No Righteous Cause is complete without a colored wristband. That’s why I’m so excited that the no-hand shake movement (yes, movement) now has an official blue wristband for people who want to show that they support the effort. Get a ten pack of them here for $20.
Here’s who has (sort of, not really) pledged their support for the No Handshake cause to date:
- OpenCandy, Bessemer Venture Partners
- Some German city
- CNN, Dalai Lama And The Obamas
- One in three Canadians
- Brad Feld and Boston Globe
- NEW – The New Yorker, via this cartoon
- Update: AND Dilbert
Haha, sounds and looks cool. Would love one on the house for some testing
Same here, but you can’t buy one.. only 10 for $20.. i’d rather have 1 for $5
You don’t need that – just do it like Dilbert: http://dilbert....trip.sunday.gif
So how does this work really? When someone extends their arm to initiate a hand shake, the person wearing the band goes “Nope. Sorry buddy.” and then points them to the wrist band?
I just read somewhere that the risk of death for a child contracting h1n1 is 540 out of 8,000,000.
The risk of coming across as an ass by not shaking someone’s hand is far greater.
yessss i alway though scott had some problems socialising with people – I think Bernie Ecelstone has a word for induhviduals like this now what was it.. ah yes “loonies”
A wristband that when worn in conjunction with a suit is probably only going to be seen when the arm is extended for a handshake? Yea, somebody didn’t think this plan through.
i saw on the news that where i live there’s been 100+ almost 200 deaths and that there are 6000+ deaths worldwide. i think that’s not true and that the actual deaths are being underreported either as an all h1n1 death or an h1n1 complications death. what about the people in third world countries who have many people travelling in and out of the areas? how are they dealing with this and do they even have access to something like a tamiflu or whatever that antibacterial is called.
10 pack for $20? that’s one hell of a rip off. Atleast the LiveStrong ones are $1 and proceeds from it go to charity.
Yes, but they are for a cause, not to inflate someones ego.
yeah it’s a hell of a rip off too for such a worthy message. too bad they aren’t going about it the right way. i mean that colour first of all is hideous, and please if i want my own rubber i will get it myself for cheap.
I actually believe in the idea of not shaking hands. But I don’t see it going away so early. :/
Even Dilbert agrees with you: http://dilbert....mic/2009-11-15/
There’s an irony with Dilbert comic strip. Dilbert lost the business because he didn’t shake (it may have to do with his inappropriate comments to
)
Point is that I prefer to keep the business/client and just wash my hands.
Michael you are a fanatic!
They made a Dilbert to this topic:
http://www.dilb...ast/2009-11-15/
Today’s Dilbert also has it
http://dilbert.com/2009-11-15/
Guess it’s proof that in the US, if you
repeat your idiotic idea enough times,
You’ll have a crowd of pathetic followers
in no time.
Rats, came here after reading my Google Reader comic feeds to post exactly that… If this was xkcd, I’d have to say “ninja’d”!
I wonder if you ever have sex with something other than smart gadgets, mr. Arrington (i mean, with human beings). It’s sooo unhygienic & barbaric, you know – to rub your precious bare skin against some ther person’s. Duh.
It could have been a pair of gloves instead..
Now come on, that would leave them looking like idiots.
Thank you for fighting the good fight. Its going to be easier to replace the custom than it is to remove it, and I think we should do as the civilized do and bow instead.
Does not compute — President Obama does a bow + shake with Japan’s Emperor:
http://twitpic.com/pm3sc
If you’re going to bow, why shake?
Last I checked, it was diplomatic for politicians to respect eachother’s traditions. Hence, the greeting done in both style.
One does wonder about the power balance being expressed by the respective bowing in the picture, however. [See bowing etiquette]
he shook because that is what he is mostly used to and that’s the “accepted” normal form of greeting and respect and all those other intangible attachments (that i could give a shit about). he bowed because he knows the custom and probably because he went through a briefing where some etiquette person mentioned that this is the traditional way, but that the japanese emperor was okay for both or either or and it’s up to obama to do what he wants, leading to the awkward moment captured on film. life’s beautiful ain’t it. what i just typed could be said in 2 sentences. no wonder some people find twitter useful. an insidious editor for lifes events.
I recently got a COSMIC usb wrist band. It is brilliant. A wrist band that is actually useful as well as promoting the cause.
Check out the pics on my blog. http://bit.ly/ssbg9
Dilbert is in on this silly trend. Coincidence?
http://dilbert....mic/2009-11-15/
Is this how TC makes extra money now?
Still have to convince Obama though. While in Japan this weekend he shook hands with the Emperor, while at the same bowing deeply, which is the sufficient way in this situation.
http://www.yout...0TY7MlI#t=0m33s
This would be even more effective if it said “Skip the shake, I have the flu.”
+1
Most of the companies, programs uses wristbands for promotion purposes.
Consider a “Namaste” – safe…and respectful.
http://satyamev...e-may-be-safer/
22 million people have had or have h1n1. that’s a good reason to skip the shake. however i don’t think skipping the shake will avoid exposure. i can already hear the h1n1 virus saying — ’shake or no shake — you have been assimilated.’
LOL… Trinkets for those with OCD. Do they come in sterilized baggies?
no but they come with free infections of swine flu
+1
1. I enjoy shaking hands.
2. We have too much tweeter\facebook\computers to give up human touch.
This phobia for touching probably explains why Mike is still single. Every geek should know that porn is NOT an acceptable substitute for proper, physical human contact with women.
Absolutely. We are human beings, not machines. Human beings touch each other, that’s not a big deal.
If we stop each tradition when a potential problem with it surfaces, we’ll end up as inhuman as robots.
This not shaking hands thing is just a paranoia. When spring comes we’ll find out that this flue was not much worse than other year’s flue. We’ll also find out that car accidents, alcohol and drugs killed more people.
But will we admit that we should have put more resource on fighting car accidents, alcohol and drugs? I doubt it.
Arrington, you need invite Brazil to change your mind. The life is very short to be worried about handshake.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
You have OCD, Arrington. Go treat yourself!
Would be better if you had the flu instead.
+1 !!!
+100000
Get over it Arrington
Unbelievable how people are making money. For when bracelets for people who don’t peak their nose in open?
Wash your hands and give up the rubber faux fashion statement. Nothing is more played out that messages on giant rubber bands.
Another way of making money (even for a cause …) out of the spychose generated by the speudo mass media.
Arrington, can you stop the demagogy and become a journalist again? Thanks.
Woah! So they will have hand bands for people who think sex isn’t good as well :s
I’d like continue handshake mans and take two or tree kiss woman’s face. This is a great advantage to living in Brazil.
Kissing is actually safer. “Prof John Oxford, Britain’s leading flu expert and a virologist at Barts hospital and the London School of Medicine, said social kissing might help cut infections: ‘Social kissing on the cheek would not easily transfer infection while viruses can spread via the hands far more easily.’”
http://www.hand...r-than-kiss.htm
yeah but that doesn’t mean kissing is the safest. can you imagine some person hacking up a lung and trying to kiss you on both sides of the face? please. i would punch that person so hard. hmm…and that’s not my natural disposition at all,
anyways i read that some places are looking to ban the bisou for some time because of h1n1. about time.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. The human race is already weakening its collective immune system by living in an evironment pervaded by antibacterials. This stupid idea clearly comes from someone who doesn’t regard human behavior as important.
Why not just live like a hermit, and save the rest of the human race the trouble of having to pay you any attention?
hey you shut up. ocd and paronoid people deserve to live in this world too, or as normally as possible. i don’t understand why everyone universally accepts the handshake as the form of greeting when it isn’t the norm in many other countries but it has to be the norm because it’s been forced on and accepted by us all. it’s kind of an gap and crap shoot system. i mean it’s not like kids now go around shaking hands as a sign of whatever it’s supposed to mean. things change. this should change as well. i hate when people dwell on things because they don’t want to update the norms or think up of a new norm. yeah the handshake might not be broken but there should be several accepted alternatives that also become normal, to the freaking handshake. i don’t want to shake people’s hands (no i am not arrignton and he’s not paying me to rant about my hate of handshakes). if i don’t shake someone’s hand i get the look. the look i ahve to decipher as, “oh shit this person thinks this or that about me not shaking their hand. am i fucked?” seriously. it’s completely unecessary.
but i do agree with you about the whole antibacterial thing, although the scientists and docs keep saying they’re safe and only help us stay healthy. i’m not getting the shot. i’ve never gotten the shot. there’s just some things that we don’t do in my ethnic background. most people back home don’t know anything about vaccines and medicine and shit like that so you don’t grow up with that culture. you’re born in the world. you die. it happens. i told my math teacher i would rather die than get the shot (didn’t say it because i’m scared of needles and also fact based science), and i realized immediately after i said that how incredibly stupid it was. really. but i wasn’t the only person who agreed with my sentiments and no one i know (even outside of my family) has gotten a shot.
sorry about that shut up part.
http://en.wikip...ulsive_disorder
To be honest Arrington I believe that a fist bump is less sanitary.
Have you ever just sat and watched what people do? When people have a runny nose they don’t use the palm of their hand they use the backside. Usually around the knuckles, so not only are you coming in to contact with the same side, but you are also coming in to contact with the exact same part that they use.
You then go about your day and you yawn you so cover your mouth the the very same knuckles that just came in contact with the excrement of somebody else’s nose.
Also, if a man urinates without washing his hands, the chances are high that any residue is also going to be on those very same knuckles that you are touting about as being sanitary.
I find fist bumping to be far less sanitary than shaking hands.
So I’ll continue with firm handshakes and washing my hands a few times a day instead of being obsessive about killing and preventing the spread bacteria and continue with not being sick for 7 years. If you attempt to prevent all contagions from entering your body at all times then you won’t have the immune system to fight the .01% that your anti-bacterial soap doesn’t kill that does.
“I find fist bumping to be far less sanitary than shaking hands.”
Yeah, maybe if all your fingers are amputated and you’re continuously forced to use your knuckles for everything, even to urinate.
+1
How could you possibly think fist bumping is more sanitary than wrapping germ filled hands around each other?
That’s just pathetic.
Seriously? This is ridiculous. We are all not lepers. Do you use cash? Have any idea how germ ridden and dirty (no pun intended) money is?
Incredibly stupid idea unless. Just wear surgical gloves if your that paranoid.
This is crazy! But I’ll buy 20..
Arrington, you’re getting ridiculous.
1) Staying away from any germ, anytime makes your body much more vulnerable to germs. This is how our body defenses work.
2) As other readers said, life is short. We are human. Touching people is important. If you want to spend your life in your basement, away from people and germs, that’s your choice. But please, please, talk about technology and forget this ridiculous handshake cause. We don’t read Techchrunch for that.
The deep bow used by the Japanese seems so civilized, polite, and sufficient. Yet I doubt that it will ever be universally accepted as a substitute for the handshake in the “Western” world.
This post remember me from Sheldon of Big Bang Theory!
In one way i feel for you since I see it as a decease that you cant help, but you need quite an ego to repeatedly drag this hopeless mission in public.
Is it really worth it for you?
Time to try again now that I can get a wristband!
I’ve held back for so long. This whole handshake business proves without a doubt that you are a f*cking retard. I stopped reading your blog a long time ago when I realized it.
Do you not see the fundamental problem with your comment?
Just wear one of those dishwashing gloves. You know, those bright yellow ones? But just wear one on the right hand. – M. J.
This is all getting very Howard Hughes.
Why don’t you just wear one of these: http://cbclean....ms/suit-2x.jpeg
Begs the question- how do you intend to
open those “disgusting” manually operated
public doors?
Your affliction is common but has an odd
medical name: spermophobia
hahahaaa. should be actually and more correctly fecalphobia. are you as shocked as i am that most people in the world have fecal residue on their hands. my goodness.
Hand shaking was a replacement for bowing introduced in the USA by Thomas Jefferson, at least that’s what I remember from playing kids trivial pursuit
Is it really so tough to wash your hands you big ninny? Any keyboard has more germs than anyone’s hand you shake. Let’s just stop touching things altogether.
Hey, you could pioneer the “no touch” life. It would be awesome.
I Think a good theme for the next campaign is sex without fluid changing, or skip sex, use insemination
That’s what am afraid will happen next.
There is an aboriginal tribe in Australia in which when men greet each other they shake their genitals instead of their hands. One tug, and you’re good (two or more if you’re French).
There’s a lot to be learned from this custom.
You can tell a lot about a person by how their handshake (or lack thereof). Instead of skipping the handshake, why don’t you just learn not to rub your eyes or put your fingers around your mouth, and wash your hands fairly often.
Like others have said, unless there is an epidemic of Argentine hemorrhagic fever going around, it’s safer to risk getting the flu occasionally than to avoid germs altogether. I shake hands probably 10 times per day, and I haven’t had the flu since I was 5 since I stay healthy and rested (most of the time)
Maniac
I don’t understand this whole “more exposure makes you stronger” sentiment. What exactly is meant by this?
1) Stronger in the sense that you are immunized against a larger set of viruses.
2) Stronger in the sense that you are less likely to get sick from a strain of virus you’ve never been exposed to.
3) Stronger in the sense that you are more likely to recover from a viral sickness. A latent immune system is a weak one.
1 is obviously true, but what evidence is there for 2 and 3? I’m pretty sure there is zero evidence for the second proposition; don’t know about 3. If only 1 is true then the following question pops up:
If a virus or set of viruses didn’t kill the person who gets sick more often, then why is it more likely to kill the person who doesn’t get sick as often?
There is one benefit I can think of for the person who gets sick often. He is less likely to get sick when he is old. Old people die from diseases they were perfectly capable of defending against in their youth. But then there 3 more questions:
1) Do flu/cold viruses mutate so frequently that the immunity you’ve built against a large array of viruses isn’t significantly valuable by the time you are old?
2) Is the diversity of viruses so great that most people can’t build a significantly valuable ‘immunization set’?
2) Does the OCD sufferer necessarily have increased chances of getting sick in his old age, if he keeps up the behavior that kept him from getting frequently sick his whole life?
although kind of silly, it is a good idea.
By not shaking hands, we certainly avoid receiving –and spreading all kinds of germs.
Now, all day and all night [if we sleep with a girlfriend, wife, partner] we touch a multitude of surfaces teeming with bacteria, viruses and other microbes: we drive the car to a gas station and, the horror!, we HAVE to touch the nozzle at the pump… which, of course, has been touched by thousand of motorists before us. Funny, I have never seen an attendant to run out and clean the nozzles with an alcohol-soaked rag after they have been used…
Then, we go on to the office and… horror! again!… we HAVE to open the door when we get there. What a dilemma, what to do? simple: just wait until someone shows up and open it for you.
Going to the grocery store? another nightmare: think that EVERY SINGLE piece of fruit has been touched by hundreds of people [the same day] who have coughed on their hands, touched their bodies, going to the bathroom… just before getting to the produce area.
Of course, this also goes for ALL canned goods, and hundreds of other products, including baked goods!
Sorry Michael, I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable. It is just getting a little closer to reality.
In Brazil we adopted a simple attitude called gel alcohol. Every place (stores, schools, banks, …) have a bottle. I think USA have powerful germ killes and a good pharma supply chain. The problem isn’t the handshake.
Congratulations for your post.
Regards,
Thiago Freitas
Thiago,
The gel alcohol was created in the US years ago.
It does work, but only in the sense of giving us a false sense of security or peace of mind…
When gel alcohol was made available to the public – also to hospitals, clinics and thousands of medical practices, we [our own large practice] decided to test this product. We used gallons [about three liters a gallon] every day, and took swabs from all personnel’ hands, including the doctors, for cultures.
The results were extremely disappointing: we took swabs at five minutes, then four, three, two and one minutes after useing the gel generously. Every single sample grew all types of bacteria in the lab, including some VERY scary ones.
The gel was good for only about 7 to 10 seconds.
What happens is that bacteria grow deep in the sweat glands, and spread back to our skin almost immediately after the gel is gone…
Although it is an useless product, it is a multi-billion industry here in the US… and I guess, also in Brazil…
i think they said that the hand sanitizer is good for 24 hours. something like that. saw it on the news and felt a little bit betrayed that something to make my hands clean all the time, no matter what surface i contact, hasn’t been invented yet.
I love the part after a soccer game where all the kids line up and shake hands with every kid on the other team. Then they go to the sideline and eat a treat, with the same hand that just shook 10 other sweaty, germy, snotty hands.
I am surprised I haven’t heard of a soccer league that has banned this practice due to the flu.
Good point.
Whatever happened to the [fake] “National Emergency?”
We know the answer…
yeah. same thing happens everywhere with all sports and group activities. i mean what’s the indicator telling you that the hand you are shaking is clean? i always figured that the germs canelled each other out.
Human plastic coatings for sale, $499 each. Shake hands without fear, as our unique, translucent body armour protects you from all those pesky germs. Call now and you’ll get a free gas mask!
I spent 7 years in the US and could never get over the personal distance Americans keep, even from close friends. One of my friends would rather step on the street than allow me to get within 3 feet of her, while having a conversation (and no, I did not smell, or anything).
Yeah, sure, take your precious isolation a few steps further. Then, have another lengthy national debate when the next kid picks up a gun and kills a dozen of his classmates.