Meeting family this week outside California and people are shaking hands I usually decline and offer a fistbump but I didn’t feel comfortable (totally my hang up, nobody made it weird). After one handshake though I got so stressed I had to wash my hands right away, so I think I’m gonna have to be better about insisting on fistbumps.

@kyellgold we need a normalized non-verbal cue indicating “no touching, nothing personal.” 🫤

As someone in a nuanced situation, I’ve adopted shoving my paws deep in my pockets around people I don’t believe share the same precautionary behaviors as myself.

I find most people won’t extend their hands when they see that.

Corollary: you need to work your tail off with other non-verbal cues to compensate for the perceived frigidity.

(If only we had ACTUAL tails.)

@artfulreggie @kyellgold hoenstlt this ks why I like those color badges at MFF. I am terrible at cues but the badges are so helpful

@ZiaMacPine @kyellgold normalize badges outside of cons, cowards~

A lot of people already wear badges all day for work. We might as well make them more colorful and useful.

@artfulreggie @ZiaMacPine I would love that for many reasons.

@kyellgold @artfulreggie Also it would be a huge help because i am TERRIBLE at names

@ZiaMacPine @artfulreggie That is another! Although lately I often find myself in groups where different people know me by different names, which would make badges tricky.

@kyellgold @artfulreggie yeah thats a good point

@ZiaMacPine @kyellgold You can do like me and tack on an alternative nickname to your pronouns. Something generic but orthogonally valid across all your projected personas~

@artfulreggie @ZiaMacPine I do tell people "you can just call me 'fox'" sometimes.