Egalitarian and endorsed by Obama, the bump got a huge boost from the pandemic. But is its archaic rival getting a grip again?

O f late I’ve been intensifying the frequency with which I bump people’s fists. Bit of unexpected banter in the street? Fist bump. Saying goodbye to a friend from an awkward distance that would necessitate fist bumping on one leg? Fist bump. Holding up the end of a five-a-side match so I can fist bump every last person on the pitch? Fist bump.

I love fist bumping so much, but I do so with the passion of the convert. Once, I was a handshaker. Family got a hug, and maybe close friends after a few drinks, but everyone else got what is described in Business Etiquette for Dummies as the “perfect” handshake: “A firm [connection] with good eye contact [which] communicates self-confidence.”

Then came Covid. One of my vivid memories of the spring of 2020 was watching Premier League footballers practising elbow bumps as a greeting, laughing at the ridiculousness of a measure recommended to limit the spread of a new virus. A week later the grounds were shut down. Twelve months further on and even that kind of limited physical contact had largely been removed from our lives. Then, with the easing of restrictions, I began to value as I never had before the moments when you could reach out and touch somebody else. Obviously, shaking hands was out: too risky. And elbows were still too awkward. But fist bumps were quick and clean.

Barack Obama was the great populariser of the fist bump. While campaigning in Minnesota for the Democratic nomination for president in 2008, he took to the stage and exchanged a gentle, cocked-wrist bump with his wife, Michelle. It became a talking point – it “thrilled a lot of black folks”, according to Ta-Nehisi Coates, and was likely to have been an al-Qaida “terrorist fist jab” in the eyes of Fox News – but it also cut through to the public at large.

This was surely because of its tenderness. According to Obama afterwards, the gesture “captured what I love about my wife – there’s an irreverence about her … and sometimes we’ll do silly things”. A presidential couple doing something both affectionate and silly moved the fist bump from a gesture largely associated with sport to something more commonplace.

In the interests of balance, it should probably be acknowledged that the handshake has not always been the act of formalised self-assertion it is today. Its early history (handshakes feature in the Iliad) was as a means of building trust, as it allowed someone to check you weren’t concealing a weapon. In the 17th century, the Quakers appropriated the gesture as something almost equivalent to a fist bump today: an act of openness that welcomed one’s fellow man and eschewed the hierarchical behaviours involved in bowing or tipping your hat.

As I bumped my way through 2021, I rode on Obama vibes. Gently meeting another person’s knuckles was, it became clear, a very different kind of greeting. It’s something about the simplicity and the way in which the hands meet evenly. There’s little opportunity for power games with a fist bump, and no need to stand up straight. There’s nothing about this gesture that has anything to do with displaying self-confidence.

During a period that was battering for everyone, the fist bump felt appropriate; and, what’s more, it was easy to do. Bumping someone who has helped you out or done something thoughtful just wasn’t as awkward as offering to shake hands. It was a way to show gratitude. It also felt like a means of simply acknowledging common humanity.

That was then. Now the pandemic restrictions are so totally over in England, I can already sense an awkwardness as I try to connect my fist with another’s. The handshake is creeping back. I am one of those people who worry that the disaster this country went through in the past two years, and the collective trauma we all shared, are things that may easily be buried. I fear that we won’t take the time to reflect on what happened and retain those things we learned for the better from that period. A greater ability to acknowledge what people have in common was, I believe, one of those things. Which is why – at least for now – my quest for bumping continues.

Paul MacInnes is a reporter for the Guardian