I'm a big Hugger. Love to hug. Nothing like a good hug to greet another fellow human being (don't hug the robots, kids, that's weird) 🫂

Throughout grade school, my friends and I would greet each other every morning with an enthusiastic hug. Shit, we'd even hug randomly throughout the day for no reason at all (or for very good reasons, if I do say so myself).

Just roasted a friend who walked in late to the classroom, and everyone laughed? High-five and a hug for you! 😄

Just made a joke during Anatomy class that referenced last night's Curb Your Enthusiasm episode that only three of us in the class understood, we all laughed, and the teacher responded with, "Guys, please, enough with the jokes. You guys need to learn this stuff."? Oh, yeah, you're getting a high five, a hug, and we're probably going to laugh for two more minutes simply because the teacher was upset that we were laughing 🤣

In French class, though? Don't hug, don't high-five, don't have any fun at all. Unless it has to do with remembering the proper way to pronounce "grapefruit." Then Ms. Boumann would be happy. But if we made a random joke when we learned the word for "fart" in French? She was not pleased. No laughing, no high-fiving, especially no hugging. She never really understood the need for us to physically embrace each other 😒

Thinking of all this makes me really miss being able to hug the majority of people I see. Or, if I didn't hug them, I didn't need to worry about greeting them at all. But that's not the case any longer. When you grow up, you need to greet everyone. Unless you're the asshole who only goes in and says hello to half the people in the room. I get it. I've been there before, and I've been that asshole.

As the world evolves and human interactions evolve with it, we need to figure this shit out.

In a previous email, I mentioned a few things every human regularly does that most cultures still haven't figured out how to talk about: having sex and taking a dump. I'm not going to go over those things again. You can read about them here. But I recently had a lightbulb moment about another thing we homo sapiens regularly do and constantly fuck up. Every single day of our lives.

We really suck at saying "Hello" to each other. Not just saying, "Hello." We generally suck at greeting unfamiliar people (and even those we're familiar with, too!).

And it sucks because if you think you have a lot of sex or take a lot of dumps (which you probably do less than and more of than the amount you think you do), we meet and greet people at an exponentially higher rate than both of those things combined.

Take one second and think about how many people you encounter and have to interact with on a regular day at work (this includes going to the office and working from home). From the people in elevators to almost every person at your job to every potential customer you might encounter.

And that's IRL. If you're working from home, you only need to greet people when you jump on a video call. Or when you randomly send them a chat message to ask something so you don't seem like an asshole for just going straight to the question. Or, when you're writing an email, you need to open with a greeting and close with a goodbye.

Fuck, no matter what you do, you have to say "Hello" to a shit ton of people in a shit ton of different moments in a shit ton of different ways.

Which makes me wonder why we're so fucking bad at it? And living through COVID has made all of it worse.

Am I shaking this person's hand?

Do I fist bump because they prefer the least amount of touching possible?

Are they elbow bump people?

Should I just do the slight head nod and verbal greeting because I'm not sure what this person's boundaries are?

"David, it's not that difficult. Just ask everyone how they want to be greeted," is what some random person on Twitter would respond if I somehow managed to put this idea into a coherent tweet or thread.

And to whoever thinks that I'd like to say, shut the fuck up. That seems like a great plan until you awkwardly start every interaction with, "By the way, how do you feel comfortable greeting each other?"

When you say it as advice to someone, it might seem simple and straightforward, but life is rarely as easy as we think it to be. Also, that's assuming you will remember to ask every person you come in contact with how they like to be greeted while expecting yourself to remember what everyone's preferences are. And that's talking to people on a 1on1 basis. What happens if you meet a new group of four people? Are you going to say,

It sucks, it's awkward, and as time goes on, you realize every day more and more how much we fuck such a simple thing up.

Let's break down how terrible (or not terrible) we are at embracing our fellow persons:

Let's start with the things we got right and one of those is bowing. Cultures who bow have this shit figured out. There's no physical contact; it's easy to do, it's respectful, and it allows us to show varying degrees of respect by changing the height and length of our bow. It's the handshake 5.0. And the only reason it's not more widely practiced is probably because of some stupid American concept about being beneath someone else if you bow 🙄

I experienced this when I spent a bit of time in Brasil. All dudes said hi to each other in the same way: a quick palm slap followed by a fist bump. It was easy, straight to the point, and you never had that awkward moment of trying to figure out how you were going to greet this person you knew nothing about. Do your thing and keep it moving. So simple, so effortless. And it feels cool too.

Now, the original awkward-white-guy-high-five isn't the fist bump covered by the open palm. It's just being really bad at high-fiving another human:

But with the evolution of handshaking and fist-bumping, we've reached this status:

If you've ever been in one of those moments, you know how embarrassing it is. First day on the job, and you had the fist-bump-to-open-palm incident? Might as well quit. You're never going to move past it. Just an utterly devastating series of events. I heard it's what led to the fall of Rome (google it).

The infamous Key & Peele sketch born from a real-life video of Obama greeting several people should be hanging in the MoMa. It's the perfect demonstration that even though we live in the same society, we really don't live in the same society. I can only speak for the white side of this interaction, but it's definitely something to think about every time you go in for the initial greeting. Are they going to give me the handshake because we're in a professional setting or because they think I can’t pull off the dap? What if they go for the fist bump, and I go for the handshake? What if they go for the handshake, and I go for the fist bump? Are we going to dap it up and give a half-hug? Am I even cool enough for that? I know I am. I'm not so sure about you. One thing I do know is we can't all be as cool as Bernie.

It's pretty straightforward in Latin countries: when you meet a woman, you give them a slight kiss on the cheek. You never go full lips to cheek. You only tap cheeks and blow an air kiss. It's simple and to the point and incredibly easy to mess up when you're not sure who you're saying hi to. Is this person Latin? Are they open to receiving a kiss because they know I'm Latin? Few things in life are as awkward as shaking a woman's hand when they were expecting a kiss or going in for a kiss when the white lady was simply expecting a shake of the hand. In the most awkward of events ever, I saw an American dude full-on-Neo-dodging-bullets avoid a kiss from a Puerto Rican girl because he didn't understand the kiss-on-the-cheek greeting. No matter how many awkward-high-five-elbow-fist-bump-palm-slaps I go through, at least I can rest at night knowing that's never happened to me.

Older people tend to focus on shaking hands. Younger people might just fist-bump. Your homies dap you up. But have you encountered that older gentleman who went in for the fist bump when you went in for the handshake? Never felt as uncool as I do during those moments. I apologize to the entire Millennial delegation for bringing shame to our generation. Fuck it. From now on, I will dap up and half-hug every senior citizen I meet. If they want to be down, they're going to be all the way down.

(will provide updates in the future)

Okay, can someone please tell me what's the best thing to say to people in the elevator? Seriously, please tell me what you say. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. "Hola/Hello" sound lame as hell. "Good morning, afternoon, evening, night" sounds way too stuffy for such a passing encounter. And now that we're getting into it, do we need to say hi and goodbye in the elevator? I have a friend who says, "Have a good one." But that can be awkward as hell when the people don't actually speak English. Great, I just let down la cultura entera and blew my non-existent chance con esta mujer bella en el elevador. Better hope I never see her again because I'd just have to wait for the next elevator even though it's only her and there's plenty of space and I'm already running late for work. Next time I get in an elevator, I will stare directly at the wall or at myself in the mirror. Now that I think about it, that feels exhausting. I'm just going to take the stairs for the rest of my life and avoid any possible encounters 😅

Walking by someone on the street, sidewalk, or hallway and giving them a head nod or a simple one-word greeting. Was it good enough? Was it not? Did they even notice? Good thing we both kept it moving.

Saying hi to someone you've already said hi to, but you just saw them again, and you need to acknowledge that you saw them because walking by them and pretending they don't exist is very awkward. Actually, I'm never getting up from my desk ever again when I'm at work. That way, I only have to give an open-eyed enthusiastic wave from afar 👋 😀

Saying hi to two or more women when you are very close with one of them, and you give them an excited hug but then an awkward handshake or half-hug to the other one because you don't know them that well and you're not sure what their boundaries are 🥴

The awkward half-hug for someone you greet on a regular basis but simply in passing, but this time you're both standing there and have to do a better greeting. Still, y'all ain't really cool like that.

Saying hi to kids. Just give them a fucking fist bump.

Saying hi to a girl from across the table, and you usually give her a kiss on the cheek, but she's too far, so she kinda stretches out her hand, and you grab her fingers, and it's an awkward hand grabbing fingers and swinging full arm from side to side. My response, in this case, has been to go for a kiss on the back of the palm. It feels respectful and also pretty fucking cool.

This is exhausting.

2000+ words, and we still haven't figured out how the fuck to properly say hi to each other. I have my own David method when it comes to different things. In informal digital communications, I start with "yoooooo." That's it, that's all I got.

Go out there today and have some great times greeting people. If you have an awkward situation or a really good one, or you remember a recent awkward situation, please text me so we can discuss it.

This is awkward because now I'm unsure how to finish the email, close it out, and say goodbye.

So, um, that's it. It's over.

Zip it up, and zip it out ✌️

PS

The word for "grapefruit" in French is Pamplemousse 🥖