It’s time to get a new hand gesture for the ‘OK’ sign – the one where you use your index finger and thumb to make an “O” – because it is now considered an official hate symbol and it’s all thanks to the doings of angry/sad white men.
The Anti-Defamation League has decided to add the sign to its *checks notes* “Hate on Display™ Hate Symbols Database” due to its association with white supremacy and far-right activists.
Oren Segal, director of the ADL’s Center on Extremism, told NPR that while context is key, the increasing use of the ‘OK’ sign as a way to spread hate on message boards like 4chan spurred the decision to declare the finger-and-thumb gesture as a hate symbol.
As an example of what he meant, Segal noted that the suspected perpetrator of the Christchurch attack, Brenton Tarrant, was pictured using the ‘OK’ sign during a court appearance following his arrest.
Now this seems weird but he has a point about the context part. A group of white men throwing up the ‘OK’ sign while chanting hate-filled garbage are definitely not using the gesture to mean “okay.”
At the same time, this whole hate symbol discourse all began as a hoax by 4chan folk who wanted to see if they can trick people into believing that the ‘OK’ sign is a symbol of white supremacy. Make of that what you will.
The ‘OK’ sign wasn’t the only gesture or thing to be added to the hate database.
The ‘Happy Merchant’ emoji and the ‘Moon Man’ image are now hate symbols because the former depicts an offensive stereotype of a Jewish man greedily rubbing his hands together while the latter refers to white supremacists who wear crescent moon costume (like the one seen in those 80s Maccas ads) while rapping racist rhetoric.
For those who are rocking a bowlcut, you might want to get a trim because that’s also considered to be a hate symbol now. It’s not just because it’s a terrible hairstyle though, it’s because of its association with another dude of the “angry/sad white men” ilk, Dylann Roof, who was convicted for the 2015 Charleston church shooting.
This is going to make life super difficult for bowlcut-rocking basketball referees signaling three-pointers but hey, blame it on all those angry white men who ruined it for the rest of us.
The middle finger is still fair game though so just go with that for the time being.