Last week the Chicago Cubs banned a fan for playing the Circle Game, claiming he was actually being a white supremacist. They fell for the hoax that the OK gesture is actually something bad. And NBC News even blurred out the guy’s hand so the infection wouldn’t spread, or maybe so the audience couldn’t see that it was just an OK sign.

Chicago Cubs fan, who appeared to flash a hand gesture that has become associated with white supremacy behind a black sports reporter while he was on air, has been banned from Wrigley Field. https://t.co/c4b8GvqJVI — NBC News (@NBCNews) May 9, 2019

Now the idiocy has crossed the pond. The other day Stephen Fry, the actor, writer, and Most British Person Ever, tweeted this:

Are you A.O.K? Our friends @aok.kitchen are supporting @MindCharity this Mental Health Awareness Week, 13th – 19th May. Follow them to find out more. 👌#mentalhealthawarenessweek#MHAW19 pic.twitter.com/lpK03pcia8 — Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) May 13, 2019

Innocent enough, yeah? He’s just trying to be a good guy, right?

Wrong! Emma Kelly, Metro (UK):

…While Stephen was just trying to raise awareness and drum up support by sharing the universally recognisable OK symbol, others piped up to claim it was a sign of the alt-right.

One person wrote: ‘Stephen and friends – You might want to be super careful using this symbol if you don’t want to be confused with white supremacist creeps. It’s an unfortunate fact of life that even the kindest of intentions can be taken out of context.’ Another replied: ‘Are you aware that this hand symbol can be misinterpreted as support for white supremacy?’, while one reply said:

‘Didn’t have you down as part of the alt-right.’

That’s because Stephen Fry isn’t part of the alt-right. Nobody in their right mind believes he is. Anybody who says something this stupid is just virtue-signaling, performatively reminding the other members of their tribe that they don’t belong to the other tribe. Their eagerness to be more #woke than the next guy and/or gal drives them to say idiotic things like, “Stephen Fry is a racist.”

For his part, Fry has given the correct and only response to such foolishness:

PS: I really will not allow the simple 👌 gesture to belong to the moronic dogwhistling catfishing foghorning frogmarching pigsticking dickwaving few who attempt to appropriate it for their own fatuous fantasies. T — Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) May 13, 2019

Exactly. Racists don’t own that gesture. Some pranksters decided to associate a harmless hand sign with racism to prove how gullible some people are, and some people proved them right.

See, the trick is to be smarter than the racists. By badgering well-meaning people, you’re doing exactly what the trolls want you to do. The best way to counter them is to think for yourself.

No wonder this keeps happening.

(Hat tip: Twitchy)