On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 12:27 PM, Carcharoth <carcharot...@googlemail.com>wrote:
> > FWIW, I've known the face-palm gesture for ages, and never knew it was > in any way related to Star Trek. I suspect our article on the topic > may be slightly over-egging things there. I've used and seen the > facepalm gesture used more like the "doh!" > > .. > Carcharoth > That's my word. I would think, that this gesture : http://knowyourmeme.com/system/icons/554/original/facepalm.jpg?1248715065 would be generally understandable across the world (so it had to be understandable without the StarTrack, without its contribution) At least myself, I would not know that this gesture is supposedly originating from StarTrack and I would expect it is just normal gesture, I would understand it normally (being in another continent and in community using different language from english). And I also believe, that both the possibilities (1 lifting up the palm to the face; 2 lowering ones face to the palm) might coexist alongside themselves, with just the meaning little bit shifted. I just think of girls I know, - blushing, just turning red for some awkward reason, lowering their heads in just reminiscence of the above gesture - the second case. So lowering ones head in facepalm is more like ones escape from my own embarrassment, while lifting rather the palm to ones tired head is more like escape from others in disbelief. That's how I would read the gesture intuitively. The template does not differentiate between those two. And I saw it being applied in both of the circumstances. Sometimes I felt it, to be surprisingly judgmental. I saw some users in good standing using it as shortcut for something, I would decipher as: "Its so stupid/naive argument, that I am not going to answer any more then this. Please stop here" Petr (a.k.a. Reo On) _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
