« Personnel Speculation | Main | MLK Day » Awkward Turtle21 Jan 2008 08:33 am Are people aware of this gesture? It's apparently a hand gesture the kids make these days during an awkward moment. Here's an example of the awkward turtle in action: The earliest reference I can find is from a two year-old Andrew Stein column in the Brown Daily Herald. Comments (32)
That vid makes me wanna pick that kid in the nuts till they bleed. How's that for awkward, punk? 
"That vid makes me wanna pick that kid in the nuts till they bleed. How's that for awkward, punk?" That should be "flick that kid in nuts till they bleed." Picking him in the nuts would just be rude.
Back when we were kids in India(late 70s) we used to do this to mimic a fish. I am not sure how common it was. Just something I learned from my brother. Had nothing to do with awkward moments.
We wouldn't have to ponder these gestures if children were made illegal. "Children of Men" was a dystopian nightmare. I prefer to think it would be the opposite. If nothing else came of it you could fly on a plane, eat in a restaurant or attend a movie without a tribe of squalling, yammering brats around to ruin your experience. And no awkward turtles.
A lot of college students know about the awkward turtle. I know that students at Duke University reference it a lot, as well as the "awkward turtle on its back" (turn your hands palm side up), used for especially awkward situations.
Weeeeeird. Also, I'm old.
It looks more like a flying rod gesture than like a turtle, to me: http://www.flyingrods.com/galleryfl/index.asp
As a strapping young person myself, I only found out about this gesture a couple of months ago. It is not incredibly common - at least where I'm from - but it is making the rounds.
Seems complicated. Where do people find the time?
What do you mean, you're supposed to do that during *awkward* moments? I thought it was a gesture of rage, like flipping someone the bird, only worse. Well in that case, to the driver of the late-model red Ford F-150 with the cow-catcher and the safari lights, weaving through the northbound lanes last Tuesday: obviously, I take it back, asswipe. Hmm, man, this *is* an awkward moment. If only there were a convenient gesture that would succinctly convey my feelings of discomfort at having misused some other gesture
To mk: old is not when you start missing trends. It is when you don't care. My wife subscribes to Entertainment Weekly and People. I find when I look at them that I recognize somewhat under half of the celebrities they gossip about. I thought for a time that I ought to be disturbed by this sign of creeping senescence, but then I realized that I simply don't care. The chance of this ignorance leading my missing some music or movie or whatever that I might enjoy is trivial. I can live with the possibility of not understanding water cooler talk about people who don't interest me.
Kids these days. Us old people just hold our hands up, palms-out, at head level, shake them back and forth and say, in a falsetto voice, "awkwaaard!"
Shooya, wow, I'm a grad student at Duke and I have never heard or seen that gesture before, ever. I guess I don't hang out with undergrads enough for that. (I hang out with the undergrad who works in our lab, and that's about it.) I just plain say "Awkward!" or "Wow, that was awkward." No hand gestures involved. (I do, hyper-ironically, make W for whatever and L for loser. That's totally from "Clueless" back in 1995. I wonder what the undergrads would do if I did it in front of them.)
I graduated from college less than a year ago and never saw this. Then again, my school was full of dorks and suicidal kids. "We wouldn't have to ponder these gestures if children were made illegal. "Children of Men" was a dystopian nightmare. I prefer to think it would be the opposite. If nothing else came of it you could fly on a plane, eat in a restaurant or attend a movie without a tribe of squalling, yammering brats around to ruin your experience. And no awkward turtles. Posted by steve duncan | January 21, 2008 9:13 AM" That's also why I'm looking forward to the days after the Rapture takes away all the fundies. Too bad not too many people here in Beijing are crazy Christians, otherwise it would be a lot easier to get on the train afterwards.
Weird. I remember that article.
There's also the "awk hawk" now.
Yeah, I wanted to post that in reply to your Craigslist football/gay encounter thread, but there's no HTML "awkward turtle" tag.
Yeah, the awkward turtle has been in use among undergrads at Harvard for about two years now. It sounds like it's a lot more subtle than that hand-waving falsetto stuff. A more recent evolution from the awkward turtle is the awkward turkey, which is even more awkward, though you probably didn't think that was possible.
The gesture is a traditional accompaniment to that old Hawaiian chestnut, "Goin' to the Hukilau." It demonstrates "all the 'ama 'ama come a-swimming to me." Maybe you have to be there.
College kids do this? I thought we were talking about 12-year-olds here. Not that there is a big difference. In fact, I imagine a stoned 12-year-old would act exactly like a typical college student.
That's a scuba-diving signal indicating turtle. I got certified 4 years ago and that's where I first learned it, so it's been around more than 2 years...
"Are people aware of this gesture?" Well, most hearing people aren't. Deaf people, on the other hand, know it pretty well. The gesture is lifted directly from American Sign Language (ASL) where it's the standard sign for "sea turtle". (Terrestrial turtles get their own sign.) How it came to mean "awkward" is an interesting question, but as long as popular culture is appropriating their language, let's give the Deafs come credit.
As one of the kids you mention, I'm familiar with not only this, but also the awkward tent (to hide from the awkward), and the awkward moose, who runs into and thus negates the purpose of the awkward tent.
Hm. The awkward turtle is around in my high school but not quite common enough that someone could just start awkward-turtling without explanation. Usually someone will go "awkward turtle..." and make the awkward turtle.
Is this generation the first to make such a big deal out of awkwardness? The entire concept seems to have taken on a new life. I don't get the impression that before, say, the late 90's, people ever did the falsetto "awkwaaard" thing, or were constantly bringing attention to potentially awkward moments (thus ensuring the move from potential to actual). Kids just seem very much attuned to "awkwardness," whatever exactly that is, than ever before. I wonder what it's all about.
Gen X did not care about being awkward or much else for that matter. Anyone familiar with the international symbol for "buck" would know this.
Matt, when you go the The Atlantic offices - leave the crack pipe at home.
I'm a grad student, and my college-kid brother just showed me that last month. But in practice, no one could manage to rotate their thumbs in opposite directions so it devolved into the basic awkward-turtle you showed in the video clip :-P
This gesture seems self-perpetuating. Anyone irritating and boring enough to do such a thing would likely also give rise to many uncomfortable gaps in the conversation.
Thanks for linking to my Brown Daily Herald column. Let me just say this: Some of the comments seem to just be, "I've never heard of it, so it's weird." I'd submit that that's not the most open-minded approach to life.
I used to work at a Korean tutoring company in Georgia where the director and most of the students are Korean, but most of the kids are fairly Americanized. Had this cute 17-year-old female student who never did her homework. One day the Korean director was jokingly scolding the girl for not doing her homework, saying that if she didn't start doing it, the teacher [me, 25-year-old male] would have to bend her over and spank her. As the director walked away, a ninth-grade male was making a weird gesture with his hands. That was my introduction to the awkward turtle.
Comments closed February 04, 2008. |
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Heads in the Sand
my grade-school cousins up in Chicago kept doing that when we visited them back in October.
i was under the impression that one of them had invented it, though. guess not :)
Posted by cleek | January 21, 2008 8:51 AM