My petty gripe: yes, hands can make hearts. Now get off Instagram and do something useful

The Guardian

2 days ago

For millennia human beings have had hands.
Oh, what things we have done with these hands! We have woven great tapestries. We have deftly saved the lives of our fellow beings. We have written works of such enduring power they have transcended the centuries. The Sistine Chapel? Hands. Open heart surgery? Also hands.
Generation after generation, people have been born with hands, used hands casually, without even thinking about it, like they were no big deal. And everything was fine with hands until, what, 10 years ago, some wizard realised you could rest the top third of your opposing fingers together while pressing the pads of yours thumbs together below and make an approximation of the shape of a heart.
And that's all dickheads have been doing with hands ever since.
Who was that person? Was it an accident, or had they been experimenting with using all their body parts to make the shape of a heart? Had they been thinking: if only there was a trite and annoying way people could signal their affection for each other? We hardly have any of those!
And when they stumbled upon this revelation, did they run out into the streets, hands aloft, shouting (weeping, maybe?) to all who could hear: LOOK, HANDS MAKE HEARTS! HANDS MAKE HEARTS!
And those who came, did they slowly and in awe bring their own hands together in a heart shape, wondering how they had failed to see this before? And is that when they put it on Instagram?
I don't have the answers, dear reader. Could we be living in end times when all human experience is flattened, rendered meaningless and fed into the insatiable algorithms that control our declining culture? I don't know! What I do know is this gesture is stupid.
What I do know is this is a grave misuse of hands, which are for tapestries, surgeries and chapel decoration (see above).
I also know that in ancient Greece, what we now consider the OK sign – the connecting of the thumb and forefinger – was used to denote love, a mimic of kissing of lips. Imagine how annoying that was, all over the agora, people doing little kissy love fingers! So stupid heart hands will go one day, too. I just have to wait for our civilisation to collapse. (Not long now.)