*Nods Respectfully Towards You*

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Part of a series on Zoë Quinn. [View Related Entries]

About

"Nods Respectfully Towards You", also known as Le Nodding Man, is a parody gesture mocking a tweet addressed to indie game developer Zoe Quinn by United Kingdom-based engineer Marc Threadingham. The character is most commonly used to mock male supporters of women online, likewise to the White Knight pejorative term.

Origin

On August 18th, 2014, Threadingham posted a tweet to Quinn urging her to stand her ground in the face of criticism she was receiving after her ex boyfriend published an expose blog post about her alleged affairs with several men. The action cue used in the tweet "*nods respectfully toward you*" was mocked by Quinn's critics as an example of "white knight" behavior. Threadingham subsequently protected his tweets from being viewed by the public. Parody images of Threadingham and his tweet began circulating online that same day.

Spread

On August 19th, the @NodsRespectfully Twitter^[2] feed was launched, which tweets the phrase "*nods respectfully towards you*" to various Twitter users and features the Le Nodding Man illustration as a profile picture.

On August 23rd, Tumblr user satorukimukobayahi^[3] submitted an image macro featuring an illustration of Threadingham, referring to him as "The Nodding Man of Respect" (shown below, left). That same day, Tumblr user Sayonara-JC^[5] made a pixel GIF of the 4chan /v/ (video games) board character Vivian James tipping a fedora with the caption "nods respectfully". Sayonara-JC's GIF was subsequentally shared on the /r/justneckbeardthings^[4] subreddit the next day (shown below, right).