The victory hand gesture.

J.H is currently my roommate is he also went to the same high school as I did. His ethnicity is Taiwanese but he was born and raised in Alabama.

As I was interviewing him, he thought he would tell me about a think he and his friends would do, but then it started to spread around the whole high school. It was first overly done by one of his (who is also my friend). Whenever his friend would do something good, or just if anything good happened around him, he would move his arm into a “check” sign, signaling a sign of victory. For example, he would extend right arm sharply to the upper right, and bend his left arm sharply across his chest. J.H would just randomly see his friends do this movement whenever, and eventually he would do it too just for the heck of it. And throughout the years, J.H would see more and more people doing the hand movement, even from people from grades below that friend who started it.

J.H decided to share this because of how the one simple movement from one random guy would spread though out the whole high school. Even though the action was weird, J.H would explain the victory hand gesture was actually relatable in a sense and could be use anywhere when appropriate. He learned this gesture from the “original creator.”

I think this hand gesture would be used as a comical sense, as J.H’s, and I assume many more, first reactions towards it was that it was weird and funny to look at. People would just laugh at the person who does it, but it eventually became the norm, allowing everyone to follow in.

I would think this would be some sort of folk ritual or tradition and folk speech to have people is a part of a group in high school. J.H said that whoever in Taiwan saw this type of hand gesture would think of the high school that it came from,  even seeing stranger doing it, J.H would assume that they went to the same high school and just never seen the faces of the people doing it before.