Awkward turtle

Some have remarked that giving the gesture is a sort of celebration of social discomfort.

[1][2][3] The awkward turtle is gestured by placing one hand flat atop the other with both palms facing down, thumbs stuck out to the sides and rotating to look like flippers.

[8] A student journalist reported on the ubiquitousness of the awkward turtle hand gesture at the University of Pennsylvania on 3 February 2006.

[2] By 2008, Facebook reportedly had more than 500 "awkward turtle" groups, the largest of which had more than 27,000 members.

[5] "A Way with Words", a public radio program about language, cited it as slang from UCLA during a segment on "awkward turtle" on 10 October 2009.