End the Handshake Horror

I’ve just gotten used to sneezing in my sleeve. And now it’s time to let the handshake meet its end. The Boston Globe’s Neil Swidey:

With everything we now know about germs, about the ferocity with which trouble travels via hand-to-hand contact, why do we feel obligated to soldier on with this centuries-old tradition?

It’s not clear exactly why and when the handshake became our default in-person greeting. The most common explanation is that it was how a man, upon meeting another, could establish that neither was carrying a weapon. The practice dates at least to the Middle Ages, though some archeological evidence suggests it’s much older than that. We long ago stopped using leeches to drain the blood of the ill and spices to hide the stink of rancid meat. Yet for some reason this medieval ritual persists.

Michael Arrington’s been on an end-the-handshake campaign for a while:

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.

Arrington’s happy to have Swidey spreading the word. But ending handshakes is easier said than done:

The World Health Organization has been dusting off an earlier campaign to get people to drop the handshake in favor of an elbow bump. Good luck with that. … Earlier this year, Brad Feld launched a campaign he called No More Handshakes in ’09. The MIT-trained high-tech entrepreneur was determined to stay healthy throughout cold-and-flu season. The results? Well, I’ll let him tell it. “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.”

Arrington has mostly given up on it, too. “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.”

NOT REALLY RELATED: Jason Kincaid says We Need To Kill The Business Card Once And For All!