HashBucket
Well-Known Member
When did the OK sign become a 'white power' sign?
Touching the thumb and index finger to make a circle, with the remaining three fingers held outstretched, is a gesture that people around the world have made for centuries, mostly in positive contexts. It is used for several purposes in sign languages, and in yoga as a symbol to demonstrate inner perfection.
The widely understood modern use of the sign for approval or assent seems to have arisen along with the term “OK” in the 19th century. Some researchers have traced the word to 1839, when Charles Gordon Greene wrote jokingly in The Boston Morning Post about it being an intentionally misspelled abbreviation for “all correct”. The term caught on, and the hand gesture, with the fingers forming something vaguely like an O and K, became closely linked with it.
It started in early 2017 as a hoax. Anonymous users of 4chan an anonymous and unrestricted online message board, began what they called “Operation O-KKK,” to see if they could trick the wider world — and especially, liberals and the mainstream media — into believing that the innocuous gesture was actually a clandestine symbol of white power.
And, the more ignorant among us bought it -- and are very willing to spread the lie.
Touching the thumb and index finger to make a circle, with the remaining three fingers held outstretched, is a gesture that people around the world have made for centuries, mostly in positive contexts. It is used for several purposes in sign languages, and in yoga as a symbol to demonstrate inner perfection.
The widely understood modern use of the sign for approval or assent seems to have arisen along with the term “OK” in the 19th century. Some researchers have traced the word to 1839, when Charles Gordon Greene wrote jokingly in The Boston Morning Post about it being an intentionally misspelled abbreviation for “all correct”. The term caught on, and the hand gesture, with the fingers forming something vaguely like an O and K, became closely linked with it.
It started in early 2017 as a hoax. Anonymous users of 4chan an anonymous and unrestricted online message board, began what they called “Operation O-KKK,” to see if they could trick the wider world — and especially, liberals and the mainstream media — into believing that the innocuous gesture was actually a clandestine symbol of white power.
And, the more ignorant among us bought it -- and are very willing to spread the lie.
