That might have been the case decades ago. For example, in the USSR, various finger gestures usually implied something related to a penis and were considered extremely offensive. But that hasn't been the case since at least the early 1990s, when VCRs became widely available, people saw Hollywood movies for the first time and got used to westernized meaning of thumbs-up and OK gestures. Nowadays, when backing a truck towards a trailer, a thumbs-up would be taken as "good job" and an OK gesture (often paired with a kiss) as "exceptionally well done".

Care to add any country to the list then? Did I miss anything? Let's see if we can push it past half of the world's population, but I don't think we will.

> I can assure you in most parts using your thumb and index finger for a visual OK is not OK.

You're moving goal posts. Of course it doesn't just mean "OK" in some places.

What you actually claimed was "The OK gesture has always been very inappropriate in most parts of the world."

Which is plain wrong. In India for instance it can refer to "money", while in China it can nowadays also be seen as a distress signal when performed a certain way (thanks to Chinese social media popularizing that use). There's some ways you can mess this up, like making it seem you're attempting to bribe someone, or signalling you're in distress when you aren't, but in neither country the gestures are inherently anywhere near "very inappropriate" and both will even understand it as "OK" if you perform it correctly and in the appropriate context.

That's already almost 3 billion people, but let's say 2.5 billion because there's regional variations in both countries and I'm sure you could find some northern Chinese village that will take offense.

I can easily push the number of people to whom it is not inappropriate past 4 billion by adding smaller populations (Indonesia, Japan, western Europe, USA, Taiwan, South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, ...), so your claim that "[it] has always been very inappropriate in most parts of the world" cannot possibly be true.

> I can assure you in most parts using your thumb and index finger for a visual OK is not OK.

>>You're moving goal posts. Of course it doesn't mean "OK" in many

I said the gesture is "not OK" to use (meaning inappropriate), not that it doesn’t mean "OK". Those are two different things. The gesture can mean OK in some places while still being not OK (inappropriate) to use in many others.

Also, I always said "parts of the world". You introduced population into the argument.

> I said the gesture is "not OK" to use (meaning inappropriate), not that it doesn’t mean "OK". Those are two different things. The gesture can mean OK in some places while still being not OK (inappropriate) to use in many others.

Fair. That's clearly how I should've read that.

Though it does not materially affect this conversation, since demonstrably there's over 4 billion people to whom the gesture is not inappropriate. The claim "[it] has always been very inappropriate in most parts of the world" is wrong, regardless of what reasonable definition of "most" you use.

You edited your comment to add this, so I'll respond here:

> Also, I always said "parts of the world". You introduced population into the argument.

Right. And you're being vague on how you actually arrive at your claim of "most", which conveniently keeps the waters muddy while you attack attempts to turn this into something measurable.

So what other measure would you use? Most others are nonsense.

For example "places" isn't a useful measure, but even then: It can only be offensive to people. If I dropped you on a random point on the globe and you made that gesture, there's about a 99% chance nobody would be around to be offended.

By land area and predominant culture? Just Antarctica (hardly anyone there to take offense), the US, China, Canada, Australia, and India together are going to dwarf the opposition.

Counting countries? It's clearly inappropriate in around 10, with about another 20-30 where it can be misunderstood easily (Arab world, some of eastern Europe, scattered ones). A far cry from ~195 countries.

Either way there needs to be someone to take offense, so population is a pretty good measure.

You may disagree, but the onus was always on you, the one making the claim, to pick a measure and a definition of "most", then show that the bar is met. Feel free to now make more of an argument than "trust me I traveled".