The Handshake
A few nights ago, I was at a party and found myself in a familiar social situation.
Someone came up, introduced themselves, and extended a hand to shake mine. I have never loved handshakes. They feel formal, transactional, and vaguely work-coded. I usually prefer a hug.
But this time, I had a different idea: instead of shaking one person’s hand, what if several of us crossed our arms, linked hands through the center of a circle, and created a friendship pretzel? A kind of tiny hand-holding festival that bounced up and down like one organism.
It was dumb. It was funny. It worked.
For a few minutes, it became a little meme at the party. The kind of thing that could easily disappear by the next morning.
That is partly why I wanted to write it down.
I like small rituals that interrupt the default script. Most social interactions come with invisible choreography: introduce yourself, shake hands, ask what someone does, nod politely, move on. But every once in a while, someone does something just weird enough to break the frame. Suddenly the room feels a little more alive.
The multi-person handshake was not profound. It will not scale. It has no obvious product roadmap. But it did something useful: it made a few strangers laugh, turned a formal gesture into a collective one, and briefly made everyone involved a little less self-conscious.
Maybe that is enough.
I am trying to notice these tiny openings more: the moments where a default interaction can become stranger, warmer, or more playful with almost no effort. A party does not need much to become memorable. Sometimes it just needs a few hands, one bad idea, and enough people willing to commit to the bit.