The 4chan idiots said “Hey, let’s tell everyone that we’re using this sign to mean that we’re racists!”, and then insisted that there was a difference between that and actually using that sign to mean that they’re racists. Unfortunately, that distinction doesn’t exist: What a sign means is what you tell everyone you’re using it to mean.
Please see my corrected statement.
Here’s a story from 2019 of a Cubs fan being banned for making an OK gesture behind a black sportscaster/analyst. Pretty hard to imagine it was being used innocently there.
But it is the same thing, you almost kind of admitted it here. “Colored” was the new word to replace the N-word that was most commonly used during and just after slavery, and it worked well. Right up until the racists started using “colored” the same way they used to use the N-word. Then that happened to “Negro”, and so on.
Stealing stuff and making it racist is just what they do. See also, the swastika and Charlie Chaplin’s moustache. If there’s a way to prevent such theft, it’s eluded us for centuries now.
This is how I’ve always known the gesture shown in the photo. The goal of the game is to make the gesture inconspicuously and trick your buddy into looking at it. Then you get to punch him. There was a case of the vapors a couple years ago over cadets using this “white supremacist” gesture at an Army-Navy game, but they were just kids playing the circle game.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/20/politics/naval-academy-hand-gesture/index.html
Were they planning to punch the TV viewers who were tricked into looking at the inconspicuous circle they shoved in the camera frame?
In the past few months, I have heard it claimed the the gesture is racist.
I have heard it claimed that Hawaiian shirts are racist.
I have heard it claimed that tiki torches are racist.
I have heard it claimed that the Gadsden Flag is racist.
Liberals surrender territory far too quickly.
You should not allow your enemies to control you so easily.
One of the people discussed in that thread was a politician’s wife who used the gesture. She was Mexican, Jewish, and the grand-daughter of Holocaust survivors, but using the gesture apparently made her a Nazi.
When I was in high school (2010-2014) the circle game was in vogue. I think it’s from Malcolm in the Middle. Even then it was painfully immature. It doesn’t make sense to do that in a photo.
Likewise you can usually tell a legitimate OK-sign because it’s made with a little bit of motion, like you’re punching a hole in the air. Like the capisce hand gesture. Also it is made in a context where OK makes sense - the person is on the phone and can’t talk, or is far away and doesn’t want to shout, or is saying the word “okay” while making the symbol.
~Max
Your example has a problem. None of those terms should have been used to describe people, they are all based in racism, and simple word changes are not really the way out of that problem.
The OK symbol is not in that category at all. It had no harmful meaning ever. It has only become unacceptable because haters have been using it with an entirely new meaning.
Do you think that liberal is the opposite of racist? I would have thought that liberals and conservatives would both be concerned with racists working to make everyday things like the OK sign into dog whistles.
Interesting that they were going with, it was a weird game, rather than that it was an “asshole” gesture directed at the other team.
Of course not. It’s dumb kids trying to “get” their friends watching the broadcast. The Academies fully investigated after massive outcry and found no other intention behind the gesture.
Personally, I use the A-OK gesture all the time. I also wear New Balance shoes. And the white supremacists will pry them out of my cold, dead hands.
But then you’re ignoring the swastika and moustache examples as well. The swastika used to be an actual positive symbol, not just “not harmful”, and yet, now you can’t use it at all in half the world, because of the Nazis. And a moustache? How did that one moustache become associated with one of the worst people in history?
And that argument might make sense if it really is “dumb kids” doing it. But do you think the dumb adults doing it are also just “innocently playing a game”?
Yep, now walk around with that moustache, minus Charlie Chaplin’s hat, and see how many people call you a Nazi.
We know that, the question is whether it’s dumb kids playing a game, dumb kids being racist, or dumb kids pretending to be racist. A LOT of the time you see this sign being flashed on camera, it’s a game, but not the circle game, it’s the ‘tweak the liberal’ game. I’m 
if liberals play the game too and kick up such a fuss that the tweaker gets investigated/sanctioned/fired. I mean, that was the goal right, to make people react?
So do I, but since I’m not being an insincere jackass about it nobody accuses me of being racist.
The OK sign is used used in SCUBA diving. That, well, you’re OK. Thumbs up means go up, ascend. I’ve confused a few dive masters by doing the thumbs up instead of OK.
Maybe. There’s plenty of immature adults out there. I can’t divine someone’s intention behind the gesture just based on a photo.
I will say, typically in the circle game the other three fingers are kept together rather than splayed since the goal is to make the circle as inconspicuous as possible.