[hamasho]

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]

> 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]

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]

> 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.

[Dig1t]

It just sounds like a conspiracy theory. The right has tons of theories about "elites" using secret hand signals and gestures meaning all kinds of satanic things.

Both are conspiracy theories for the same reasons.

[flir]

"Just a joke, bro"

I hear that a lot.

[pessimizer]

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"?