With the Olympics in full swing, I have ben reminded how much I hate the "hand heart" gesture. You know what I mean, where you make a heart shape with two hands, with the thumbs pointing downwards and the index fingers curled round above. Everybody's doing it. You can't avoid it.
It was first officially documented back in 1989 by an Italian artist, but I don't think he can be said to have exactly "invented" it. By 2010, it was ubiquitous, mainly courtesy of pop stars and sports personalities. Taylor Swift fans seemed to think that it was Ms. Swift's own personal gesture - well of course they did! - and that everyone else were just copycats.
And it is its sheer popularity that has made the hand heart quite such a bugbear for this particular curmudgeon. It's supposed to indicate somewhere between "I love you" and "thank you", so you can see why all these media personalities (and their followers) have taken to it.
But it's just such an easy, throwaway gesture that it has become overused, and its value has diminished accordingly. People now just do it because they are expected to. Many of them are now sloppy efforts and not even very heart-shaped, performative and pretty much empty.
Anyway, I don't want to belabour the point too much, just to get it out of my system.
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