On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 12:27 PM, Carcharoth <carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com>wrote;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)