On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 11:51 AM, Tom Morris tom@tommorris.org wrote:

On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 11:04, Scott MacDonald doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com wrote:

...

Unfortunately, I think this is what happens when kewl teenagers who like memes started (apparently) by star-trek, meet adults who value actual communication in the language of Shakespeare.

Oh, please. I'd call you a flap-mouthed miscreant, but instead I shall risk accusations of incivility and just facepalm quietly to myself.

This whole conversation is starting to get a bit WP:DICK-ish... :-)

Seriously, have a look at the article on facepalm. It is terrible and might be causing a fair bit of misunderstanding here. For starters, "lowering one's face into one's hand" is wrong. You raise your palm to your face (as clearly shown in the pictures). The act of lowering your face into *both* hands is known a variant of "holding your head in your hands" (sometimes shaking the head in despair as well). The Star Trek image in question isn't even a classic facepalm:

http://knowyourmeme.com/system/icons/554/original/facepalm.jpg?1248715065

That is just holding your forehead with one hand supporting the head from the side. A completely different gesture. There is also a similar gesture where you avoid looking at something because it is embarrassing, that involves turning the head away slightly and cringing mentally and covering the eyes. Not to mention slapping your forehead in mock disgust/frustration. Really, we need a better article on body language, with scholarly sources, rather than stubs with urban dictionary references or worse.

I suspect looking at the page history will throw up a better version than the current one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Facepalm&oldid=332507973

That version dates from 18 December 2009. The redirect discussion is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2009_Dec...

But the article whichever version is used still needs a massive citation needed tag added, and better sources. The monkey stuff seesm to come from the experiment described here:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/02/02/monkey-see-mon...

Trouble is, most easily findable sources are blogs like this:

http://www.healthkicker.com/754153008/the-science-of-facepalm/

Which shows that the definition is not exactly stable.

Carcharoth

On 10/04/11 3:51 AM, Tom Morris wrote:

On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 11:04, Scott MacDonald doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com wrote:

...

Unfortunately, I think this is what happens when kewl teenagers who like memes started (apparently) by star-trek, meet adults who value actual communication in the language of Shakespeare.

Oh, please. I'd call you a flap-mouthed miscreant, but instead I shall risk accusations of incivility and just facepalm quietly to myself.

Pedantry is no more communicative than the memes of pop culture.

Ec