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I don't believe the clicking thing but then I guess various subcultures have their own idiosyncrasies, and I haven't been in the U.S for a long time - maybe the

I don't believe the clicking thing but then I guess various subcultures have their own idiosyncrasies, and I haven't been in the U.S for a long time - maybe they have some new habits.

UberFly 3y ago
Believe it. It's a super cringy clapping replacement. It feels like a cult revival when it happens around you.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
thinkingemote 3y ago
It's weird but "People started snapping their fingers in acclamation." is a real thing as clapping with hands may harm people through for example making loud noises . It was given in the article as an early example of the idiosyncratic state that the author was working in. It's not a subculture, it's regular corporate Human Resources behaviour in a few places. In my opinion it's often a symptom of something wrong rather than a mindful remedy. On it's own clicking fingers can be good especially if some in the audience really do have trouble - for example a group meeting of certain sufferers. Most people would encounter it as part of a range of other idiosyncratic symbols and activities. It has become something that is done by default than something done specially. Going further, it's different from a subculture. It becomes more than something that might be harmless but a kind of religious activity - something that both protects against evil people who are against them and something that promotes group unity within by participating.
- ajkjk 3y ago
  I don't think it's got anything to do with loud noises. I think it's (roughly) a hippie culture thing? Or maybe just a sort of hippie-infused west-coast liberal culture. I'm not really sure but that's triangulating: the first people I knew who did it were either from California or in backpacking / outdoorsy communities (or more woo stuff: ecstatic dance and astrology types). It was surprising at the time but has gotten a lot more common since then.
  - Tabular-Iceberg 3y ago
    Exactly right. Clapping to show approval is clearly bourgeois behavior, but they have to stop using that word because the fact that they themselves represent the arch-bourgeoisie just causes too much cognitive dissonance. Turns out being the victors of the culture war isn’t all sunshine and rainbows like one would think.
    - ajkjk 3y ago
      I don't think that interpretation holds up at all. None of the people doing this are really aware of why they're doing it, it's just something that people they knew, or cultures they were in, did. In the communities it came from it was a less intrusive way to show assent or support or clapping, like for instance how people snap at poetry readings because clapping is a bit too loud. It is really not an ideological thing, just a natural solution to a natural social problem of how to behave in a particular situation. Your bizarre reaction, pattern-matching it to a bunch of ideological stuff, reveals a lot about your but nothing about them.
      - ajkjk 3y ago
        about *you
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
defrost 3y ago
FWiW: “Snapping is not new, but it is newly resurgent,” said Daniel Gallant, the executive director of Nuyorican Poets Cafe on the Lower East Side. The practice, he said, dates to the heyday of the beatnik poets, who would gather in coffeehouses and at hootenannies to perform poems laced with cultural rebellion and political activism. (It has also long been popular in bastions of counter-counterculture: sorority houses. Some historians say snapping was used in the days of the Roman Empire as well.) ~ Why Snapping Is the New Clapping (2015) https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/fashion/snapping-new-clapping.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/fashion/snapping-new-clap... Culture section of the ... New York Times ( YMMV )
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago
  ok, so it came along after I left. Although I was familiar with the snapping from beatniks and I think I saw it in some comedy show which I figured was just some cringey stuff.
- archagon 3y ago
  We did it when I lived in student co-ops back in 2009.
verticalscaler 3y ago
You're essentially calling this person a liar for sharing an anecdote. Why is this even a matter of belief, what makes you uncomfortable about it? With a modicum of effort you can indeed corroborate that this happened - I hope you do so - but I'm more curios about the knee jerk reaction. You clearly don't want it to be real and simultanously you left open the possibility that it is a thing you aren't familiar with. But first and foremost you called him a liar. This is worthy of further rumination.
- screenobobeano 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - jbullock35 3y ago
    What do you make of Erik Wemple's investigation of the incident, which he describes at https://twitter.com/ErikWemple/status/1763646613778563225 https://twitter.com/ErikWemple/status/1763646613778563225? He is a media critic at the Washington Post -- is he lying about his incident, too?
  - barry-cotter 3y ago
    Unless you’re willing to say who you are your claim to be an NYT employee is worthless.
- kergonath 3y ago
  Why are you so aggressive? They did not call the author a liar, just said that a specific point was unbelievable. Which it is for some people; this behaviour is completely alien to me for example. > Why is this even a matter of belief, what makes you uncomfortable about it? Nobody mentioned any kind of discomfort, merely bewilderment. You are tearing down a strawman you built based on a very uncharitable reading of a 1-sentence comment. That sentence even mentioned the author being a cultural outsider. > but I'm more curios about the knee jerk reaction. I am more curious about why you chose to escalate so quickly instead of taking this as an opportunity to discuss different viewpoints and experiences. Also, why you are so quick to attribute malice on such a flimsy basis. > This is worthy of further rumination. You present yourself as a model of cultural understanding (because clearly your attitude is better and one we should emulate), but you do sound a bit like a member of a cult. This is also worthy of some rumination.
jl6 3y ago
I assumed it was a well-intentioned alternative to loud clapping to help avoid distressing neurodivergent people, or, if there are no neurodivergent people in the room, to show solidarity with them, or, if solidarity was never in question, to help promote the general concept of allyship, and, helpfully, if anyone doesn’t comply, that’s a great indicator that they oppose all of the above and are therefore fascists to be smoked out.
- oefrha 3y ago
  > if anyone doesn’t comply, that’s a great indicator that they oppose all of the above and are therefore fascists to be smoked out. Lovely, clapping is now “fascist”. As ridiculous as it sounds, I can’t even tell if this is satire because I’ve met people who seem to genuinely believe that making an okay sign means I’m KKK or something. I’d rather starve on the street than work with a group of people who can blurt out the parent comment with a straight face.
  - jl6 3y ago
    Clapping isn’t fascist. But clapping is noise-adjacent, which is distress-adjacent, which is oppression-adjacent, which is fascist-adjacent, so actually clapping is fascist. The logic of American polarization. It is not unique to the left either.
    - kcplate 3y ago
      > But clapping is noise-adjacent, which is distress-adjacent, which is oppression-adjacent, which is fascist-adjacent, so actually clapping is fascist. Hilarious hyperbole here but what is sad is there are some on HN that will not recognize it as such and will nod their heads in agreement as they read it, then in all seriousness convey the idea downstream to some group of like-minded friends who will then add it as one more moral turpitude into their weird nouveau religion.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  It's not "well-intentioned" at all. The objective is to make you obey. That's it. That's the whole reason. The folderol about "neuro-divergent people" is just a thin gloss of claimed virtue intended to disguise the actual goal. Do they have any actual evidence that "neuro-divergent people" suffer a greater degree of trauma from clapping than finger-snapping? No, they don't. Sure, there might be a "neuro-divergent" person, or even more than one, who finds clapping disturbing, but that says nothing at all about the general case. > if anyone doesn’t comply, that’s a great indicator that they oppose all of the above and are therefore fascists to be smoked out. Or witches, perhaps. The terminology changes over the years, but the tactics remain the same. The people who get out the torches and pitchforks because someone clapped his hands are exactly the same type of people who used to lynch blacks, burn harmless old ladies as witches, and throw Jews down wells. Exactly. They do it because they enjoy hurting people, and have found a cover story that allows them to do it under an illusion of virtue. You complain because we burned Mrs. Johnson? Well, then you must be pro-Satan!
jbullock35 3y ago
The Washington Post's media critic found corroboration from other sources. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39579136#39579664 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39579136#39579664.

I don't believe the clicking thing but then I guess various subcultures have their own idiosyncrasies, and I haven't been in the U.S for a long time - maybe they have some new habits.

UberFly 3y ago

Believe it. It's a super cringy clapping replacement. It feels like a cult revival when it happens around you.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

thinkingemote 3y ago

It's weird but "People started snapping their fingers in acclamation." is a real thing as clapping with hands may harm people through for example making loud noises . It was given in the article as an early example of the idiosyncratic state that the author was working in. It's not a subculture, it's regular corporate Human Resources behaviour in a few places. In my opinion it's often a symptom of something wrong rather than a mindful remedy. On it's own clicking fingers can be good especially if some in the audience really do have trouble - for example a group meeting of certain sufferers. Most people would encounter it as part of a range of other idiosyncratic symbols and activities. It has become something that is done by default than something done specially. Going further, it's different from a subculture. It becomes more than something that might be harmless but a kind of religious activity - something that both protects against evil people who are against them and something that promotes group unity within by participating.

ajkjk 3y ago
I don't think it's got anything to do with loud noises. I think it's (roughly) a hippie culture thing? Or maybe just a sort of hippie-infused west-coast liberal culture. I'm not really sure but that's triangulating: the first people I knew who did it were either from California or in backpacking / outdoorsy communities (or more woo stuff: ecstatic dance and astrology types). It was surprising at the time but has gotten a lot more common since then.
- Tabular-Iceberg 3y ago
  Exactly right. Clapping to show approval is clearly bourgeois behavior, but they have to stop using that word because the fact that they themselves represent the arch-bourgeoisie just causes too much cognitive dissonance. Turns out being the victors of the culture war isn’t all sunshine and rainbows like one would think.
  - ajkjk 3y ago
    I don't think that interpretation holds up at all. None of the people doing this are really aware of why they're doing it, it's just something that people they knew, or cultures they were in, did. In the communities it came from it was a less intrusive way to show assent or support or clapping, like for instance how people snap at poetry readings because clapping is a bit too loud. It is really not an ideological thing, just a natural solution to a natural social problem of how to behave in a particular situation. Your bizarre reaction, pattern-matching it to a bunch of ideological stuff, reveals a lot about your but nothing about them.
    - ajkjk 3y ago
      about *you
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

defrost 3y ago

FWiW: “Snapping is not new, but it is newly resurgent,” said Daniel Gallant, the executive director of Nuyorican Poets Cafe on the Lower East Side. The practice, he said, dates to the heyday of the beatnik poets, who would gather in coffeehouses and at hootenannies to perform poems laced with cultural rebellion and political activism. (It has also long been popular in bastions of counter-counterculture: sorority houses. Some historians say snapping was used in the days of the Roman Empire as well.) ~ Why Snapping Is the New Clapping (2015) https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/fashion/snapping-new-clapping.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/fashion/snapping-new-clap... Culture section of the ... New York Times ( YMMV )

bryanrasmussen 3y ago
ok, so it came along after I left. Although I was familiar with the snapping from beatniks and I think I saw it in some comedy show which I figured was just some cringey stuff.
archagon 3y ago
We did it when I lived in student co-ops back in 2009.

verticalscaler 3y ago

You're essentially calling this person a liar for sharing an anecdote. Why is this even a matter of belief, what makes you uncomfortable about it? With a modicum of effort you can indeed corroborate that this happened - I hope you do so - but I'm more curios about the knee jerk reaction. You clearly don't want it to be real and simultanously you left open the possibility that it is a thing you aren't familiar with. But first and foremost you called him a liar. This is worthy of further rumination.

screenobobeano 3y ago
[flagged]
- jbullock35 3y ago
  What do you make of Erik Wemple's investigation of the incident, which he describes at https://twitter.com/ErikWemple/status/1763646613778563225 https://twitter.com/ErikWemple/status/1763646613778563225? He is a media critic at the Washington Post -- is he lying about his incident, too?
- barry-cotter 3y ago
  Unless you’re willing to say who you are your claim to be an NYT employee is worthless.
kergonath 3y ago
Why are you so aggressive? They did not call the author a liar, just said that a specific point was unbelievable. Which it is for some people; this behaviour is completely alien to me for example. > Why is this even a matter of belief, what makes you uncomfortable about it? Nobody mentioned any kind of discomfort, merely bewilderment. You are tearing down a strawman you built based on a very uncharitable reading of a 1-sentence comment. That sentence even mentioned the author being a cultural outsider. > but I'm more curios about the knee jerk reaction. I am more curious about why you chose to escalate so quickly instead of taking this as an opportunity to discuss different viewpoints and experiences. Also, why you are so quick to attribute malice on such a flimsy basis. > This is worthy of further rumination. You present yourself as a model of cultural understanding (because clearly your attitude is better and one we should emulate), but you do sound a bit like a member of a cult. This is also worthy of some rumination.

jl6 3y ago

I assumed it was a well-intentioned alternative to loud clapping to help avoid distressing neurodivergent people, or, if there are no neurodivergent people in the room, to show solidarity with them, or, if solidarity was never in question, to help promote the general concept of allyship, and, helpfully, if anyone doesn’t comply, that’s a great indicator that they oppose all of the above and are therefore fascists to be smoked out.

oefrha 3y ago
> if anyone doesn’t comply, that’s a great indicator that they oppose all of the above and are therefore fascists to be smoked out. Lovely, clapping is now “fascist”. As ridiculous as it sounds, I can’t even tell if this is satire because I’ve met people who seem to genuinely believe that making an okay sign means I’m KKK or something. I’d rather starve on the street than work with a group of people who can blurt out the parent comment with a straight face.
- jl6 3y ago
  Clapping isn’t fascist. But clapping is noise-adjacent, which is distress-adjacent, which is oppression-adjacent, which is fascist-adjacent, so actually clapping is fascist. The logic of American polarization. It is not unique to the left either.
  - kcplate 3y ago
    > But clapping is noise-adjacent, which is distress-adjacent, which is oppression-adjacent, which is fascist-adjacent, so actually clapping is fascist. Hilarious hyperbole here but what is sad is there are some on HN that will not recognize it as such and will nod their heads in agreement as they read it, then in all seriousness convey the idea downstream to some group of like-minded friends who will then add it as one more moral turpitude into their weird nouveau religion.
Turing_Machine 3y ago
It's not "well-intentioned" at all. The objective is to make you obey. That's it. That's the whole reason. The folderol about "neuro-divergent people" is just a thin gloss of claimed virtue intended to disguise the actual goal. Do they have any actual evidence that "neuro-divergent people" suffer a greater degree of trauma from clapping than finger-snapping? No, they don't. Sure, there might be a "neuro-divergent" person, or even more than one, who finds clapping disturbing, but that says nothing at all about the general case. > if anyone doesn’t comply, that’s a great indicator that they oppose all of the above and are therefore fascists to be smoked out. Or witches, perhaps. The terminology changes over the years, but the tactics remain the same. The people who get out the torches and pitchforks because someone clapped his hands are exactly the same type of people who used to lynch blacks, burn harmless old ladies as witches, and throw Jews down wells. Exactly. They do it because they enjoy hurting people, and have found a cover story that allows them to do it under an illusion of virtue. You complain because we burned Mrs. Johnson? Well, then you must be pro-Satan!

jbullock35 3y ago

The Washington Post's media critic found corroboration from other sources. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39579136#39579664 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39579136#39579664.