What people are saying about Andrew Scheer’s awkward arm’s-length handshake

Last week, while he was in Toronto, federal Conservative leader Andrew Scheer tweeted some photos of himself shaking hands with Toronto voters. The subject matter was totally benign, but the way Scheer went about shaking those hands was decidedly weird: his arm was fully extended, putting his body a few feet away from the person he was greeting. In some cases there was even a row of hedges between Scheer and his handshake partner. Is this a big deal? Not exactly. But shaking hands is to politics what boiling water is to cooking: most practitioners master it pretty early on. Twitter was perplexed. Here’s what people had to say.

Here’s the original tweet. Andrew Scheer is making some friends! That’s nice:

And then people began to identify something odd:

This person puts his finger on it:

It is a little peculiar to be standing a full arm’s length away from someone whose hand you’re shaking—as this guy demonstrated when he tried recreating the pose:

A number of Twitter users zeroed in on a woman in the background of one of Scheer’s photos. Her arched eyebrow seems to speak volumes (but who knows):

There were calls for the heads of Scheer’s communications people:

There was wordplay:

And there was quite a bit of hedge humour:

Everyone loves a good excuse to use this Homer GIF:

And another one:

But some people took the skepticism a bit too far: