Look at you. All this time, you've just been subtly snapping at your waiter when impatient for the check. Back in the 90s, though, there were actual video tutorials, complete with slow-mo shots, to teach folks how to take snapping to the extreme. And by extreme, we mean snaps named after mythological creatures, snaps that could clear rooms, punctuate sentences, battle foes, stop time, and make people rip their clothes off.
See the found video footage after the jump, where a gnarly gang of self-proclaimed "snap divarettes" school you on how to work the Medusa Snap and the Maxi-snap, among other fancy finger moves.
Where'd this come from? Some quick internet research reveals that the short how-to is an excerpt from a 1991 Marlon T Riggs PBS documentary called Tongues Untied that was funded by the National Endowment For The Arts. The early '90s are the same television era when In Living Color's Damon Wayans and David Alan Grier took snapping to new levels of hilarity with their "Zorro snap....in a Z formation" for their Men On Film sketch.
The video was apparently first uploaded to YouTube by professional VH1 blogger with his own private blog on the side. His video was served with a copyright violation by the company Frameline and summarily removed. Before that happened someone pirated it from his channel and reuploaded it to theirs. Oh snap.
Additional reporting by Swampdog.
