The Kikwit handshake and culture

Wed, 19 Feb 2020
1 min read
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(IMAGE: Metro.co.uk)

Some trivia from the Ebola outbreak in 1995:

Outbreaks and the news they create also give the public a chance to see culture being created and transmitted because people invent behaviours and management strategies when they encounter new diseases. One small example of this occurred during the early days of the Ebola virus outbreak in Kitwit, Uganda. Villagers who were deathly afraid of contamination began to stop shaking hands and to start touching elbows in greeting, a gesture that became known as the ‘Kitwit handshake’… Shaking hands in greeting became briefly supplanted by touching elbows as a polite way to greet one another without passing the pathogen” (96).

— In Epidemiology and Culture by James A. Trostle (2005)

I thought I’d share this because of the behaviours manifested in:

  1. The public responses thus far – boomer-tips, panic-buying after the raising of the DORSCON risk, the response to the panic-buying itself, etc.; and
  2. Me, because of my own responses to boomer-tips and hand-shaking.

What the kids are calling it: The hashtag

Fri, 22 Jul 2016
3 min read
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NOTE: I wrote this two years ago.

Unfortunately, ST Communities seems to have disappeared, so I thought I’d archive this piece here for post-terity (hur hur).

July 21, 2014
The Straits Times
Communities – Education

Growing up, you referred to it as “hex” or “the pound sign”. Now, you refer to it as “hash” or “the number sign” – correctly, you think, with a sigh of relief.

End of story? Think again, folks – this thing with two pairs of parallel lines intersecting each other has had a new lease of life breathed into it, and is gaining popularity with each passing day.

“What? That’s ridiculous!” – what some of you might probably exclaim.

#pfft #parents #lame – what your kids will probably say in eye-rolling response, replete with a weird finger action where they cross the index and middle fingers of both hands.

Don’t call in the exorcist just yet, though – much as you might be inclined to disagree, the kids are all right; they’re just hashtagging.

The hashtag, as it has come to be known, was first developed on Twitter for use as a means of indexing and retrieving topics.

An example: Searching for #NLB or #NLBsaga on the micro-blogging platform allows you to easily locate stories on the recent pulping furore.

The explosion of the hashtag’s usefulness and popularity on Twitter has influenced other social networking sites like Facebook and Instagram to adopt hashtags too.

Here’s the twist – hashtag usage has evolved to encompass what linguist Ben Zimmer calls “ironic metadata”: light-hearted humour in which users subtly poke fun at themselves or others.

In my case above, I’ve used a hashtag for that purpose in my Facebook photo caption: “Thought I’d take a selfie with my new friend. Apparently, the feeling of affinity isn’t mutual #putmebackinmyenclosureyouterrorist.”

The hashtag creates humour on two levels:

  • Through its length and exactitude, which prevent it from being functional, so it’s clear I’m not being serious about using the hashtag for its literal purpose; and
  • Through its succinct depiction of the turtle’s imagined response to being forcibly taken out of its enclosure for the snapping of a frivolous selfie.

(DISCLAIMER: No turtles were harmed in the making of this picture, and all turtles were returned to their enclosure immediately after they were photographed.)

End of story? Not yet!

Hashtag usage has become so popular online that people – including your children, much as you might be inclined to disagree with regard to their classification as humans – have been using it offline as well.

Hence, the weird finger action they’ve been doing, and your alarm at the possibility of them being possessed.

So don’t worry about the kids. Much like the hash symbol, your young’uns will morph and grow in strange and varied ways, but they’ll eventually find some function in life, useful or otherwise.

Last but not least, should you join in the fun of physical hashtagging?

My advice is a firm and solid “No”, lest your kids think you possessed too.

#endofstory #forreal #imserious

Poet of colour

Tue, 31 May 2016
1 min read
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I’ve always thought of myself in these terms (in no particular order): writer, artist, educator, editor, and so forth.

At most, I’ve included the adjective “Singaporean” in front of the first two nouns, or “based in Singapore” behind the latter two to provide a sense of context.

But never in a million years have I thought of myself and my work in terms of race.

So I was pleasantly surprised – and very amused – to find myself being described as a “poet of colour”, as seen from one of the hashtags on this post:

Apparently, I'm a poet of colour 😂
Apparently, I’m a poet of colour 😂

It’s one of the few times – beyond form-filling and direct or indirect racist comments made in my presence, because people are occasionally unable to grasp my ethnic makeup – that I’m forced to confront the fact that race matters a lot more to other people than it does for me.