Credit: http://www.cafepress.com/downtwinkles

So here’s the deal: I lived in a crusty vegan hippie cooperative when I was a sophomore in college. Despite its stigma and the obvious lack of cheese, it was a fun experience at that point in my life (all I’m saying is that I paid my dues). Observing Occupy Portland’s methodical meetings over the past week has sparked memories of my past residency. Specifically, our house’s weekly endless meetings that would either end in tears (one word: rat poison) or a massive hug-pile. Point is, we used the consensus method seen in the Occupy crowd — hand signals and agreement methods, NOT call and response. While it appears that a lot of the meeting sign-language has changed since my consensus time, one hand motion has remained intact: the down twinkles.

Down twinkles (make the sign for rain with your hands) signify general (and silent) disagreement during a consensus meeting. Pretty simple. But it doesn’t stop there. Due to it’s growing popularity through the Occupy movement, one Illinois woman made a website solely dedicated to this disapproving hand motion.

Oh, and a store.

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  • http://www.cafepress.com/downtwinkles

Who knew the antiquated hand motion of my past would make it big? For more consensus-style hang jives, check out the tutorial by vest man:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=8NJjiGV0cCw

Alex Zielinski is a former News Editor for the Portland Mercury. She's here to tell stories about economic inequities, cops, civil rights, and weird city politics that you should probably be paying attention...

22 replies on “What’s Up With Down Twinkles?”

  1. I’ll admit to “down twinkling” in 1996-1997 but sometime during hour three of a random consensus meeting about NW old growth logging, I decided my time would be better spent finishing up that Computer Science degree.

  9. Oh man. In the late 90s I used to have to bake vegan apple crumble to get my lame ass roommates to attend our weekly house meetings (which mostly consisted of me trying to get them to pay for utilities) and could have used some down twinkling back then.

  11. Cat and Beard — I found the fuse box helps get your lame ass roommates to pay for utilities and disabling the hot water heater will get your lazy assed overdependent psycho bitch girl friend to move out or at least join a health club.

    This is tip number 156 from the Portland Guide to Passive Aggressive Living.

  12. Yes, this whole thing reminds me of houses I lived in with other people in the ’90’s. Minus the whole hand-gestures-in-lieu-of-just-talking part. It would have been surreal in a room with maybe seven people tops in it.

    But above all else, those pained, earnest attempts at clear communication and mutual respect undone -as always- by the loudest and craziest among us still taking up all the airspace, and the rest of us acceding to their bullshit because we want to be tolerant of others, or secretly hope that if we give them everything they want, they’ll shut up.

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