ADL: How the “OK” Symbol Became a Popular Trolling Gesture

May 1, 2017

Updated: 9/5/18

[apology if old news. having a great kek at this one, wanted to share]

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This is thanks to a 2017 hoax campaign started by members of the notorious website 4chan that has since taken on a life of its own.

The 4chan site is an anonymous discussion board with an outsized cultural impact on the internet. It has been responsible for everything from the “I can haz cheeseburger” cat meme to the concept of Rickrolling. There is little that 4channers like as much as a hoax, and in recent months, they have served up a number of fakeries with white supremacist themes to largely credulous online audiences.

The “OK” hand gesture originated as one of these hoaxes in February 2017 when an anonymous 4channer announced “Operation O-KKK,” telling other members that “we must flood Twitter and other social media websites…claiming that the OK hand sign is a symbol of white supremacy.” The user even provided a helpful graphic showing how the letters WP (for “white power”) could be traced within an “OK” gesture. The originator and others also suggested useful hashtags to help spread the hoax, such as #PowerHandPrivilege and #NotOkay. “Leftists have dug so deep down into their lunacy,” wrote the poster, “We must force [them] to dig more, until the rest of society ain’t going anywhere near that s***.”

Following the cues of the hoax’s originator, 4channers created fake e-mail and Twitter accounts and bombarded civil rights organizations, journalists, and others with messages furthering the “OK” hoax. It is possible that some of the hoaxers were racists or white supremacists themselves, as parts of 4chan are something of a haven for them, and the site itself has been a source of adherents of the alt right segment of the white supremacist movement.

The original launch of “Operation O-KKK” sputtered after a few days and it seemed that the hoax had run its course without spreading too far, but it picked up again in late April and this time was far more successful in spreading across social media—and beyond…

Over the year and a half since the original hoax campaign began, ADL has tracked its usage by a variety of figures on the far right, including some well-known white supremacists, though it seems to be even more popular among the so-called alt lite. Use of the “OK” gesture has spread beyond the far right and can now also be found within the broad community of mainstream Donald Trump supporters—some of whom seem to have no idea of its origins…

One of the more successful of these recent 4chan hoaxes, also originating in February 2017, was the concept that white supremacists were drinking milk to show “the superiority of the white race” and the “purity of white milk.” One hoaxer trying to convince the Anti-Defamation League “explained” that “they are chugging milk in front of people of color, quoting racist books and phrases and supposed statistics about people of color being lactose intolerant.” A number of media websites bought into the milk hoax…

They are also a response to the willingness of many on the left in the United States to believe that the Trump administration is full of hardcore white supremacists, a belief so powerful that recently a photo of White House staffer Stephen Miller adjusting his suit and tie before an interview went viral with the claim that Miller was actually using his hands to form an obscure white supremacist hand sign for “white power” as a secret signal to white supremacists who might be watching. It is this willingness to believe that 4channers have been trying to exploit.

full article at https://www.adl.org/blog/how-the-ok-symbol-became-a-popular-trolling-gesture