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Secret Hand Gestures in Paintings (2019)

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Re: Secret Hand Gestures in Paintings (2019)

#81

Post by burnished »

crdrost wrote: post #47
bgoated01 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

The genius of your proposition is that you wouldn't have to be surprised, you'd just know

Re: Secret Hand Gestures in Paintings (2019)

#82

Post by [deleted] »

massinstall wrote: post #31

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 su…

[deleted]

Re: Secret Hand Gestures in Paintings (2019)

#83

Post by Dig1t »

flir wrote: post #57
hamasho wrote: post #52

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…

> 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...

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...

Re: Secret Hand Gestures in Paintings (2019)

#84

Post by pessimizer »

hamasho wrote: post #52

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…

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"?

Re: Secret Hand Gestures in Paintings (2019)

#85

Post by runjake »

rubyfan wrote: post #62
fidotron wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Most of the secrets and symbols are available in publications and online for a very long time.

There's a surprising amount that aren't.

And even then:

1. Every Freemason knows what's on the Internet. Identifications have evolved.

2. The leaks lack... important contexts... about what they are.

Re: Secret Hand Gestures in Paintings (2019)

#86

Post by endofreach »

runjake wrote: post #85
rubyfan wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the secrets and symbols are available in publications and online for a very long time.

There's a surprising amount that aren't. And even then: 1. Every Freemason knows what's on the Internet. Identifications have evolved. 2. The leaks lack... important contexts... about what they are.

But what are they actually used for? The only things i heard about freemasonry were from conspiracy theorists. But i never really found out, what they actually do. And the secret handshakes are performed with strangers to tell each other secretly they're unknown brothers?

Re: Secret Hand Gestures in Paintings (2019)

#89

Post by kmoser »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #39
dmurray wrote: post #28

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 seem…

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.

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.

Re: Secret Hand Gestures in Paintings (2019)

#90

Post by aspenmayer »

Dig1t wrote: post #83
flir wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

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…

> 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.

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