Why Do Guys Raise Their Hands Like This?

There’s nothing like social media to remind you that you’ve never once had a unique experience.

Packing seven pairs of underwear for a three-day trip? Someone tweeted about it. Obsessively googling every actor I recognise in a movie before being able to watch it properly? Yeah, there’s a TikTok on that.

There are fewer and fewer original thoughts or quirky tropes to peg my personality around these days, and I’m kinda OK with it, especially when these observations lead to moments of shared understanding, enjoyment, and most importantly: TikTok fodder.

Enter: the ‘guys raising their hand in class’ TikToks, which are currently going viral. Yes, we are talking about the very mundane scenario of… boys throwing up their hands in classrooms. But it’s not the act that captivates, but the way they raise their hand that’s resonating with millions of people online. The shoulder hunch, the furrowed brows, the way their arm seems to be pulled up by their elbow rather than their hand — it’s all just disconcertingly spot on.

 

The thing that kills me the most is the fingers. I get that people probably don’t want to look too eager when putting their hand up to answer a question, but why does that universally translate to this half-open claw?!

The gesture seems to be specific to a classroom situation, too. I don’t see the claw out in restaurants signalling when they’re ready for the bill. Guys don’t whip it out when they thank cars for letting them merge. What is it about classrooms that suddenly has guys’ hands trapped in this liminal space?

Is this is a learned experience? Some kind of rite of passage, like how in kindergarten we all raised our hands like we were in a competition to pull our own arms out of our sockets? (I miss caring about something that much.)

Sadly, we may never know. But it comforts me knowing that despite all of our differences, there are universal experiences that bind us to our fellow kin. Thank you to these men, and we can only hope that your questions are one day answered.