OK Symbol 👌

About

The “OK” Symbol is a hand gesture^[7] which is typically used to signal that “all is well.” The symbol has been frequently associated with supporters of the 45th President of the United States Donald Trump, with some speculating it is used by members of the alt-right to mimic a Smug Frog depiction of Pepe the Frog.

Origin

Throughout many parts of the world, the hand gesture made when connected one’s thumb and index finger into a circle while holding three finger straight up is considering synonymous with the word “OK,” signifying that “all is well.”

Circle Game

The circle game is a prank which involves tricking someone into looking at their hand while performing the OK gesture below the waist, leading the prankster to hit them as punishment.

Association with Trump Support

On April 9th, 2015, conservative Viner Pizza Party Ben^[1] posted a video of himself making an OK hand gesture while saying “We should chill” with the description “White guys be like” (shown below, left). Sometime during the 2016 United States presidential election, Pizza Party Ben and Milo Yiannopoulos began making the gesture together at various events supporting the candidacy of Donald Trump (shown below, right).

Spread

On November 9th, 2016, Yiannopoulos posted a photograph of himself standing with Viner Mike Ma making the hand gesture at Donald Trump’s election night party following the 2016 United States presidential election (shown below, left). On December 3rd, Malik Obama tweeted a picture of himself making the symbol while wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat, along with the caption “I look like Pepe the Frog” (shown below). Within four months, the tweet gained over 14,000 likes and 7,400 retweets.

On February 13th, 2017, Gateway Pundit founder Jim Hoft tweeted a photograph of himself and White House correspondent Lucian Wintrich standing behind the White House press briefing room lectern while making the hand gesture (shown below). That day, the progressive media watchdog group Media Matters^[3] published an article about the photograph, accusing the gesture of being a “hate symbol.” Meanwhile, the official Media Matter Twitter account tweeted the article, calling the gesture a “racist Pepe hand signal.” That day, several Twitter users mocked Media Matters for labeling the gesture a symbol of hate.^[4]

On March 7th, 2017, the news site Mediaite published an article titled “Is That Cute Kid Trump Met at the White House Today Making the Pepe Symbol?,” highlighting a video of a young student making the hand symbol while visiting the White House (shown below, left). On March 10th, Twitter user Ian Miles Chong tweeted photographs of several celebrities making the gesture, along with the joke “Look at all these white supremacists giving the ‘white power’ sign smh” (shown below, right).

On April 11th, 2017, YouTuber FaceLikeTheSun uploaded a satirical video about conservative writer Mike Cernovich, claiming that the OK gesture was a symbol for the satanic number “666” (shown below).

Operation O-KKK

In February 2017, 4chan users launched Operation O-KKK to “flood Twitter and other social media websites” with posts claiming the OK hand symbol was a “symbol of white supremacy,” along with a picture of an OK symbol identifying the three up-turned fingers as a symbol for “W” and the thumb-and-forefinger circle as a symbol for “P” (shown below).^[12]

On April 28th, 2017, Fusion reporter Emma Roller retweeted a photo of reporter Cassandra Fairbanks along with the caption “Just two people doing a white power hand gesture in the White House” (shown below, left). Within 72 hours, the tweet gained over 7,000 likes and 6,700 retweets. That same day, Roller tweeted the “white power” OP-KKK image as evidence (shown below, right).

The following day, journalist Tim Pool retweeted Roller with the comment “Journalism is dead,” which received upwards of 9,000 likes and 4,100 retweets within 48 hours.^[8] Also on April 29th, Pool posted a video titled “4chan Has Become Too Powerful,” which discussed the ease at which 4chan succeeded in the operation (shown below).

On April 30th, The Independent^[9] published an article claiming the “The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) characterises the symbol as a ‘racist hand sign’,” citing an entry in the ADL database of a woman holding a hand in the form of a “W” next to a hand formed to make the letter “P” (shown below).^[11] That day, BuzzFeed^[10] published an article titled “The Trump Internet Keeps Making Fake Hate Symbols, And People Keep Falling For It.”

Cernovich’s Response

On May 2nd, The Observer^[13] published an article written by 4chan moderator Jay Irwin, which included a statement from Cernovich denying any knowledge of the “white power” association and claiming that it was initially inspired by Jay Z and Beyoncé:

“It started off as a joke about Jay Z. He and Beyoncé used to do it, and some said it was an Illuminati symbol. We started doing it as a joke, and it took on a life of its own.”

Search Interest

Not available.

External References