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From the Coronavirus and You thread, before being rightfully directed to stop, there was a discussion by several posters on the value of handshaking in a social distancing world and afterwards.
On one hand there appear to be those who beleive that handshaking is indicative of the person or gather a lot of information from someone and those who disagree, that an arbitrary social custom and to beleive so is superstitious.
Another interesting argument was over the value of handshaking as a social custom with different greetings from different cultures being offered as examples as well as it's value in countries where social distancing is maintained.
For my part here is my post to help continue the discussion.
On May 14 2020 23:13 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On May 14 2020 07:48 Seeker wrote:On May 14 2020 04:50 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On May 14 2020 04:13 Seeker wrote:On May 14 2020 03:45 Mohdoo wrote:On May 14 2020 03:38 Seeker wrote:
Don’t abolish handshakes. They’re too damn important to society. Instead, we need to evolve to the point where at least one party brings out a travel-sized hand sanitizer and allows all involved parties to use it before the handshake(s) can take place. There, problem solved. I suppose the question I am asking is: SHOULD handshakes be important to society? Or should archaic bullshit be consciously removed from our day-to-day routines as we learn more about the world we live in? Some people in Italy, Spain and Iran are probably asking themselves if it makes sense to kiss each other constantly now that we see so clearly what a difference that can make with infection. I'm not asking if the current convention is to handshake. I am asking if that is a worthwhile custom that we should try to hold on to. I say toss it in the trash. For me, personally, I like physical forms of contact when I meet and get to know a new person. And a handshake is often indicative of what kind of person you’re dealing with, so I think it definitely has a role in society that cannot just be ignored. Are you serious? Yes, I'm serious. And I thank you for contributing to this thread with a pointless one-liner. Confirming that you are not making some kind of joke is not a pointless one-liner, it is to confirm you are not make a joke. As you confirm that you are not making some kind of a joke, I can say that what you have written is mind boggling bizarre. The only thing you can tell from a handshake is how that person shakes their hand. You form business contracts based on past and current records, not on form of greeting. You choose your boiler repairer/plumber on past recommendations, not on how they shake your hand. Would you say the same about hugging and kissing and bowing, other forms of greetings, or other cultures where the handshake is prefered to be weak? On the topic of changing norms, after SARS, several south east asian countries had a culture change in their method of their communal eating habits. As it is in UK, people don't shake hands but instead the acceptable greeting custom is to awkwardly wave their hands/make humour about it/waggle eyebrows. It's certainly less awkward than shaking hands then washing hands afterwards. Such a change from normal customs is unlikely to pass after social distancing measures are removed, but the idea of changing norms have been seen in the aftereffects of SARS.
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United States43283 Posts
To be clear, the question is regarding the additional insights that gripping someone’s hand grants over a comparable greeting without skin to skin contact. This means that arguments that rely upon stuff like eye contact for their insights would not apply unless they’re literally engaging in direct physical eye to eye contact with other people. If someone tries to argue that looking is something that can only be done while gripping hands and that eye contact could not be done with an alternative greeting performed at a 6ft distance they’re probably trolling.
Consider a hypothetical argument that tongue kissing was a better form of greeting than handshaking because it allows for eye contact and that eye contact really helps get the measure of a person. People would immediately dismiss that argument because while eye contact may be a component of kissing it is not exclusive to kissing and is also present in handshaking. It is therefore irrelevant to the question of kissing over handshaking and handshaking over saluting.
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hmm, blind people ...
Edit: ok, OK! ... you could tell if one is a cold or warm/hot type of person.
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I don't see any value from handshaking that couldn't be better attained through something else.
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United States43283 Posts
On May 15 2020 01:11 xM(Z wrote:
hmm, blind people ...
Edit: ok, OK! ... you could tell if one is a cold or warm/hot type of person.
Identification of reptilians for visually impaired people is certainly one case of handshaking over saluting at 6ft. But I’m not sure if the applicability to the modern business environment as reptilians are generally highly placed in organizations that are not always open to people with disabilities.
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New favorite thread on TL
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Kind of strange and fun subject.
I have lived a little over 40 years and in my time the way you greet people has change. When i was young boys and men could not hug each other. But now it is (was until a couple of months ago) normal to greet friends to hugs and a little slap and the back.There was a period with air kisses on each cheek with female friends.
We live in a time with lots of change also social and morally. So i find it naturally to change a greeting norm to avoid spreading a virus and endanger other people, actually i find it absurd to do otherwise.
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On May 15 2020 01:19 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On May 15 2020 01:11 xM(Z wrote:
hmm, blind people ...
Edit: ok, OK! ... you could tell if one is a cold or warm/hot type of person. Identification of reptilians for visually impaired people is certainly one case of handshaking over saluting at 6ft. But I’m not sure if the applicability to the modern business environment as reptilians are generally highly placed in organizations that are not always open to people with disabilities. meh, passive-aggressive deflection disguised as a joke ... come on Kwarky; you wanted one and i gave you one.
but, since you're now changing contexts(the value of a handshake within a modern business environment), would information gathered from a handshake that is not immediately or consciously perceived, work?(ex: after a handshake people unconsciously sniff the hand that was shook, especially when it was done so by someone of the opposite sex; chemical communication and all that).
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Is there really a large difference between shaking hands and not shaking hands when it comes to corona?
Like, if I have it, we're not going to shake hands, but then we'll talk for 10 minutes, and you'll probably get it anyway from the droplets, won't you.
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United States43283 Posts
On May 15 2020 01:53 xM(Z wrote:Show nested quote +On May 15 2020 01:19 KwarK wrote:On May 15 2020 01:11 xM(Z wrote:
hmm, blind people ...
Edit: ok, OK! ... you could tell if one is a cold or warm/hot type of person. Identification of reptilians for visually impaired people is certainly one case of handshaking over saluting at 6ft. But I’m not sure if the applicability to the modern business environment as reptilians are generally highly placed in organizations that are not always open to people with disabilities. meh, passive-aggressive deflection disguised as a joke ... come on Kwarky; you wanted one and i gave you one. but, since you're now changing contexts(the value of a handshake within a modern business environment), would information gathered from a handshake that is not immediately or consciously perceived, work?(ex: after a handshake people unconsciously sniff the hand that was shook, especially when it was done so by someone of the opposite sex; chemical communication and all that).
I genuinely thought you were suggesting divining useful information from the temperature of a handshake as a joke and that I was playing along with your joke. I read your post as an amusing deconstructive parody intended to show how stupid that kind of analysis would be and I genuinely thought it was a good joke and enjoyed it. I wasn’t mocking you on purpose, I thought we were both mocking the same stupid idea you were jokingly proposing. It never occurred to me that you have some kind of actual system in which the temperature of someone’s hand tells you what kind of person they are.
How would that even work? There are a huge number of personality traits and I doubt you can feel the difference between 35.5 Celsius and 35.6, for example. I thought you were, as a joke, proposing a system of “this person feels warm blooded, probably mammalian” rather than seriously claiming an actual system. Please explain your temperature based system though. Which temperatures mean what, and how do you measure them?
Also stop sniffing people, it’s weird.
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Not gonna lie, the vegans among my acquaintances mostly have cold hands.
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That's a lie. Like a real man, you don't know any vegans.
(This is sarcasm btw)
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I like shaking hands with people i know really well. I like it before informal meetings with people i have to do business with. I don't like it when just showing up to a crowd that i'm gonna hang around with. Is it IMPORTANT? No, probably not. Do i miss it? For sure.
I never was a fan of hugs, a real handshake is/was plenty enough for me.
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United States43283 Posts
On May 15 2020 02:37 Vivax wrote:
Not gonna lie, the vegans among my acquaintances mostly have cold hands.
Do you think that if you had to pick the vegans out a crowd of strangers you would have a higher success rate using a handshake than a salute? If so, how highly would you value this knowledge?
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Norway28716 Posts
I like shaking hands. I like pretty much all types of physical contact actually. Feels like a good way of establishing an 'initial bond with this person' type of deal. If I haven't met someone in a good while I prefer hugging, but handshake is better than just a wave or whatever. It's also nice to establish that whomever I'm meeting isn't armed!
I'm fine not doing it during covid, I'm fine with some other type of greeting instead, but I prefer greetings that involve more physical contact rather than less, because I think physical contact makes people more positively connected with the people they have physical contact with. Maybe it's not a generalization applicable to all of humanity, but I certainly think it applies to myself. So outside pandemic situations I'd rather us evolve to a hug than devolve to a bow.
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All human contact should start via online means to avoid me having to be in contact with others as much as possible. Plus, imagine all the time we'd save on basic grooming!
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Outside of the context of a pandemic, how do some of you see approaching more than one person? For instance, you go to a bar and see 6 familiar faces standing in a circle talking. Maybe you give a wave or a greeting to the group as a whole, maybe shake hands and introduce yourself to anyone you don't know. However, I know a lot of people who seem to need to shake each and every hand before engaging in conversation. On one hand (heh) I understand that it might feel odd to be snubbed (some person comes in an shakes 3 hands close to them and gives a nod to you, slightly further away), but the person entering the scenario just didn't want to keep shoving himself between people for the sake of being equally polite.
Is this "imbalanced greeting" something that ever crosses your minds?
EDIT: and for what it's worth I see it similarly to Drone. I think there are definite benefits to physical contact, but can only speak for myself: I love giving a hug to someone I'm excited to see, or happy to have met.
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On May 15 2020 04:10 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On May 15 2020 02:37 Vivax wrote:
Not gonna lie, the vegans among my acquaintances mostly have cold hands. Do you think that if you had to pick the vegans out a crowd of strangers you would have a higher success rate using a handshake than a salute? If so, how highly would you value this knowledge?
I'd start by looking for the pale ones, sniff them a little for signs of incense sticks or pot maybe, like that Biden guy.
If the crowd is unresponsive to peace handsigns, a handshake is required, followed by a wide smile to check for fangs.
I'll leave it to you to guess who you found if he has fangs.
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On May 15 2020 01:17 Nevuk wrote:
I don't see any value from handshaking that couldn't be better attained through something else.
This.
Also, the non-trivial proportion of the population that in normal times doesn't wash their hands regularly, especially after using the washroom, makes shaking hands extra disgusting. I'd much rather a nod, a bow, or literally any of the other non-physical forms of greeting over a handshake. My hope is that this virus will be the end of handshaking as a societal norm.
On May 15 2020 04:10 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On May 15 2020 02:37 Vivax wrote:
Not gonna lie, the vegans among my acquaintances mostly have cold hands. Do you think that if you had to pick the vegans out a crowd of strangers you would have a higher success rate using a handshake than a salute? If so, how highly would you value this knowledge?
One never has to pick a vegan out in a crowd. They'll tell you about their veganism before you have any opportunity to try to pick them out.
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I am still unconvinced that the person claiming that handshakes can tell you what kind of person you are dealing with is trolling. I guess if someone squeezes your hand hard enough to make it hurt you can tell they are an asshole.
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EPT
