You try to push your thumb and forefinger through each other. Eventually they slip.
this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2025
64 points (95.7% liked)
No Stupid Questions
39759 readers
1420 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Put your fingers together like so:
Then push your thumb to the right while pressing your middle finger down hard. Let your thumb slide out, releasing your middle finger, which will snap against your hand like this:
Your middle finger hitting your hand is what makes the snapping noise, so the harder your press your middle finger down, the louder the snap will be.
This is a skill I do not have, and apparently I may be one of two people in the world who can’t do it.
I gotta say, surprised everyone is attributing the "snap" sound to hitting the pad of your thumb.
All y'all veteran snappers, try this. Lift up your pinky, then snap. Makes a much higher pitched snap. Now lift up your ring finger, then snap. No snap at all. Your pinky and ring finger make a sort of tube, and your thumb is striking one end of it (the crevice between thumb pad and ring finger tip) to make a tone. I'm even able to smack that spot with a finger on the OTHER hand and make a (quieter) snap.
Hope this helps.
Directions unclear, I tried snapping with my pinky (instead of with my middle finger) for far too long before I realized you meant "snap like normal except put your pinky up."
Sorry XD
holy shit i learned a new thing im the guy from the xkcd comic
this is literally me rn
My pet peeve is when people post this for things that are not even close to common knowledge, like this. You are not lucky 10000. More like lucky,,, 10 or something
Cool! What part did you learn??
Not op but I learned that the snap is loud because your closed pinky and ring fingers form your hand into a resonator.
Update: my hand hurts now, but in fact it is possible to lay down a pinky, then snap three times successively with ring, middle, then index, which makes three different snaps (descending in pitch).
I was a child and had enough time to devote to learning this.
For me it's my middle finger hitting the cushion below the thumb that makes the noise.
Also answering the second question, I have a vague memory of being in 4th grade and all of us trying to learn how to snap fingers during recess by watching each other and trying to do it.
one thing to know is that the snap doesn’t come from your fingers flicking together, it comes from your index finger striking your thumb muscle
Or middle finger. I can't snap with my index.
Whew… thought I was weird for a minute there
I have to use my ring finger and my thumb. 😂
TIL I can snap with my ring finger. I'm a lot better at snapping with my left hand too, even though I'm right handed.
Haha same
The thumb muscle being the intersection bayern the thumb and palm right?
For me it's my middle finger but same effect I guess
Although listening it sounds more like the sound is coming as it moves past the knuckle
Press the pad of your thumb and the end of your middle finger together with some force. It helps to offset the finger to the left side of the thumb (looking down at the thumb). Hold your thumb still, and try to pull the tip of your middle finger down to your palm, until it overcomes friction and snaps against your palm at the base of your thumb.
I can only do it with ring finger. I can't get any sound out if I use middle finger
Press your middle finger and thumb together with your pinky in the hollow of the gerl of your hand and your ring finger slightly overlapping it at the base of the thumb. Move the thumb out of the way to the side, allowing the middle finger to accelerated down to strike the spot where the ring finger meets the base of the thumb.
How I learned? In a dream. I literally woke up snapping my fingers and I've been able to do it ever since.
You just put your fingers together and blow.
Wait... 🤔
It's impressive he can snap with a metal gauntlet, I wouldn't think it'd give enough friction with the metal on metal.
The gauntlet can wipe out half the population instantly, and you think it's unable to snap its fingers 😭
Press your middle finger against your thumb. Pull the middle finger down, but barely stop it with your thumb. Play with that hand movement
There's a song called "Snap your fingers, snap your neck."
There's also
Snap ya fanguhs, do the step, you can do it all by yo self, lemme see ya do it
I feel like these are two entirely different processes.
I spent hours one afternoon as a kid trying to figure it out. After a few hours my right (dominant) hand was completely wrecked, but I was so frustrated I just switched to the left hand and kept trying. Eventually I got a passable snapping sound and ran to my mom sobbing with joy to demonstrate the saddest sounding snap. She noticed my hands were shaking and made me sit down and hold them on ice packs, lol.
I'm 29 now and still can't snap with my dominant hand for shit but my left hand snap sounds decent.
- Place your thumb firmly onto your middle finger, you'll want to apply significant pressure with your finger here
- Push your thumb ourwardly to the side while maintaining pressure
- As your middle finger slams into the palm bit of your thumb it should produce a noise
- Practice until you can do it more consistently and loudly. Try doing with the other hand - I can only snap loudly with my non-dominant hand
I've taught my cat to come over when I snap my fingers. It started by just trying to get its attention...
Edit: typo.
Pushing your middle finger tightly into your thumb to build up pressure. Vary the pressure slightly and your middle finger will slip off your thumb, and due to the pressure built up, quickly slam into the base of your thumb and produce a loud sound.
Once you're got the hang of that you can try it with other fingers. The ring finger works nicely as well.