Now even mainstream journalists are picking up the no handshake banner and running with it. Neil Swidey, writing for the Boston Globe, says “Last month, swine flu officially became a pandemic. Public health officials have said so-called “social distancing” strategies — sharply reducing contact with others — have proved most effective in slowing the spread of previous outbreaks, such as the 1918 flu pandemic. And they told us to cut down on our handshakes as much as we could. Northeastern University heeded the advice, asking its graduates not to shake hands when receiving their diplomas during the school’s commencement ceremony in May.”
Swidley also points to Brad Feld’s promise earlier this year to end handshakes, and asked Feld how that was going. Feld said “My campaign was a total failure. I found that I was having the same conversation over and over, explaining why I wasn’t shaking hands. I got tired of it and decided it was easier to just shake everyone’s hands and then wash mine a bunch throughout the day.”
I obviously agree that handshakes need to go. My first post on handshakes was in May, and after I noted that some startups and venture capitalists were trying to end the barbaric practice at board meetings. I piped up again on National Handshake Day.
Like Feld, I too have mostly given up on this. People just get pissed when you don’t shake their hand. But 30% or so of people I meet with know how I feel about it and offer a friendly fist bump. The best moments I have are when people say how much they love TechCrunch and read it every day, and then stick out their sweaty palm to shake hands. They obviously were just being polite about reading this blog. I shake their hand with a smile, and remember to wash my hands at the next opportunity.
I bet mike has sex like in demolition man where they put on the head pieces.. no touching aloud.. seriously we need more touching in this world not less… Mike do you curl up next to your apple as you fall asleep… you know the USB port is not a…
Just wash your hands more. Handshakes aren’t a major cause of sickness compared to everything else we come into interaction with. Doorknobs, public computer keyboards, surfaces we touch, etc are much larger culprits.
I found that people thought you were pregidous and looked at you funny. I would always say please forgive me but I have a cold and I don’t want you to get it. Never worked.
I too, decided to just bring a bottle of Prell.
Michael, Being opposed to handshaking is dumb. I understand some people just like to be iconoclastic, just to be “cool”.
How about taking on the American habit of asking “how are you doing?”? This makes more sense. Most people who ask this, don’t really mean to be asking for a status update.
There’s nothing barbaric about a handshake. It’s a simple, real human contact in an ever increasingly separated world. Perhaps you should discuss with some close friend or counselor why you’re so insecure. Man up!
Logically, I agree with you about avoiding spreading disease. So wash your hands.
Good luck.
Bill
@courtney benson: Pregidous is not a word (and certainly not an adjective), but prejudiced is. There’s no excuse for that kind of spelling past age 18.
….you just cant avoid handshakes, its like trying to avoid saying good morning to anyone when you go to work; that’s how its perceived.
Although “good morning” has a good alternative. It’s “hello.”
Shaking hands, on the other hand, offers no good alternatives.
Fist bumps? No..
anybody heard of antibodies?
blah blah swine flu. This the same swine flu where in the last pandemic the vaccine killed more people than the actual sickness?
thx for being uninteresting. Next article should be “bust out the leaches here comes the swine flu” or maybe “You should wash your hands after wiping your ars and before shaking hands” oooh here’s one “why you should be asian and start wearing a dust mask, gloves and a visor over you face when you walk out of the house…. SWINE FLU”
yet another 45 secs of life wasted.
Few more posts on the topic and you can probably get that number from 30 to 50%.
I’m in favor of a good ass grab instead. Who’s with me?
I shake Arrington’s hand as often as I can. Why? Cause it gets that “you don’t read my blog, do you?” look.
Seriously shaking hands is so automatic in our society that it’s very hard to change this behavior. I think we’ll be driving electric cars before we get rid of shaking hands.
That said, I usually fist bump when I can because I just don’t want to be the guy who gets a whole town sick.
lol seriously, I would say ‘get a life’ but that would be stating something so completely obvious… given you so clearly are afraid to walk outside.
So that’s what happened, you gave up. At the CrunchUp, a chatted with you for a minute, and it was you that reached out for a handshake. I was just going to avoid it until you did that.
It was an odd conversation over all though, here was my tweet just a few mins after the chat: http://twitter.com/jstrellner/status/2574132262
Mysophobia (or germaphobia) is a disease, Mike – you need treatment!
People n
We need someone to lead us in this direction!
No more handshakes, please!!!
You guys should do what we do in India – NAMASTE – google it if you don’t know how it’s done.
yeah, let’s throw people in jail for kissing in public like you do in India too
hehehe Good one
Simply cough into your hand right before the hand shake is about to happen. That should do the trick
Loving contact with children when they’re young makes them more well rounded individuals, and the same is true of adults.
There’s an article in the New Yorker that goes over just how important human contact is, and it’s a fascinating read.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande
Even if this is all a silly joke, it is likely influential. Promoting physical isolation from others because of your own agenda is at best fatuous, and at worst fosters paranoia about germs.
I think taking the bus and having to hang onto the rails that everyone who went before you has touched is far worse than shaking hands with a few people during the day. Just my luck to not have a car when there’s nasty swine flu germs around.
Haha… You are so weird Arrington.
Handshakes are a very telling sign when meeting someone. Firm and strong w/ good eye contact makes a strong first impression. Fishy and weak does not. Running away (or tucking hands in pocket) brands you as a Howard Hughes-esque germ weanie.
I’ll stick with the old fashioned shake (combined with regular use of Purell sanitizer).
While I am not too into the handshake thing as I find it very impersonal and dirty, I usually reserve the fist bump for very close friends. What is one to do to acknowledge the other person’s existence, agreement, etc?
From the TechCrunch “About Us” page:
“TechCrunch was founded on June 11, 2005, as a weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies. In addition to covering new companies, we profile existing companies that are making an impact (commercial and/or cultural) on the new web space.”
Err… right.
If you don’t expose yourself, then your natural immune system will crap itself when it gets a serrious hit.
When they give you a jab for flu, they are actually infecting you with a small amount of the flu so that your immune system can build up its defence for a serious hit.
Handshaking, probably works in roughly the same way. However, I would avoid doing it with someone that’s just flushed the can. And people that know they have something have a responsibility to avoid contact with others.
Worst thing is when people shake hands at a party where everyone’s eating. I was fighting a cold at Le Web a couple of years ago, and we were eating all that spectacular food, and people kept wanting to shake my hand, the same hand that was handling food that was going into their digestive system. I kept saying “You don’t want what I have,” but they all insisted on shaking anyway. It’s stupid! Really fucking stupid.
The handshake disease strikes again!!! I thought you had left this in the past Michael
What I enjoy the most about these posts are the comments. I love respectful bashers.
Yikes! I’m sorry I shook your hand. I forgot about this entirely. My bad.
I try the Japanese head bow instead of returning the handshake with some success (It doesn’t help that I’m of Danish vs Asian descent. Most people I meet – I don’t want to touch. The part about people not reading your blog is awesome.
I thought this was going to be about the Obama-gets-no-handshake-in-Russia
Michael Admiral, that’s your standard for trust, not everyone is the same, some of us really only care to touch people we really care about not strangers, I don’t trust you now and shaking your hand wouldn’t make me trust you then. i hope you realize that the whole world does not exist to make you happy.
I read this post and said “he’s full of it!” Shaking a hand is a social obligawp:comment_author_IP>66.188.111.172
2009-07-20 14:56:06
2009-07-20 21:56:06
1 death vs 11,803 current live births per day...
The sky is falling, the sky is falling!
Stop smoking and drinking, eat right and you will be able to live through this 'pandemic' (unless of course, like previously stated, you are just one of those susceptible people a lot of us have known).
American people are so ignorant due to media blackout of swine flue reporting.
Does anyone know here, more than 292 people have died of swine flue in USA.
Thats a death every day since swine pandemic began.
Check out CDC website, facts speaks for themselves
292 people died so far out of a current 300 million people in the U.S.? What is that, like a hundredth of 1 percent?
1 death vs 11,803 current live births per day…
The sky is falling, the sky is falling!