Secret Hand Gestures in Paintings (2019)

196 points by Jaruzel 1 year ago | 162 comments
  • antognini 1 year ago
    Another hand gesture you will frequently see in religious art is a figure (usually a Pope or bishop) pointing upwards with their index and middle finger. This is somewhat unnatural since you would generally point with your index finger alone. The use of two fingers represents the divine and human natures of Christ.

    A few examples:

    https://i2.wp.com/catholicism.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/fil...

    https://jimmyakin.com/wp-content/uploads/st-augustine-and-fo...

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Urban_VIII#/media/File%...

    It shows up in formal photographs of the Pope in the 20th century:

    https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ch3pBw3dBY0/WeG5Oo9_k1I/AAAAAAAAC...

    And the TV series The Young Pope even included this gesture as a detail: https://youngpopesart.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/...

    • pulkitsh1234 1 year ago
      If you have played Elden Ring, There is an amazing video on the "two fingers" and "three fingers" by "The Tarnished Archaeologist" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hETam732CvY
      • fortran77 1 year ago
        > Another hand gesture you will frequently see in religious art is a figure (usually a Pope or bishop) pointing upwards with their index and middle finger. This is somewhat unnatural since you would generally point with your index finger alone. The use of two fingers represents the divine and human natures of Christ.

        At Disney employee training they taught me to point with index and middle finger (or my whole hand) too.

        • dpig_ 1 year ago
          The use of two fingers represents the dual natures of Disney Channel and Disney Plus.
          • sandworm101 1 year ago
            That is less about the gesture than it is about avoiding a different gesture. Many cultures do not appreciate pointing with a single finger. So Disney wants their people to use two.
            • bbarnett 1 year ago
              I had thought it was more about pointing at a person with a finger was unwelcome, than pointing at a destination. I suppose in a crowded place such as an amusement park, you could inadvertently point at a person when giving directions?
          • dvh 1 year ago
            The pope photo is not him pointing upward, he's doing the blessing. Imagine someone standing right in front of him and he's pointing two fingers at their head, then move to torso, then left shoulder, then right shoulder. Depending on the speed of the camera at that time, he might pose like that for a second just to take the photograph as if he's in the middle of the blessing someone. I've never seen priest doing it with one or three or four fingers.

            Tldr: they're not pointing upwards, they're pointing to someone's head (the viewer of the painting/photography most likely)

            I bet when they used one finger people were asking "me?" and then looked behind them to see if there is someone else. If priest uses two fingers it's obvious he's not pointing at you or someone behind you. It also helps if he points it little bit higher not just right between your eyes like a gun.

            • Loughla 1 year ago
              It's literally the hand sign of dual nature of Christ. Blessing or posing.

              The Catholic Church has had quite a few years to solidify and formalize their rituals. Nothing a priest does during mass is accidental or coincidental. They go to school for these things.

              • fsckboy 1 year ago
                >The Catholic Church has had quite a few years to solidify and formalize their rituals.

                so they retconned it?

            • throwawayForMe2 1 year ago
              It also frequently seen in images of the child Jesus.
            • Daub 1 year ago
              My favorite secret hand gesture in a painting is in the portrait of the Duchess of Alba by Goya. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Francisco-de-Goya-Duches...

              The text on the floor that she is pointing to reads 'solo Goya' (only Goya) and was not discovered until the painting was cleaned in modern times.

              As to it's significance, draw your own conclusions.

              • massinstall 1 year ago
                From the publication: “The speculation that the hand gesture herein presented is a freemasonry’s conveyed code is fascinating, but it is hard to accept.”

                This sentence concluded a very short paragraph that apparently aimed to explore whether the hand sign could have a Masonic meaning. But instead of giving any explanation for their conclusion, the authors merely postulate the above without any given reasoning. I’m surprised to find this in what appears to aim to be a scientific analysis. Even more so would it surprise me if any conscious reader found this conclusion satisfactory.

                Any thoughts?

                • runjake 1 year ago
                  32° Freemason here. The images and descriptions do not match any masonic hand positions I am aware of.

                  However, there were numerous other fraternities and secret societies during that era, although they were typically gender-specific. Seeing both men and women using the same hand signals suggests these were likely common societal practices of the time. And since, presumably the hand positions are secret, they're not going to be immortalized in a painting.

                  • flir 1 year ago
                    > presumably the hand positions are secret, they're not going to be immortalized in a painting.

                    I wouldn't bet on it. Performative secrecy is very common in esotericism.

                    • runjake 1 year ago
                      Touche. You are correct. In fact, a number of paintings of esoteric figures now come to mind where their hands are in a particular configuration.
                    • fidotron 1 year ago
                      > 32° Freemason here. The images and descriptions do not match any masonic hand positions I am aware of.

                      Would you actually be able to say it if they were?

                      • flir 1 year ago
                        The other guard always lies.
                        • runjake 1 year ago
                          I would just not comment, in that case.
                          • rubyfan 1 year ago
                            Most of the secrets and symbols are available in publications and online for a very long time.
                            • NoMoreNicksLeft 1 year ago
                              Probably not, the Freemason Police patrol this internet web site daily, and he'd disappear in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again. Be sure to follow up on his comment history a month from now, to see whether he's said anything since.
                            • temporarely 1 year ago
                              Sorry to break the news to you Jake but there are two orders. Those of "that era" are the actual power breakers, you guys are the peculiar but innocent window dressing.

                              > And since, ..

                              No, the meaning is the secret :) Oh dear.

                              • kjkjadksj 1 year ago
                                Sometimes with these sorts of organizations their deepest secrets are the meaning of their public symbology.
                                • dpig_ 1 year ago
                                  Source: Nicolas Cage
                                  • Timon3 1 year ago
                                    Do you have any examples you could share?
                                  • coliveira 1 year ago
                                    What is secret is the meaning, not the gesture itself.
                                  • bgoated01 1 year ago
                                    Having been involved in peer reviewed publishing before, I wonder if this was an afterthought prompted by a peer reviewer's comments on the paper. Perhaps they quickly added this point just to get it to pass review. Sloppy, if so, but I've seen similar (though not as blatant) things happen.
                                    • karaterobot 1 year ago
                                      There were enough basic grammatical errors in that article—not to mention a general lack of clarity and specificity—that I initially wondered whether it was a preprint, or maybe somebody's blog. But no.
                                      • standardly 1 year ago
                                        "According to this hypothesis, the gesture was a secret sign used to recognize crypto-jews each other"

                                        "According to this hypothesis, the gesture was a secret sign used to recognize masonic followers each other"

                                        I have never heard this verbiage before... Did an AI write this? Or, can someone explain to me how "used to recognize followers each other" is grammatically sound?

                                      • crdrost 1 year ago
                                        I mean the whole paper is sloppy here. They kind of are writing to a biomedical journal and then say "well, it's NOT biomedical..." as kind of a little brush-off? And then they go through a couple explanations they have heard and dismiss them without really going through the evidence. (I especially liked the sloppiness of self-contradiction, in one section they're like "well there are no Hebrew letters that work for this" which is wrong, you could make decent arguments for both shin and tsadeh -- but then almost immediately after they're like "well this could be an M or W, W can symbolically be the Hebrew letter Vav...")

                                        And after cursorily dismissing them they just say "therefore, it's an aesthetic meme. This is just what perfect hands look like, sorry."

                                        A hypothesis that was not considered, for example: 'We asked people at school to imagine that they were going to be sitting still for the next three hours on a stool, and to sit on it in a way that was perfectly relaxed. We then prompted them "remember, in old times you'd have had to sit here for three hours, really relax." Finally, we then picked up their left wrist, turned it, and placed it on their chests saying "great, now can you just hold this hand here," and took a photograph. In 30% of these photographs we also see, even without syndactyly, that the two fingers get forced together just by the process of having your wrist twisted by an artist and then the fingers having to conform to the contours of the chest.'

                                        I don't know what that percentage is, but I'd be surprised if it were 0%, right?

                                        • burnished 1 year ago
                                          The genius of your proposition is that you wouldn't have to be surprised, you'd just know
                                      • panarchy 1 year ago
                                        This reads like it belongs in an episode of The Curse of Oak Island not an article.
                                        • anigbrowl 1 year ago
                                          I noticed that too. Eventually they drew the conclusion that people just copied each other to look cool. I have no idea whether there's more to the 'hidden meanings' conjectures or not, but if you're going to dig into a topic, dig in properly. Waste of reading time in my view.
                                          • marginalia_nu 1 year ago
                                            Could also be from some defunct offshoot off the freemasons or some other adjacent secret society. The rosicrucians are perhaps most well known, but secret hermetic societies were fairly in-fashion during the renaissance. Given the secrecy involved, it's probably very hard to know what is and is not (and has been) a significant gesture.

                                            I'd also personally not be surprised if hermetic symbolism cropped up around the Medici-adjacent artists in particular, given the Medicis' proximity to Pico della Mirandola who was fairly important in bringing together this new mix of christian, jewish, gnostic and neoplatonist mysticism.

                                            • 1 year ago
                                            • odyssey7 1 year ago
                                              > hands were as important a focus of attention as the face was, because they were the only other visible area of the body

                                              Huh, I had always assumed the reason that they were featured in renaissance art was the trend of depicting subjects with a sort of realism, combined with hands tending to be a more difficult feature for artists to master; so a good depiction of hands showcases the skill of the artist and enhances the work’s merit as a status symbol for its owner.

                                              I guess both could be true. Hands are an important focus of attraction in the modern day tbf.

                                              • JoeDaDude 1 year ago
                                                I am reminded of a short scene in the film Goya's Ghosts, where the artists claims to charge more if the portrait he is painting includes one or two hands.
                                              • mbivert 1 year ago
                                                > unnatural hand position

                                                Is it really unnatural? Interestingly, as a right-handed, the two middle fingers of my right hand tend to effortlessly group together; this feels noticeably less true on my left hand, but still observable if I try to relax it.

                                                The peculiar "mission tile" (half-cylindrical) flexibility of the palm region, encouraged by writing for example, may foster this grouping.

                                                It's a bit surprising for the article not to address potential anatomical causes.

                                                • w10-1 1 year ago
                                                  The ulnar nerve goes to finger 4 and 5, and the median to 2 and 3 plus a branch to 4. For me, 3+4 is the most difficult combination to maintain, and raising 4 is the most difficult, but the effect (as you suggest) is strongest in the non-dominant hand.

                                                  So I interpret this position as simply the most difficult hand position to maintain, thus indicating some intention, practice, or awareness -- and thus self-control, which was considered the master virtue classically.

                                                  • onionisafruit 1 year ago
                                                    I naturally keep my pinky and ring fingers together on my right hand, and I think this is a result of how I hold my phone. It made me wonder if there is an easily overlooked common activity of that time that would cause people to naturally hold their middle and ring fingers together.

                                                    Your example of writing makes sense too. Perhaps because writers were a more exclusive club then, prominently showing your subject’s hand with that finger grouping was a message in itself.

                                                    • jameshart 1 year ago
                                                      I’d also consider the possibility that artists might use their own hand as a reference when detailing hands in a painting, and their own physiology might be affected by long hours working with a brush. Artists training other artists might reinforce this collective conclusion that this is a natural relaxed hand pose, because when they look at their own hands that’s often what they see.
                                                    • berniedurfee 1 year ago
                                                      Yep. If I just naturally lay my hand down on something, my middle and ring fingers do tend to naturally come together.

                                                      It takes a tiny bit of intent to splay my fingers out.

                                                      Portrait artists constantly study people very closely and are likely attuned to thousands of little nuanced details that go unnoticed by most people. This is probably one.

                                                      Now I’m going to start looking at people’s hands to check their finger positions. That might have been a good exercise for the authors of the paper to determine if this is a natural hand position.

                                                      • jameshart 1 year ago
                                                        I think the claim that it’s an unnatural position definitely needs justifying. A search of a corpus of modern photographs to determine the base rate for hands resting in this pose and a comparison of that to the rate depicted in renaissance art would seem to be the minimal due diligence to determine if there’s even an effect that needs explaining, before delving into the relative likelihood of Masonic symbolism.
                                                        • ricardobeat 1 year ago
                                                          As an exercise, pretend you’re a 16th century lord, or just a very theatrical person, and raise your arm with a drooping hand, then gently touch your chest with your fingers splayed and wrist at an angle. Your two fingers in the middle naturally touch first, and stay together once you lay down the whole hand, exactly like in the portraits. It’s not a straining position.

                                                          I’m also surprised the paper (?) doesn’t go into simple behavioural explanations for this.

                                                          • taeric 1 year ago
                                                            Agreed. I think it is somewhat uncommon to have the fingers touching, but the pinky and pointer are both much more separable from the rest.
                                                            • mordymoop 1 year ago
                                                              If I absently place my hand on my chest, the resulting configuration looks just like the “unnatural” one in the painting.
                                                              • carabiner 1 year ago
                                                                Maybe because you're biased having read the article? I just looked at a picture of me waving at the camera taken 2 weeks ago, and my fingers are splayed apart with even spacing.
                                                                • mordymoop 1 year ago
                                                                  When I rotate my hand toward my body the middle fingers come together, when it rotate it away they fan out. I can feel this happening in the tension of my muscles and ligaments during rotation. In contrast, pulling my two middle fingers together on purpose with my hand held out, without also pulling together all my fingers, feels weird. I simply think this is a mechanically likely think to happen due to the design of the forearm, though it may not be the case for everyone depending on tension and strength and anatomy.
                                                                  • throw310822 1 year ago
                                                                    It's a pity we don't have renaissance paintings of subjects waving at the painter. While making a silly face too.
                                                                • dim13 1 year ago
                                                                  Same here, just a natural anatomic relaxed hand/finger position in my case.
                                                                • bakul 1 year ago
                                                                  Note that "mudras" have significant meanings in Hinduism, Jainism & Buddhism. Mudras used in Indian dances convey feelings or elements of story etc. Also used in yoga. And mudras are not just hand gestures but also facial expressions, eye movements and so on.

                                                                  Though there does not seem to be any connection of mudras with European paintings. There were cultural links between India and the Greco-Roman world in 2nd-1st century BCE around the time of Indo-Greek kingdom (northwest of the current India) but seems unlikely that would have such an influence centuries later.

                                                                  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudra

                                                                  • Oarch 1 year ago
                                                                    This kind of speculation is what Friday afternoons were made for.
                                                                    • drtgh 1 year ago
                                                                      It is so poorly researched and, with such a weak seeker spirit, that I doubt they spent more than a weekend to it while playing video games.
                                                                    • dmurray 1 year ago
                                                                      The only two plausible explanations to me are either that artists conventionally drew hands like this (for religious, artistic or other reasons) or that artists' subjects conventionally posed like this, for a similar variety of reasons, or because the artist told them to.

                                                                      The article helpfully rules out a third explanation, an "epidemic of syndactyly", but doesn't make a strong decision between the other two. It seems to lean towards this being a quirk of the artists, but it could do with a quantitative study: if artist A painted subject A like this, what happened when artist A portrayed other subjects, or other artists portrayed A?

                                                                      • JKCalhoun 1 year ago
                                                                        Yeah, to me it is an artistic thing (then followed perhaps by painters copying "the Masters").

                                                                        Fingers spread evenly is artistically uninteresting — naive even. Fingers all joined is also rather dull — suggests a rigidity in fact.

                                                                        • kmoser 1 year ago
                                                                          My thoughts exactly: by bringing two of the five fingers together you achieve a more interesting effect of overall asymmetry among the fingers, and yet because the two joined fingers are each flanked by a "detached" finger, it creates another layer of symmetry within the non-thumb fingers.

                                                                          The overall effect is quite pleasing to the eye, which may account for it having caught on to the point where it became a trend. I see this as the Occam's Razor of explanations.

                                                                      • ldjb 1 year ago
                                                                        400 years later, this mysterious hand gesture would resurface in the character designs of Capcom's Mega Man / Rockman series of video games.

                                                                        https://themmnetwork.com/2010/03/18/the-great-mega-man-finge...

                                                                        • leocgcd 1 year ago
                                                                          i think papers like this reveal the benefits of domain-specific methodologies. a scientific paper is a bad choice for historiography.

                                                                          art historical texts are usually much more concerned with close reading of artworks to establish syncretic pathways of artistic convention. art writers are usually unconcerned with null hypothesis and burden of proof. the authors here had no real claim about history or any interesting reading of artwork. i couldn't imagine something like this being disseminated in an arts journal or publication-- there just isn't enough time spent with the methods of art history, i.e close readings of the examples presented, primary source inclusion, historiographic narrative, formal analysis, etc.

                                                                          i wish i could provide a counterexample, but my work is on american conceptual sculpture, not renaissance art. i think the last very good text i read on the renaissance was james hall's book on michelangelo's anatomy published some years ago.

                                                                          • shrx 1 year ago
                                                                            The famous Arnolfini Portrait [0] by Jan van Eyck also has quite a bit of symbolism depicted in the hands of the portrait subjects.

                                                                            [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnolfini_Portrait#Interpretat...

                                                                            • ffhhj 1 year ago
                                                                              The knife in the hand and the knife-like hand:

                                                                              https://cdn.kastatic.org/ka-perseus-images/82e1c6954dc87273a...

                                                                            • irrational 1 year ago
                                                                              > Finally, there is no letter or religious gesture, Hebrew or otherwise, similar to the splayed hand.

                                                                              Isn’t there? Not including the thumb, it looks like the letter shin. Of course, the Vulcan salute also famously makes the shin letter (but, includes the thumb).

                                                                              • AdamN 1 year ago
                                                                                "During the Renaissance period, hands were as important a focus of attention as the face was, because they were the only other visible area of the body."

                                                                                [Example painting is a Titian with a naked Mary Magdalene]

                                                                                • criddell 1 year ago
                                                                                  I love that there's a section for conflicts of interest.

                                                                                  Would have been interesting to see a disclosure for a pharma company working on syndactyly or a disclosure that the authors belong to some secret society.

                                                                                  • walterbell 1 year ago
                                                                                    Or a disclosure that their ancestors were for or against a secret society.
                                                                                    • tocs3 1 year ago
                                                                                      Or that the authors are themselves in a secret society that uses this gesture.
                                                                                  • Lammy 1 year ago
                                                                                    > It is an unnatural position of one or both hands in which the third and fourth digits are held tight together, as if almost fused, resembling syndactyly, and the second and fifth fingers are separated from the central ones.

                                                                                    My favorite example is in the Flammarion engraving: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flammarion_engraving

                                                                                    • betandr 1 year ago
                                                                                      It's fascinating that modern gang signs might be considered a recent development although they have probably been always with us.
                                                                                      • defrost 1 year ago
                                                                                        A great deal of hand talking is suprisingly universal | understood quickly enogh on opposite sides of the globe, almost all hunter gatherers have finger talk and share common enough base despite seperate regions.

                                                                                        eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuhhn-GSejs

                                                                                      • tocs3 1 year ago
                                                                                        Was not sure but had to look up a definition. "Syndactyly is a condition wherein two or more digits are fused together."

                                                                                        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndactyly

                                                                                        I thought maybe it was some sort of condition that caused finger to contract like that.

                                                                                        • lkdfjlkdfjlg 1 year ago
                                                                                          It's just a matter of style. People copy the styles that they identify themselves with/aspire to. Artist copy each other, black kids copy 50cent, white kids copy jake paul, gay men copy each others feminine affectations. Once you notice it, it's everywhere.
                                                                                          • guerrilla 1 year ago
                                                                                            > gay men copy each others feminine affectations

                                                                                            Do you know of research on this? I have two gay friends with feminine speech and both are adamant that they don't choose to have this and would prefer not to. Each has their own theory as to why they have it. One suspects it might be (epi)genetic while another suspects its influenced by being raised by women. I can't buy the latter since many very masculine straight men were raised exclusively by women.

                                                                                        • DonHopkins 1 year ago
                                                                                          One of my aspirational hobbies is designing Apple Vision Pro games and interfaces that trick people into unwittingly making embarrassing hand gestures in public.

                                                                                          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsGnqf3CUW8

                                                                                          • scifi 1 year ago
                                                                                            I just wanted to add something I didn't see mentioned in the article or the discussion. In the Christian tradition, figures are often portrayed with their pinky and ring fingers curled up, while the thumb, index, and middle fingers are extended. This is done to symbolize the holy trinity.
                                                                                            • 082349872349872 1 year ago
                                                                                              > ...with their pinky and ring fingers curled up, while the thumb, index, and middle fingers are extended.

                                                                                              leading to a local joke:

                                                                                              Q. How can you spot a forester on a Saturday night?

                                                                                              A. (while making sign above) 5 beers, please!

                                                                                              • vinnyvichy 1 year ago
                                                                                                Not Poire, then
                                                                                                • 082349872349872 1 year ago
                                                                                                  And here I'd thought « entre la poire et le fromage » ?

                                                                                                  (William the first may have preferred calvados, and the current William is unlikely to be based enough to style himself William the last [ending the monarchy in 2066], but I prefer my Williams in a bottle)

                                                                                            • rebuilder 1 year ago
                                                                                              Well, faces and hands are still considered important. There’s a saying that if you get the face and hands right, you can get away with anything.

                                                                                              Also common advice for artists is to group the middle and ring fingers together. It just looks better and they kind of tend to do so naturally anyway.

                                                                                              • pyuser583 1 year ago
                                                                                                I really like this article. Many humanities articles are political or opaque.

                                                                                                But simple articles like this add to knowledge in a fun way. I hope this becomes more common with more open journals.

                                                                                                Not sure if Acta Biomed is open.

                                                                                                • motohagiography 1 year ago
                                                                                                  Can probably rule out Freemasonry. If it were masonic, it would be a very rare symbol, sign, or token that has not survived to modern times.
                                                                                                  • koolala 1 year ago
                                                                                                    Maybe those are their herb fingers while they sit still waiting during the photo and walt disney edited it out
                                                                                                    • antman 1 year ago
                                                                                                      So there are somewhere lists of such symbolisms? Where would one find them?
                                                                                                      • greenhearth 1 year ago
                                                                                                        The spread fingers make three points on a fibonacci curve. It is just the most aesthetically pleasant gesture. The artists were always in pursuit of beauty and this is what it is.
                                                                                                        • every 1 year ago
                                                                                                          I discovered I was using that very gesture on my touchpad to scroll through the article and this thread...
                                                                                                          • _tk_ 1 year ago
                                                                                                            Same here.
                                                                                                          • wmanley 1 year ago
                                                                                                            Of all the hypotheses they considered, they seem to have missed the obvious one: Cosimo I de' Medici is Eastside and Jesus, God and Mary Magdalene are Westside.
                                                                                                          • moi2388 1 year ago
                                                                                                            “ It should be considered an artistic device or a symbolic hallmark without any conveyed meaning rather than a true pathologic depiction of syndactyly.”

                                                                                                            Well, that was tax money well spent. Is this actually considered science now? Is this what (art) historians actually do? Speculate a bit and then say “well, it probably was something”?

                                                                                                            • 1 year ago
                                                                                                              • mandibeet 1 year ago
                                                                                                                Symbolic language in paintings is always so interesting for me to discover
                                                                                                                • mihaic 1 year ago
                                                                                                                  I'm surprised the paper doesn't entertain the notion that some things look cool, artists copy one another, and trends simply start like that naturally.

                                                                                                                  I mean, it's not like Corinthian style columns have a hidden meaning. They look nice and provide artists with a great default.

                                                                                                                  • legitster 1 year ago
                                                                                                                    Great, now I can't stop thinking about what I do with my hands all day. Thanks.

                                                                                                                    But for real, this seems like selection bias. Is combination of fingers touching actually any more or less common than any others?

                                                                                                                    • ruined 1 year ago
                                                                                                                      west side
                                                                                                                      • karaterobot 1 year ago
                                                                                                                        My thought as well. The article suggests it's an "M" for Medici, but it could just as easily be a W" for "Westside Connection". This sort of proves a theory of mine, that Ice Cube has a time machine.

                                                                                                                        (Presumably he developed it in order to travel back to the best day of his life, the day he messed around and got a triple double, and then later used it to travel back to the 16th century and influence the late Renaissance... but here I am speculating)

                                                                                                                      • baldr333 1 year ago
                                                                                                                        Hitler also had the same hand gesture in his portrait by Heinrich Knirr
                                                                                                                        • SamBam 1 year ago
                                                                                                                          Most likely the artist referencing the style of the earlier paintings.
                                                                                                                          • imglorp 1 year ago
                                                                                                                            More than one evidently.

                                                                                                                            https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Hitler+portrait+by+Heinrich+Knirr&...

                                                                                                                            • 1 year ago
                                                                                                                              • riskable 1 year ago
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                                                                                                                                • 1 year ago
                                                                                                                                  • DontchaKnowit 1 year ago
                                                                                                                                    That is a joke... the "ok" symbol being associated with "white piwer" is a complete and total fabrication.
                                                                                                                                    • stanleykm 1 year ago
                                                                                                                                      Even if it started as a fabrication it was pretty quickly adopted by the crowd you’d expect to be using such a hand gesture. IOW “Teehee I’m doing a hand gesture everyone thinks is racist but its not because its an internet joke” isnt the own you think it is.
                                                                                                                                      • llamaimperative 1 year ago
                                                                                                                                        Uh, no. It started as a joke, and then was absolutely adopted "as a joke" by white supremacists... which is functionally equivalent to a symbol of white supremacists. Not many people who aren't white supremacists are comfortable being labeled as one, and no one would "throw" this sign without knowledge they'd be labeled as a white supremacist, ergo either you're one of the few who's comfortable being labeled that way despite not being one (in which case yeah, you'll be labeled that way and don't have much to complain about), or you are one.

                                                                                                                                        That is exactly how all social signals work.

                                                                                                                                        https://nypost.com/2019/03/15/suspected-new-zealand-shooter-...

                                                                                                                                        Note: I do think people are sometimes too ambitious to leap toward accidental/arguable "flashing" of this sign as evidence of this belief system, but there are absolutely people who are consciously, deliberately, and sincerely doing it.

                                                                                                                                        • Ginguin 1 year ago
                                                                                                                                          That's the magic of human beings. Once the joke spreads to the point where the people who are in on it are flashing the symbol for the lolz, it no longer matters how it started or if there is no historical basis for the connection between the symbol and certain beliefs. The association exists now, however ironically.

                                                                                                                                          Oh look, the guy who is racist is flashing the ok symbol. His buddy, who is in the same spaces online is flashing the symbol as a joke. How can we not make certain assumptions about the second person and what they think?

                                                                                                                                          • DonHopkins 1 year ago
                                                                                                                                            N*gger jokes are jokes, but that doesn't mean it's not racist to make them and call black people n*gger to their face or online, just because you say you're just joking. And doing that online is just as racist as doing it in person.

                                                                                                                                            And your pathetic excuses that it's only teenage boys doing that, and that you know for a fact that all teenage boys who do that are only pretending to be racist because it's impossible for a teenage boy to actually be racist, only reveals that you yourself actually did that when you were a teenage boy, and you still haven't grown up and matured mentally enough to admit that it was wrong.

                                                                                                                                            Your ridiculous "boys will be boys" argument is absolute unmitigated bullshit, trying to justify your own misbehavior and racist beliefs you still haven't grown out of. You certainly sound exactly like a racist goat fucking teenaged boy. What other possible explanation is there for you carrying their water by making such disingenuous untrue arguments, and ignoring the counter arguments?

                                                                                                                                            And you're arguing in bad faith and ignoring the evidence other people are showing you, like the photograph of the Proud Boys who attacked the US Capitol on January 6 and Roger Stone all flashing that White Supremacist symbol fully knowing what it means and intending it to be understood that way, when NONE if them are teenaged boys. Those fully grown men are violent White Supremacists, and Roger Stone is 71 years old, not a teenaged boy.

                                                                                                                                            https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/roger-stone-proud-boys/

                                                                                                                                            Roger Stone was convicted of seven felony charges, including witness tampering, lying to congress, and obstruction, in relation to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, and he's a trusted advisor to Donald Trump who had White House access and still hangs out with him at Mar-a-Lago. Not a teenaged boy for 52 years, but definitely a racist hanging out with a bunch of other racists. And here you are defending him.

                                                                                                                                            • deprecative 1 year ago
                                                                                                                                              And? Words and phrases are often adopted by a group to mean things they didn't. The ok hand gesture was a joke then it was embraced by Nazis and here we are.

                                                                                                                                              But you knew that.

                                                                                                                                        • hamasho 1 year ago
                                                                                                                                          This reminds me of Korea's progressive feminist hand gesture [0]. For some reason, a video about Korea's gender war [1] ended up in my YouTube recommendation and somehow I decided to watch the 47-minute video (and another 110 minutes for part 2)...

                                                                                                                                          Basically, aggressive feminist groups use a hand gesture as a disrespect against men (or misogynists), but the gesture is so general and anti-feminism is so large in Korea, that a lot of people mistook the otherwise normal picture in anime/games as a hidden attack against men. It caused riots and several people lost their jobs or sometimes the entire projects/companies went down.

                                                                                                                                          I think it's not a good idea to associate a very natural gesture with horrible intentions...

                                                                                                                                          [0] https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/02/business/south-korea-busi... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Im4YAMWK74

                                                                                                                                          • flir 1 year ago
                                                                                                                                            > I think it's not a good idea to associate a very natural gesture with horrible intentions...

                                                                                                                                            I imagine it's a very good idea, if you have horrible intentions.

                                                                                                                                            https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ok-sign-wh...

                                                                                                                                            • Dig1t 1 year ago
                                                                                                                                              This entire thing is a hoax.

                                                                                                                                              > It has become an extremist meme, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

                                                                                                                                              The ADL maintains a "glossary" of every random meme and inside joke from 4chan and claims that they are all somehow connected with Nazis.

                                                                                                                                              The ADL itself is in fact considered a hate organization by many people.

                                                                                                                                              >Under the guise of fighting hate speech, the ADL has a long history of wielding its moral authority to attack Arabs, blacks, and queers.

                                                                                                                                              https://droptheadl.org

                                                                                                                                              https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/emmaia-gelman-anti-def...

                                                                                                                                              • aspenmayer 1 year ago
                                                                                                                                                > This entire thing is a hoax.

                                                                                                                                                While the usage of the ok sign likely began as a LARP hoax, it has since become adopted as a high sign/shibboleth by actual white supremacists and adjacent fringe groups like Boogaloo Boys, similarly to Hawaiian shirts.

                                                                                                                                                That’s the entire point of these types of signaling behaviors - they’re plausibly deniable, innocuous or not obviously offensive or aggressive, and they’re usually inscrutable or indecipherable to the out-group while being effective as signifiers of the in-group.

                                                                                                                                                • flir 1 year ago
                                                                                                                                                  "Just a joke, bro"

                                                                                                                                                  I hear that a lot.

                                                                                                                                              • pessimizer 1 year ago
                                                                                                                                                If people are attacking women and destroying companies because they think they might be associated with women's rights, it's not a hand gesture that's the problem. "Horrible intentions"?
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                                                                                                                                                • Dr_Birdbrain 1 year ago
                                                                                                                                                  I am confused why this appears on NIH.gov
                                                                                                                                                  • troymc 1 year ago
                                                                                                                                                    One of the proposed explanations was that lots of people actually had fingers which naturally posed like that, which, if true, would be of interest to people in biomedicine. The paper was published in Acta Biomedica, an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal that publishes original research articles, reviews, and case reports in the field of biomedical sciences. It then got slurped into various journal indices and online libraries, including the National Library of Medicine at the NIH.
                                                                                                                                                    • lgessler 1 year ago
                                                                                                                                                      A division of the NIH (NCBI) maintains a repository of open access publications in life sciences called PubMed Central (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PubMed_Central) and this article was in a qualifying journal.
                                                                                                                                                    • zoomablemind 1 year ago
                                                                                                                                                      Syndactyly is a medical condition; paintings seemingly display this as being more prevalent than reported in medical records of the time.

                                                                                                                                                      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndactyly

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                                                                                                                                                      • cannibalXxx 1 year ago
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                                                                                                                                                        • mvkel 1 year ago
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