Look over here, jerks, it’s a history of flipping people the bird
A brief history of showing the middle finger as an insult, from ancient Greece to the modern day
Aux Features Middle Finger
As the above image shows, there is no insult quite like either being shown or showing someone the middle finger. Why, exactly, anyone cares at all about seeing a digit stuck up in the air is one of those mysteries that we all kind of just accept, but, in a noble attempt to demystify our long history of being offended by flipping the bird, a recent video from YouTube channel Weird History traces the gesture from its earliest known uses to some famous modern-day examples.
The clip begins with examples from ancient Greece, highlighting “the phallic nature” of a single raised finger sticking out from the center of a fist and mentioning an early recorded instance of it being used when the philosopher Diogenes needed a good, unsophisticated way to show disrespect to another philosopher, Demosthenes.
We’re then told that the ancient Romans called the middle finger the digitus impudicus (“offensive, indecent finger”), are told that it disappeared from popular use for a while in Europe during the Middle Ages, then skip far forward in time to learn that an ornery American baseball player named Charles “Old Hoss” Radbourn immortalized the gesture by being the first person to be photographed giving it during a team picture.
Other notable middle finger uses are documented as the video comes to an end, including the infamous Johnny Cash picture (which was directed, apparently, at Folsom Prison’s warden) and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller flipping off a group of students in 1976, giving us “The Rockefeller Salute” in the process.
So, there you have it. Next time you get cut off in traffic or dress up like Eminem for Halloween, know that you’re participating in a time-honored tradition.
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9 Comments
Have you heard?
https://youtu.be/RSBcgqnI4y0
does that make it easier to fit up his ass?
…a little bird told me…
This dude barely even tries to hide his contempt for his captors.
More badass than the Johnny Cash picture.
http://www.usspueblo.org/Prisoners/The_Digit_Affair.html
It’s kind of a shame that humanity reached its absolute apex with Diogenes, jerking off in the street and constantly dunking on that nerd Plato, and yet here we are still two thousand years later struggling to keep the whole thing afloat for some reason.
🖕
The bird has been watered down so much by people flipping off the camera for Facebook and, for some reason, dating profiles. I mean, in the context of driving it has a clear meaning, but just having people flip off the camera and sticking it on social media, who are you even mad at? What possible statement could you be making other than, “i’m edgy lol”? Through overuse, it’s just become emblematic of some generic, “Fuck you; I do what I want!” from the type of people who have strong opinions when other people do what they want.You know… like the American flag.