As more people embrace finger claps, the queer ballroom scene is clapping back at those unaware of its origin and meaning.

Are you finger clapping the right way? (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)

Finger claps have quietly taken over a swath of pop culture in the past year.

The gesture — repeatedly tapping the thumb to a finger on the same hand — offers a silent way to show praise, like the snaps of beatniks during poetry slams.

It’s been captured across the internet, with young women and LGBTQ+ youth using it the most. Blue Ivy Carter finger-clapped while onstage with her mother, Beyoncé, in a Cowboy Carter Tour video posted in May. On “The Tonight Show,” Chappell Roan tiny-clapped with long, feather-finished nails. The pinching hand emoji 🤏 now doubles as a finger clap in texts, and stars of “Love Island USA” finger-clapped throughout the hit reality show’s latest season.

Finger claps are certainly easier on the palms than seal clapping like Nicole Kidman at the 2017 Oscars, but not everyone is applauding. Some veterans of an underground LGBTQ+ scene, who were finger-clapping long before the gesture had a name, have been upset that many people using it now have no idea where the gesture came from, what it means, or even which fingers they’re supposed to use. The clap’s surging popularity can feel especially galling to the queer ballroom community, which pioneered the gesture, as the rights of transgender people have been rolled back.

“All of the spaces that have provided the opportunity for this culture to continue to exist are being threatened, almost to the point of extinction,” said Leelee James, mother (or leader) for the Denver-based ballroom group Royal House of LaBeija. “The same energy that is going into trying to gate-keep and co-opt our culture from us and regurgitate it back to us are not necessarily … being put into trying to help us preserve ourselves.”

The finger-clap has quietly taken over pop culture from Beyoncé’s stage to "Love Island." Post reporter Samantha Chery shows us how to do it and why it matters. (Video: Amber Ferguson, Samantha Chery/The Washington Post)

Queer Black and Brown Americans started ballroom as an underground subculture in the 1960s in response to the discrimination they faced in New York’s predominantly White drag pageant scene. Over time, balls evolved into their own art form, with campy competitions and elaborate makeup. Although it’s unclear when finger taps entered the scene, people who have attended and participated in balls said the gesture needs no explanation when used during shows — silently tapping the thumb to the middle finger is one of many ways to applaud and praise ballroom performers when a cocktail or fan in one hand makes it difficult to clap traditionally.

This isn’t the first time ballroom culture has gotten muddled as it seeps into the mainstream. In 2023, fans were calling their favorite female pop stars “mother,” and “slay” took off in the 2010s. “Love Island USA” stars have perhaps done more than anyone to contribute to finger claps’ popularity online in recent months, combining the gesture with other ballroom-derived slang terms like “clock it” (essentially, “did you catch that?”) and “tea” (gossip) — regardless of whether those associations make any sense.

“You can’t call me ugly. So okay, talk about my makeup. Face tea, body tea,” one of Season 7’s runners-up, Olandria Carthen, said in a TikTok Live video as she finger-clapped back at people who had criticized her makeup. A still of contestant Huda Mustafa grinning mid-finger tap has become a meme used to signal agreement. And in a video Ace Greene posted in April, before he appeared on “Love Island,” he referenced the gesture’s popularity in a freestyle rap: “She did the finger thumb tap and said, ‘clock it.’”

The surge of tiny clapping has led to an endless debate on TikTok about the proper way to do it. Some insist finger claps should be silent and bristle at people who say “clock it” or “tea” while clapping. Others take issue with influencers who clap with their index finger, when the middle finger is more commonly used in ballroom. (If this seems pedantic, imagine the reaction if you used your middle finger to give a thumbs-up.) And a notion has spread that the finger clap is supposed to resemble the American Sign Language sign for the number 8, because it means someone “ate,” or performed extremely well. (Ballroom folks say that’s a reach.)

As one commenter noted, “Man the finger police is strict strict.”

PLEASE………. stop stealing the Ballroom scene gestures and lingo…….!!!!!!!!! —-That GRINDS MY VOGUE —- Food 4 Thought………. 🤏🏾🤏🏾🤏🏾🤏🏾🤏🏾🤏🏾🤏🏾🤏🏾🤏🏾🤏🏾🤏🏾🤏🏾🤏🏾

Others are mainly concerned with keeping the gesture linked to ballroom, a community that seldom gets credit for its cultural influence.

“I’ve been teaching this for class for so many years,” ballroom icon Dashaun Wesley complained on TikTok in April as he demonstrated his finger-clap technique. “But now I see people walking around like, ‘Clock that tea.’ No! They took this from the ballroom girls.”

Wesley often finger-clapped with Leiomy Maldonado as stars of the HBO Max ballroom show “Legendary,” and he still does it constantly as a commentator at balls. “We had our underground ways of communicating with each other, but now that we’re so public, I feel like we’re now in a teaching space,” he told The Washington Post.

Myah More, a 29-year-old teacher in Milton, Ontario, assumed the tap was meant to be a mini bravo when she first noticed it in a video from Black, queer celebrity stylist Scot Louie. She didn’t think much about finger claps after that — until she started seeing her younger sister finger-tapping with her thumb and index finger while saying “clock it.”

“I was like, ‘Girl, that is not the finger. Stop embarrassing me in these streets. We are not going to co-opt the signage of others,’” More told The Washington Post. “You’re saying ‘clock it,’ and you’re not even part of the community that I first saw bring this to the forefront.”

After she turned to TikTok for answers, it confirmed her concerns: “We’re just running with something that is cool and Black,” she said, comparing it to Justin Bieber’s infamous line, “It’s not clocking to you that I’m standing on business.”

Breean Flax also noticed how finger claps were drifting in meaning, much like how conservatives started using “woke” as a pejorative, she said. Flax first started seeing finger claps sometime around 2017, after moving to New York and attending balls with her friends.

A 33-year-old Brooklyn-based content creator who often wears intricate nail art, Flax has found the tiny claps to be more practical for her: It doesn’t get her palms sweaty or dirty, avoids interference with her long nails and makes it easier to clap quietly when she’s wearing bracelets.

After seeing the gesture become misconstrued, Flax posted a TikTok to educate people on the proper finger placements. “If you gon clock it Clock it right babes,” she captioned the clip, where she narrowly avoids tapping her thumb and index finger together, then meets her middle finger to her thumb.

“Obviously, everyone’s going to keep saying ‘clock it.’ We’re not going to get away from that,” she said. “But at least let’s keep it true to form.”

Ballroom icon Shannon Balenciaga said the lack of widespread recognition is nothing new. When she brought her kung fu fan to the 2022 BET Awards, it caught the attention of one of Beyoncé’s choreographers. Later, she watched as fans were incorporated into the pop singer’s Renaissance and Cowboy Carter tours. Beyoncé, Madonna, Lady Gaga and other stars have often hired dancers from the ballroom scene, but Balenciaga would like to see the people driving ballroom culture become as popular as the expressions they create.

“We have so much talent in ballroom, and yet we’re so overlooked,” she said. “We’re good enough to be background dancers, but are we good enough to be stars?”

Samantha Chery

‘Clock it.’ We’re all finger-clapping wrong.