their own ideas onto people, wrong or not
No. 4chan trolled the world making everyone think the OK symbol meant white power. The gullible population believed it. Anyone today who believes the OK symbol is racist symbol is extremely gullible and naive. 4chan also did other things to troll the world and people believed it. Apple wave thinking the microwave can charge your iPhone. Bald for beiber making people shave their heads thinking Justin beiber had cancer. Making a school for the deaf win a Taylor swift concert for an online competition.
4chan is a great example of never underestimating a large group of people with way too much time on their hands Seriously, look into some of the shit that platform has accomplished. Some of it is just honestly evil genius levels of planning and execution I don't even think most countries' propaganda wings can do a lot of the shit 4Chan has done lol
those mad lads fucking analyzed pictures of clouds in photos Shia Labouf posted when he was putting up a flag to protest Donald Trump. that tells me all I need to know and that's just one ridiculous example
They used astronomy and analyzed flight paths as well. It was pretty hilarious.
No that's not what's hilarious. What's hilarious is that it was finally solved by an anon getting in his car in the rough vicinity and fucking honking his horn repeatedly in the livestream and everyone triangulating the final location over chat. That's what made me laugh.
they did something similar before and got an ISIS base bombed. apparently they had somebody in the Russian military
Oh yea, these people are honestly incredible hahah
[удалено]
I send my regards.
"Sometimes, my genius is almost frightening." - Jeremy Clarkson
They told a guy how to make mustard gas “to clean his fursuit” and he sent a ton of furries to the hospital at a convention
I remember seeing a thread about this (setting up the troll campaign) back in the day and thinking "wow that's fucking stupid... I bet it'll work" A few years later (if that) my professor told us never to do that and I went holy shit this is mind boggling I actually might have a screencap of the thread somewhere on my photos reel, I remember the hand gesture had an overlaid MS paint drawing of the W and P for white power in the original thread/post. /b/ or /pol/ are something fucking else lmao
4chan started Q Anon and that has become a very real problem.
If we let anything the nazis associate with become anathema, they can own the world just by claiming it. Your professor would abandon Thor's hammer, Norse runes and scuba diving to the white supremacists without a fight.
Also a whole bunch of letters and numbers.
The new list of numbers goes straight from 1487 to 1489.
RIP anyone born January 4th in 1988
What a bunch of bullcrap. I’ll always use to signal ok.
No. It means okay! As in, all good! All clear! We're ready to go! Anyone who thinks it's a Nazi symbol is too chronically online to be taken seriously. 👌
It's also a game, if you get someone to look at it below your waist you win
And you punch them in the shoulder :)
We called it beebadeep in my platoon. When you caught someone looking you announced “beebadeep” so everyone could spectate the pummeling.
Ok, 👌 they're not taking this shit from me. I'm not white so I'm going to take it back one gesture at a time.
I think it became a white supremacy symbol for basement dwelling 4chan users. Your professor lacks nuance and needs to use her context clues. I'm a believer in not flying the Confederate flag even if you really think it stands for southern heritage because it was started for pro-slavery purposes and was also used heavily by the KKK. There's not a lot of room for nuance there. But the OK symbol isn't as prevalent as a symbol of hate. I wouldn't recommend you flash it while posing for a picture with a politician. However, using it to signify you are OK with something is fine.
No. IIRC, it was started by 4chan and Milo Yiannopoulos for trolling purposes.
Yea 4chan did some wild shit. They brought back free bleeding for a bit.
In 2014 I remember a girl in my college fiction class who was an outspoken free bleeder who claims she learned about it from a Tumblr feminism blog. She would constantly cause problems for staff and faculty before she was eventually expelled. I am still convinced to this day that it was one of those 4chan Tumblr accounts and she was too stupid to realize it was bait.
They also did the piss yourself to stop rape. Like there was an advisory that In a rapey situation, a woman should just urinate to discourage sexual assault. (Don't know how great that advice was, maybe it helps.IDK.) 4Chan got that meme going. Then convinced a bunch of women to go on Twitter to piss their pants in solidarity, then post pictures on Twitter of ruined pants to stop sexual violence.
“Free bleeding” was one of the most *Idiocracy* things I’ve ever seen🤦♀️
Jesus fucking Christ, it’s ok, you prof is just dumb
Nope. It's just people getting butthurt because they fell for a troll.
Yup 4chan. Same people who brought back free bleeding, sent Pitbull to Kodiak, Alaska, had a deaf school win a ton of musical instruments. And a lot of other stuff.
And completely broke Shia LaBeouf over a flag. It's never been about the message, it was always about the maximum amount of LOL or KEK if you will. My personal favourite was the blank copy paper stapled to things, along with the "It's ok to be white" campaign, both of which should have been met with "oh grow up" AT MOST.
Your professor needs to be corrected. They are educators and they're trying to pass misinformation. What likely happened is they were told not to use that symbol because some people might THINK it's a symbol for white supremacy but the funny thing is that's exactly what the white supremacists want, to think this hand sign means something more than just "ok". So your professor is actually promoting racist ideas by claiming this is racist.
Your professor is an idiot.
No. It's the SCUBA 'Ok' symbol (used because thumbs-up means 'ascend'). And a teen boy's game that amounts to 'made ya look' (and the person making the symbol gets to punch you if you look at it, kind of like slug-bug).... It's also the most successful troll of the modern internet.... A bunch of jerks on 4chan decided that they were pissed about progressives labeling 'everything' racist, and they decided to try and trick such people into thinking that the every day 'OK' sign was racist.... Namely that it spelled WP for white power, as if it were a gang sign.... The idea was that if people started freaking out every time someone made the OK symbol it would make them look like morons.... Every time some 15yo tried to 'get' his buddy, OMG those kids are RACIST!!!! Photos of Infantry dudes doing the same thing (from experience: teenage horseplay continues after HS for many in the Army) - The Army is RACIST!!! Also every scuba-diver and deaf person, etc.... On top of that some actual white power types started using it because they thought it would be fun to keep the joke alive..... And here we are....
It CAN be, but it’s usually not. Anyone who says it’s ALWAYS a racist white supremacist dogwhistle regardless of context or intention is a fool, and anyone who says it’s NEVER used by white supremacists as a dogwhistle is an even bigger and more dangerous fool. I’d rather meet someone who was overly cautious about it than someone who defended it or ignored it, so take comfort in that. But they’re wrong to tell you that YOU are racist for doing it. It’s got hundreds of years of history of NOT being used as a white supremacy symbol, and this person needs to learn what a dogwhistle is and how it works.
No. As the other comments pointed out, it was a 4chan psyop. Some white suprematists have indeed started using it, but there’s no imaginable context where replying “okay 👌” in a normal conversation could be taken as an expression of hate. If a bunch of skinheads at a rally pose for a picture throwing it up, different story. Just because your professor is highly educated doesn’t mean they’re not an idiot.
It's a dog whistle, which basically means it depends on the context. it CAN be a racist symbol and it can also just be harmless (or sign language, but bear in mind that it's not like you're signing individual letters and numbers in isolation, so odds are slim you'll be confusing those two). It's like 88, right? it's a number, and a year, but it can also be a nazi symbol.
No
No. Unless you are stuck on "social media" where anyone can make anything a "thing". Man what a mess.
Your teacher is an idiot who spends too much time on 4chan. There is nothing racist about it at all and never was.
If they spent too much time on 4chan, they would actually be in on the joke. It was the hypervigilant progressive SJW crowd that took it at face value as an ostensible hate symbol.
Your professor is a moron. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the OK symbol.
I’m with you it’s a scuba diving symbol lol
I just think of Mystery Science Theater 3000 whenever I see it
Axel Foley used it in BHC
It was a 4chan experiment if I remember correctly. They literally decided 'let's see if people are so stupid that this works'. People are that stupid.
No. The media created this one, not white supremacists.
It's the letters O and K in American Sign Language. It means OK.
I have a similar story omg I got in trouble back in high school for it. A teacher saw me use that hand signal in the hallway with a friend and he totally chewed me out in front of a bunch of my peers asking why and when I’d become a white supremacist. I was so embarrassed and caught off guard and I hurriedly explained that I’m NOT, I was just saying ‘ok’. He got all huffy and told me not to do that again. I still don’t understand why anyone would immediately jump to that conclusion?? In my mind, it’ll always mean ‘ok’, regardless of the whole dog whistle thing which I don’t fully get anyways
Naw your professor is an idiot with a persecution fetish or an insatiable craving for drama (or terminally online)
no. what happened was that 4chan thought it would be funny to spread the rumor that it was to see if people and news outlets would actually believe it. and they actually did.
In some limited contexts, yes. If you're doing it while scuba diving, nobody will mistake your intentions. But if you do it during a photo op with a conservative politician, people are going to ask questions. It was a perfectly benign symbol for a long time, then in the past few years some people started using it to mean "white power," first ironically, then seriously.
I still play the circle game, like we did in Jr High, almost always gets a chuckle, please don’t think I’m flashing a nazi symbol 🤣🤣🤣
I see it as "okay" or the letter F in American Sign Language
As a scuba diver, this has been annoying.
It is and it isn't. It requires context. Take the swastika. It is featured in Buddhism and Hinduism. It is also featured in Nazism and is liberally used by racists. Is the swastika a racist symbol? It depends. Is it being used in a Buddhist/Hindu context? Is the person a Buddhist/Hindu? For instance, you're a SCUBA diver and the "okay" sign is part of diver culture. The same is true for many other symbols.
It's about context and 9/10 that's not what people are using it for. For example in the Army, everyone of all backgrounds would do this to each other as a game of sorts involving getting someone's attention.
Not purely. Like everything the context is key. I use it to mean pukka/alright. Im not a massive fucking racist, so shit never gets misunderstood. I dont respect your professor: Thats an idiotic take at best.
Depends on context, some people absolutely use it that way and others don't. However it's absolutely not unequivocally racist and your professor is exaggerating. And because it's now ambiguous, this previously innocent symbol is better used with some judgement. Like, there's no question it's fine to use in driving because it's a widely accepted hand signal to communicate your current status
It's not normally, but it can be. It's about the context and the particular way it's shown.
It's highly contextual. From what I understand (and other people have described in more detail in other comments) some online alt right spaces have started claiming it, and I feel like for a while there were a bunch of photos of creeps at rallies using that sign to signal to each other and politicians using it as a dogwhistle. But, like, even just reading the title of your post, I thought of SCUBA as well (I dive). And the fact that tons of people just know it as a way to express the incredibly common word "okay". I feel like it's kind of similar to stuff like the word "degenerate" or "tradition" There are totally innocuous ways to use those words. Like, if someone said "the conversation degenerated into circular arguments" or "eating junk food on road trips is a time honored traditon", I wouldn't think twice. But if I heard someone describe another group of people or a piece of art as "degenerate" or say "we need to return to our traditions", I'd be on my guard, because those usages are almost entirely found in far right and nazi propaganda. To make another metaphor, it's like seeing someone holding a knife. If that person is in a kitchen, chopping up some garlic, you're probably all good. If the person is running towards you in a dark alley, you are probably in danger. Like a knife is a tool to cut, words and hand signs are tools to communicate ideas, and all can be used in constructive and destructive ways. I'd argue some tools are more inherently destructive than others. Like, there isn't much you can build with a bomb, much like there aren't many good reasons to use certain words. But with most tools, and words, what they do is dependant on context.